Meet the Founder

Meet Jean Philippe Giacomini, known as “J.P.”, was born in France. He rode many green colts, raced in a few steeplechases, evented, show-jumped and trained the first of 25 Grand Prix dressage horses before he was 20. He later studied dressage with Master Nuno Oliveira in Portugal for a year and worked as assistant trainer at the National Portuguese Stud of Alter Real for 3 and a half years with Dom Jose Athayde. 

Before the April 74 Communist Revolution, he promoted equestrian sports as director of the Lisbon Country Club (Aroeira) where he organized One Day Events with the support of the PEF president, Fernando Sommer d’Andrade, who named him National Trainer for the Junior Eventing Team, but the new regime prevented it. JP left for Spain where he organized Dressage shows in Marbella.

While living in England, Giacomini produced international champions in 3-Day-Eventing, Dressage and Show-Jumping, including the Lusitano stallion Novilheiro, who was a Grand Prix dressage horse, an intermediate eventer and British Show Jumping leading money earner in 1983. Giacomini also coached international event and dressage riders from England, Canada, the United States, Ireland and Portugal. This list includes the 1983 3 Day European Champion and multi-Gold Medalist Rachel Bayliss who, aboard Mystic Minstrel, achieved the unique feat of competing internationally in Dressage and Eventing the same year.

Giacomini is widely considered an expert at training piaffe and passage and is noted for his ability to bring long-lasting solutions to previously unsolved training or soundness problems. He is the inventor of a revolutionary training approach: the Endo-Training™ method (“rewarding the horse from within”) that addresses emotional and biomechanics issues for both horses and riders.

It includes the Endotapping™ technique that is the foundation for a new School of the Aids through systematic relaxation.

It has paved the way for the design of his Zeno Neuropacer™, a pain-reducing device (human and animal models) that “resets” the nervous system. 50 years of observing and analyzing horse behavior & biomechanics lead him to this remarkable discovery designed to resolve neurological issues in horses & humans. Anecdotal evidence of Zeno’s effects shows great promise for severe problems like Separation Anxiety, Shivers or Cribbing, Nervous Traveling, as well as relax the horse and rider during their training sessions.

JP was one of the few select American clinicians giving a very popular series of demonstrations on classical training during all 16 days of the Kentucky WEG 2010 and was invited again for WEG 2018. JP Giacomini translated a book on N. Oliveira teaching in English, promoted the Lusitano horse in the US through articles and administrative actions. In 1996, he created the format now known as Working Equitation. He travels for clinics worldwide, teaches his long-term student, USDF Gold Medallist Cedar Potts-Warner, and trains the Iberian Sporthorses he breeds in Harrodsburg, KY to become serious dressage competitors.He has now designed a full line of training aids soon to be released commercially under the brand “Zentora -Ride as One”.