Part of what makes these horses so safe for beginners is that they “tune out” some of the aids that lower level riders give by accident, meaning that they won’t go cantering off if a rider’s leg accidentally slides back too far. Most of the riders mounted on these horses also do not have the education to be able to influence the horse to carry themselves correctly through their hind end, core, and topline. However, once a rider becomes more advanced, they will need their horse to be more responsive to aids given the first time, and properly use his body to perform more athletic movements.

In some cases, the horse may have lapsed in his training after being ridden by beginners or riders using unclear aids for an extended period of time. In any case, the remedy is to use exercises that engage the horse’s mind and body while giving clear and consistent aids.

How to Fix a Horse’s Responsiveness

The most important thing is always to have the horse traveling forward and straight. If a horse is crooked in his gaits and movements, this means that there is energy wasted traveling laterally that could be available to be funneled straight ahead if the crookedness were corrected.

Once the horse is straight, you can start asking for transitions from halt to walk. You will want to carry a short crop, and you may choose to carry a longer dressage whip or wear spurs (particularly during these initial stages of retraining), depending on the horse.

In the halt, make sure to begin with your legs hanging loose by the horse’s sides. While trying to get horses to go forward, we often tighten the muscles in our bottom, hips, and legs without realizing it. Draw up through your core so that your abdominal muscles support the upper half of your body, rather than sitting heavily in the saddle.

When your pelvis is following the horse’s motion in the walk (and later the canter), it should feel as though you are gliding across the saddle, rather than grinding into it.

Push your heels down and close your calves in a squeeze against the horse’s sides. If a sustained squeeze with moderate to strong pressure does not entice the horse to walk forward, add a kick. During the kick, your hips and bottom should remain loose, and your legs shouldn’t come more than 6 to 8 inches off of your horse’s sides.

If this still doesn’t elicit a response, tap the horse with a crop just behind your leg until he walks forward. As soon as there is any forward movement, the horse must be rewarded by taking the pressure off (stopping the tapping).

The halt-to-walk transition should be repeated until your horse is moving off from just the squeeze.

Correct Canter

Once your horse is recalibrated to the meaning of the leg squeeze, repeat the same exercise between the walk and trot and then halt and trot. Straightness should still be emphasized, using your seat bones to feel if the horse is pushing evenly with both hind legs.

All horses have their own natural rhythm that’s comfortable for them, then a rhythm that’s a little more forward and a little more work for the rider, but helps them to build fitness. That second rhythm is where you want to be working your horse.

After your horse is working through halt/walk/trot transitions in good rhythm and balance, the canter can be added. In the walk and trot, horses can get away with moving into the gait by dragging themselves forward from the shoulder, even though this is incorrect.

However, in the canter, it’s absolutely required that the horse engage his hind end and push off of his hocks, otherwise he will end up in a rushed trot rather than a canter. If any part of your work up to this point has been ineffective, it will show in the canter. Transitions should now include all three gaits plus the halt.

Additional Tips For Improving the Responsiveness of a Seemingly Lazy Horse

If a horse has been experiencing unclear or conflicting aids for a while, it may take some time to re-educate him fully.

In future training sessions, it will be valuable to add collection and extension of the gaits, turn on the haunches, 10- and 20-meter circles, and pole work. All of these exercises encourage and improve proper engagement of the hind end, building fitness and adding power to all three gaits.

Key Takeaway

It’s important to teach even beginner riders how to use their aids effectively and to expect a prompt reaction from their horse so that those nice, quiet schoolmasters don’t slip into bad habits. The same exercises that build strength in the horse will build the education of the next generation of riders. Correcting a “lazy” horse is as much the rider’s responsibility as it is the horse.

This article about improving a lazy horse’s responsiveness appeared in the January/February 2024 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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Tamie Smith of Next Level Eventing in Temecula, Calif., winner of the 2023 Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event CCI5*, has a strong focus on pole work in her program.

“Not only do they help your horse become stronger, but they get the horse to a place where he’s super rideable,” she says. “You can start off super simple, just trotting over one pole.”

Smith emphasizes that setting up pole exercises doesn’t need to be complicated.

“In my ring, I just have random poles out,” she says. “It’s a really good exercise for the horses to learn where their feet are and for them to let go of their bodies because they have to push over their back when they trot over them.”

