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Join date: Oct 2, 2023

About

Welcome!

My name is Gilead (Gil) Friedman, founder and head coach of Mental Athletics.

My more than 20 years experience in the horse industry as a trainer, competitor, and coach has highlighted the importance of a strong mindset for sports performance.


In the past, mental toughness was thought to be innate – we now understand that resiliency can be learned through training. Concerned by the lack of resources available to riders on the mental aspect of showing, I created Mental Athletics.


Mentals Athletics combines my years of horsemanship experience with my education in Sports Mindset Coaching into a hands-on approach that helps riders of all skill levels and disciplines gain the knowledge and practical tools to step up their mental game and reach their Peak Performance Mindset (PPM). A PPM describes one’s ability to overcome mental barriers along their journey to success.

My goal as a Performance Mindset Coach is to support riders worldwide, and help them develop the skills to improve their well-being as competitors and their awareness about the inner workings of their mind that impact performance.

Posts (23)

Dec 21, 2025 ∙ 5 min
From Good to Great
Finals day at the NRHA Futurity — we freaking killed it. Gabriel Borges finished Reserve Champion Level 4, and Rodrigo Nieves won both Level 2 and Level 3 of the 2025 NRHA Futurity. I am extremely proud of them, and I’m proud of myself for doing what I’ve been doing to help get them there. And still, the question comes up: What do you actually do, Gil? It’s not always easy to explain what I do in a sentence, so instead, I want to share what I see again and again — what it actually takes to...
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Nov 23, 2025 ∙ 2 min
Time to Disconnect in Order to Connect
Overcoming the Uncontrollable Barriers Nothing in this world can be totally controlled. Things happen because they happen - just like the equine herpes virus outbreak that suddenly appeared in the United States, right before many of the season’s final events, including the NRHA Futurity, which I’m attending. EHV reshuffled the deck.  For 24 hours, we were all out of focus, waiting for someone else to decide our near future. It created this strange feeling of uneasiness, impatience, and...
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Nov 1, 2025 ∙ 3 min
Fixing the Rundown Breakdown
Lately, many riders have reached out to me for help dealing with issues in their rundowns, specifically that straight-line approach before the stop in a reining pattern. One rider, Allen, is a professional horse trainer, a very good one, who lately has felt a bit off in his rundown approach. It seemed to him that he was not able to relax his body and run freely through the rundown - his body got stiff, and it felt to him that he was starting to get in the way of the horse’s natural ability....
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Gilead (Gil) Friedman

Gilead (Gil) Friedman

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