Relaxation & Rideability

Additionally, Smith uses poles as a check-in for riders to see if their horses are adjustable and listening. Instead of passively riding over the poles, Smith encourages her riders to think about how their horse is completing the exercises and what holes in their training the poles bring into focus.

Smith says to ask yourself the following: “Do the trot poles create more tension and make your horse stiffen? Do they create anxiety?”

The more trot pole work the horses do, the more comfortable they get and the more rideable they become.

“I always err on the side of making sure that the horse isn’t feeling overwhelmed by the trot poles,” says Smith. “If he’s struggling, I’ll take away multiple poles and only use one until he gets really confident with it.”

Fresh Footwork with Ground Poles

Catherine Donworth has spent most of her riding career focusing on fox hunting. When her long-time partner, Skippy, was ready to retire, she got a ranch horse named Doolin Banjos. She began prepping Doolin to be her next fox hunting mount, but quickly discovered that he might be destined for a dual career, so Donworth began her dressage journey.

She uses ground pole exercises to keep things fresh for both herself and her horse in training.

“When you have a dressage horse that doesn’t jump, or doesn’t jump very often, poles are a huge way to introduce variety into your schooling,” says Donworth.

She regularly sets up different pole exercises in the ring year-round and finds new creative ways to use the smaller space of the indoor arena in the winter to keep training going, especially in colder weather when hacking and hill work aren’t an option. When Donworth sets up an exercise, she tries to leave it up for others at the barn to benefit from.

“You can tailor the exercises to whatever level your horse needs very easily, depending on his level of collection or how quickly he can do transitions or how much he can lift his hocks,” she says. “You can easily lay out a pole exercise, and with tiny alterations, work several horses at different levels without needing to set the whole thing up differently again.”

For Doolin, Donworth has found that the main benefit has been that poles keep him thinking.

“It’s helped sharpen up his feet,” she says. “It sharpened his reflexes, and he has to think for himself about where he puts his feet.”

In addition to the mental benefits, Donworth has also seen physical perks.

“It’s good from a physiological standpoint,” she says. “It keeps their hocks and back moving in a way that plain flatwork might not. It strengthens their bodies and can increase range of motion without putting extra pressure on their joints.

“Even walking over small, raised poles gets them to lift their hocks. If a horse has hock problems or arthritis in his hocks, just even walking over poles can loosen, flex, and extend his hocks. It’s like us stretching as part of our warmup.”

Ground Pole Set Up

How to Set Up Distances

• Walking poles: Set 2.5 feet apart for most horses.
• Trot poles: Set around 4 to 4.5 feet apart. Smaller-strided horses may need closer-set poles, while horses with a longer stride may need poles a little farther apart. Adjusting the distance between the poles can help your horse learn to collect or lengthen his stride. Try to avoid having only two trot poles in a row; your horse might think he is supposed to jump both in one go.
• Canter poles: Set around 9 to 11 feet. Like trot poles, the length of your horse’s stride can influence your placement.

Simple Eight-Pole Set Up

Place four trot poles and four canter poles on either end of a circle. Begin by trotting the whole loop.

Then ask your horse to canter through the canter poles and come back to a trot before the trot poles, and then canter again before the canter poles. See how accurate you can get your transitions.

Once your horse gets comfortable, try raising some of the trot poles to add difficulty.

Benefits of a Single Pole

Whether you jump or not, finding a distance to a single pole will help you learn your horse’s canter stride length and increase his adjustability. Sometimes it feels easier to find a distance to a larger jump, so breaking it back down to a single pole makes you check in on the details.

For greener horses, trotting a single pole helps build confidence and get them trusting their footwork.

Key Takeaway

Integrating ground poles into your horse’s training program can increase strength and flexibility, add variety, and sharpen response time. A useful tool for riders and trainers at level, pole work is worth adding to your routine.

This article about using ground poles in training appeared in the November/December 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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Although horses are naturally athletic and many can boldly jump over obstacles of astounding heights and widths, there are also those who aren’t quite so sure why they should put themselves in such a compromising position.

A horse may stop at a jump for all kinds of reasons. He may be afraid of the jump itself, or his fear may be more related to what he has experienced from the rider when jumping; sometimes a rider’s lack of confidence relays to the horse, or the horse has been the victim of numerous bad distances.

Jumping from a distance that is too long or too short puts the horse in a physically difficult spot, and he may not want to keep jumping. It’s also common for riders to cause further discomfort to the horse in the air after a bad distance, sometimes accidentally pulling the reins, falling back into the saddle too early, or falling forward onto the horse’s neck.

Allow Your Horse a Thorough Investigation

No matter the cause of the horse’s anxiety, the answer to getting him comfortable jumping again is to go one step at a time, creating enough new positive experiences to outnumber the negative experiences he has had.

Start by allowing your horse to investigate and sniff the jumps. Done at a walk either mounted or unmounted, this is easy to do at home but also a valuable aspect of schooling shows. The horses that benefit from this most are those that hesitate before leaving the ground or that jump with a peek when they do go over.

Once the jumps have been thoroughly inspected and sniffed at the walk, flat your horse very close to the jumps and their fillers. Trot and canter just alongside each jump, never pointing him at the jump, but making sure he feels relaxed having the jump close to him. If not, he may need to stop and sniff the jump again.

Next, place flower boxes or other fillers perpendicular to the plane of the jump in between the standards and off to the sides, creating a chute toward the center of the jump. Trot your horse back and forth through the fillers until he is moving confidently past them.

From there, make a small cross-rail with the rails and filler. At a schooling show, this may be where you need to start if taking out the fillers to trot through is impractical. This is also a good place to start for those horses that are more concerned with the distance than the jump itself.

Walk or slowly trot your horse over the jump so that he can have time to process the idea of jumping over filler and so that you can easily follow the motion of him going over the jump. Be sure to praise him when he goes over.

Once your horse is happily taking you to the jump (this is important—he should be moving confidently toward and over the fence), try cantering it. I would caution against making it any larger than a small vertical, as you risk another setback to his confidence. Remember, you must make a large library of positive experiences.

Stick to Small Stuff

For horses that have stopping issues at jumps rooted in too many missed distances, it’s important to honestly evaluate your riding. Your horse may need a tune-up with a trainer or more advanced rider for a few rides, or you may need to accept dropping down to jumping ground poles and small cross-rails until your eye becomes more consistent.

Adjustability of the canter is also crucial for these horses so that you become more familiar with your horse’s proper jumping canter and so that the horse is well-versed at moving forward off of your leg and coming back to your hand.

Some horses may have trouble with combinations or lines specifically, and the same concepts apply. Small jumps and a patient rider will do the trick over time, and it’s important to keep encouraging the horse to go forward, even when the striding is not quite right, so that he eventually gets the confidence to open up his step.

When the jumps are small, it’s completely fine for a horse to add a step, whether it’s two strides in what should have been a one stride, or six in a five, especially when the horse has a history of refusals.

Eventually, with repetition, he will begin to get the correct striding, but this is another process that should not be rushed if you want the lesson and the confidence to stick. Take the time to meet your horse where he’s at and build his confidence back up piece by piece.

This article about training a horse that’s stopping at the jumps appeared in the August 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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Picture this: You are cantering around the corner, peacefully counting the rhythm of the canter, when suddenly a few strides out from the jump, your horse takes over. Out of seemingly nowhere, he is scooting toward the jump, the distance has disappeared, and he’s launching himself as if he wants the jump to be over with as quickly as possible. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone!

As with any training issue, it’s important to rule out any medical explanations. These horses should be looked over by a veterinarian and perhaps other specialists, like a dentist or chiropractor.

With pain/discomfort off the table, rushing is almost always rooted in anxiety. Your horse may find jumping stressful for any number of reasons. He may feel overfaced by the size of the jump, by the speed at which he’s approaching the jump, or by the complexity of the course. He may also have experienced a lot of missed distances or a rider who was unbalanced and accidentally punishing his jumping effort.

Keep it Positive

In order to reverse the effects of these negative emotions and experiences, from this moment on, your horse must have a consistent positive association with jumping. This will most certainly take time, and you as the rider should expect to be patient and allow the process to take as long as it takes.

While usually I prefer that horses only jump twice a week, many horses that rush do better jumping five to seven jumps or so every day so that it feels less like a special event to them and more like a standard routine.

The jumps should be low. Even if your horse has plenty of scope, he should be presented with only small jumps until his anxiety subsides. (I consider small jumps to be cross-rails through 2’3″). It’s OK if your horse just needs to go back to ground poles or even trotting and cantering through empty standards.

There should not be any right or wrong in these exercises. That extends to leads/lead changes, breaking of gait, or any of the details that normally would be important when jumping. Your horse is feeling enough pressure from the jump alone, so it’s better not to add any pressure through other expectations. (Many young or green horses are most concerned about the lead change that they know is coming after the jump.)

Gradual Introductions to Start

Begin by walking over ground poles or tiny cross-rails. The slow speed gives your horse plenty of time to assess and negotiate the obstacle. Tiny is preferred so that he has less chance of hitting it and scaring himself.

After he has walked over regular rails, add towels, flowerboxes, or other small fillers to continue to build confidence. Once all is going well, you can move up to a slow trot. If trotting leads to rushing, go back to the walk.

After your horse has mastered relaxed trot jumps from a slow trot, you can test the waters by adding speed with a regular trot or the canter. However, when adding speed, it’s important to also capture the horse’s attention with something other than the jump itself. Give him a job unrelated to the jump that happens to occur near the approach or landing side of the jump. Some examples include circles, figure-8s, and transitions.

The key is to not make this feel like a punishment. Whatever you are asking your horse to do, you should ask about five strides before or after the jump so that there’s space for him to breathe and relax as he approaches the jump, jumps, and lands.

Exercises to Try for a Horse That’s Rushing Jumps

Two of my favorites are a downward transition five to six strides in front of the jump and a figure-8 after the jump, either in trot or in canter, with a simple change.

From here, you can string a course together with lots of circles or transitions interspersed between the jumps. The more turns the better, since long, straight lines are not the best idea yet. It’s hard to influence your horse to rebalance on a straightaway without using a lot of hand, which is counterproductive to relaxation.

Once you have made it to the point where your horse is ready to canter some jumps, a good option is to canter a jump on a circle and allow your horse to fall into a rhythm. By creating the same track to the jump and facilitating the same striding over and over, you allow your horse to relax into a predictable pace and not worry about his takeoff distance.

After your horse has built a confident foundation in these exercises, you can begin to ride regular courses again. Just keep the concept of relaxation at the forefront so you can continue to help your equine partner let go of his anxiety surrounding jumping.

This article about training a horse that’s rushing jumps appeared in the July 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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I’m a fan of the saying, “Your horse is doing his best with the information you provided.” It directs us to look at the signals we’re sending through our riding aids and to see whether we are being clear.

Often when we mean to ask for something from our horse and receive either no response or a “wrong” response, we assume our horse is being disobedient. Instead, we should investigate whether our aids could be more precise.

Leg Riding Aids

Because your leg is the foundation of your position and therefore where many of your key riding aids come from, we’ll start there. There are three uses for the leg: supporting, bracing and displacing.

The supporting leg is the one used most of the time, with your heel directly under your hip and your toe directly under your knee. It’s called the supporting leg because it’s supporting whatever is happening in the moment through pressure or lack thereof.

Pressure from both legs is a riding aid that tells your horse to go faster or maintain pace, depending on the amount of pressure. Pressure from one leg tells your horse to move away with his whole body, and lack of pressure allows your horse to slow down or stop.

A bracing leg is kicked out in front of the girth nearly onto the shoulder, and it prevents you from being pulled forward by your horse while executing a downward transition. There is no pressure against the horse’s side with a bracing leg.

A displacing leg comes about a hand-width or two behind the girth to activate your horse’s hind end. It’s most often used to pick up the canter, and should be used anytime engagement of the haunches is the goal.

Seat Riding Aids

Working our way up, we arrive at the seat. Your seat technically goes from mid-thigh to the bottom of your ribcage. Core strength is key to the use of your seat, as it helps to determine your pelvic placement.

A neutral pelvic angle gives you a few options based on the amount of pressure you place downward into your stirrups at any given moment. Less pressure in the stirrups allows for a full seat, and more pressure allows for a light seat.

Being in a full seat helps you rebalance or collect your horse, while being in a light seat allows your horse to move forward and cover the ground. A neutral pelvis is also used to help form the two-point position, which takes weight off the horse’s back while galloping or jumping.

A posterior pelvic tilt gives you a driving seat, which is used to urge the horse forward, particularly in spooky situations.

Hand Riding Aids

The last piece of the puzzle is your hands. They can communicate with your horse one of the five ways: open, direct, indirect, neck and pulley.

An opening rein is best for a green horse or rider, and opens out to the side with little to no backward pressure, encouraging the horse to follow the pressure to turn.

The direct rein pulls straight back toward your hip on the same side, and is used by intermediate and advanced riders for steering and all riders for slowing, stopping, or backing.

The indirect rein pulls back across the wither to your opposite hip. It helps lift the horse’s inside shoulder and rebalance him, especially when he is falling in.

The neck rein is most common in western riding, but it can be useful when paired with an opening rein, as it allows for excellent control of the horse’s shoulders while turning.

A pulley rein is used for emergencies. You pull up and back with one hand while the other is firmly planted in the withers in order to stop an out-of-control horse.

In this video from Ridely, Olympian and Chairman of Dressage4Kids Lendon Gray demonstrates the common errors some riders make when using the rein aids. She shares her tips for how to prevent these from happening and how to keep your hands still. Register for Ridely PRO to access 450+ other useful training videos.

Communicating with Your Horse

Now that you know all of the natural aids and their uses, you need to know how they pair or group together to allow clear communication with your equine partner. The leg, seat, and hand must all be sending the same message, or your horse will be confused.

For example, stopping aids include a bracing leg, neutral pelvis, and two direct reins. However, if your leg slips back toward the girth, your horse is being told to stop with your hands and to go with your leg.

Horses can only understand the aids that they’ve been trained to understand, no matter your intention. For this reason, we owe it to our horses to study up on the aids and apply them correctly in order to reduce confusion and improve the horse-human relationship.

This article about riding aids appeared in the July 2022 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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There are places in every dressage test where even the humblest mount can score just as well as—or better than—the fanciest horse. They are the “non-brilliant movements,” of dressage so called because the gaits play little to no role in how they are ridden and judged. Frequently overlooked in daily schooling, these elements offer the clever rider the opportunity to gain a competitive edge—and they’re also good basic training, whether you choose to show or not. So let’s learn how to polish up these non-brilliant gems until they sparkle.

The Non-Brilliant Dressage Movements

At First Level and below, the non-brilliant movement is the halt. Second Level introduces two more: the rein-back and the turn on the haunches (the latter of which becomes a walk pirouette at Fourth Level and above). In this article, we’ll focus primarily on the halt and rein-back.

Halts, rein-backs, and turns on the haunches are called non-brilliant because “there is no impulsion in any of these movements,” says Eliza Sydnor Romm, an FEI-level trainer/competitor and U.S. Dressage Federation-certified instructor through Fourth Level from Chapel Hill, N.C.

“Impulsion is what pushes the horse up off the ground and then gives him ‘air time’ in suspension in a beautiful trot or a big, bounding canter. But what the judge is judging in a halt is the straightness, the squareness, the connection, and the line of travel. There are not more points awarded for a fancy-moving horse halting than an average-moving horse halting.”

The same goes for the rein-back. The judge wants to see the horse halt square (with his weight distributed evenly over all four legs), then take the prescribed number of steps backward with diagonal pairs of legs, deliberately and in balance, then moving off promptly. These elements and movements may not be thrilling to watch, but they are great tests of your dressage training.

“If you can have it be really reliable, then by definition the horse is truly on your aids,” Romm says of the rein-back. “That’s an impressive thing to a judge, even if it’s not a fancy-moving horse.”

Romm has a lot of experience using the non-brilliant movements of dressage to her advantage.

“I grew up riding and showing this little Quarter Horse that we bought from my farrier for $1,000,” she says. “He was endlessly patient and had a wonderful disposition, but he was a really bad mover! I showed him all the way through Third Level, and he was never going to get more than a 5 or maybe a 6 for his medium trot. But we could halt for a 10 every time, and we could rein back for a 10, and we could do the turns on the haunches for a 10. And with that, at Training and First Level, we could score in the mid to high 60s. We’d often get 9s for our halts. I’d almost always get 8s on our turns on the haunches. So I’m very familiar with trying to do this.”

Romm shares strategies for honing the halt and rein-back to make these dressage movements reliable staples that you can confidently nail every time.

Improving the Halt

From the ground or in the saddle, establish an active walk and then ask your horse to halt. A helper on the ground can tell you whether your horse is square (over time you’ll learn to feel it), or you can use a mirror, your horse’s shadow, or even that old standby, leaning over and looking.

Give a nudge with your leg or a gentle tap with the whip on the side of the errant hind leg to ask your horse to square up. Never settle for a crooked, sloppy halt, and halting square will eventually become automatic.

Be picky about straightness when it comes to this dressage movement, too.

“That will probably dictate whether the horse will halt square,” says Romm. “It will definitely not be square if he is very crooked.”

Focus on maintaining balance into the halt (“land like a snowflake,” as some put it—you shouldn’t need to haul on the reins), keeping in mind that at both Introductory and Training Levels, you may execute the trot-halt transition through a few steps of walk.

In the dressage ring, especially if your horse is antsy, riding the established, familiar sequence of aids will help to settle him in the halt, Romm says. You should know by now which hind leg he tends to leave out behind, “so you can specifically half-halt that hind leg to try to bring it under.”

That said, a balanced, immobile halt—at least three seconds when performed with a salute—trumps all else, so don’t fiddle too much if your horse doesn’t halt square. Show immobility prior to the salute.

Romm gives one big inhale-exhale before she takes a hand off the reins, and she incorporates the use of her breath in the daily training so that her horses associate it with a moment to relax and stand quietly at attention.

“It’s usually easier to ride a balanced halt if you sit the last few steps of the trot into the halt,” Romm advises Intro and Training Level riders. “However, if you can’t keep your seat balanced in sitting trot, then do it from posting trot and walk two to three steps, then halt.”

Improving the Rein-Back

If your horse doesn’t know how to rein back, Romm recommends teaching him from the ground so you’re not pulling on the reins. From a balanced, square halt, place one hand on your horse’s chest and apply pressure (or gently tap his chest with the butt end of a whip) as you repeat the vocal cue “back.”

The word will serve as a bridge when you introduce the rein-back from the saddle, lightening your seat and sliding your legs back a bit as you give little squeezes first with one rein and then the other—don’t pull back with both reins simultaneously, and never pull back hard. Overuse of the reins also causes the horse to invert his neck, which creates a hollow back and loss of the correct diagonal pairs of footfalls.

The rules don’t require the horse to remain immobile for three seconds before reining back, but the halt must be “established” prior to the rein-back, Romm points out, so no boomeranging backward.

Accurate Riding in Your Dressage Movements

Every aspect of a dressage test contains a non-brilliant element, according to Romm: the accuracy of your figures and the accuracy of your transitions. Even if your horse’s gaits aren’t spectacular, you’ll raise your scores if you show spot-on geometry and balanced, at-the-letter transitions.

“At Intro and Training Levels, the judges are thrilled to see an accurate 20-meter circle,” she says. Other elements that can get a boost from super-accurate riding are the Training and First Level trot “stretching circle” and the free walk, both of which have a coefficient of 2 (meaning the score is double relative to all the other movements in the dressage test).

“Work on the center lines and halts, the accuracy of the transitions, the stretchy circle, and the free walk,” Romm says of coaching a competitor with an average-moving horse. “Mathematically, you’ll come out ahead if you can hope to get at least a 7 for your free walk and your stretchy circle, and then you can really nail your halts and hopefully get an 8 or a 9.”

This article about improving your dressage movements appeared in the September 2022 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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You trot down center line, ride the pattern of your dressage test, and soon receive your score. Your placing in the class depends on how that score stacks up against those of your competitors, but there’s a lot more to the dressage judging process than the score alone.

The more you know about how dressage is judged, the more you can do to improve your own test scores and placings—and to make your horse a happier and more willing partner. Here’s an overview of the process.

The Basic Math

Each numbered movement (element) on the dressage test sheet receives a score from zero to 10. Here is the scale of marks and what they mean:

0 Not executed
1 Very bad
2 Bad
3 Fairly bad
4 Insufficient
5 Marginal
6 Satisfactory
7 Fairly good
8 Good
9 Very good
10 Excellent

Judges can also award half-points. A mark of 6.5 would indicate that the movement was a little better than “satisfactory,” but not quite good enough to be “fairly good.”

Certain movements in the tests are considered so important that they have coefficients of 2, meaning that the points for those movements are doubled.

Most dressage final scores are expressed as percentages of the total possible points that a competitor would garner if every movement earned a 10. Therefore if most of your marks are in the 6 range, you’ll wind up with a score of around 60 percent.

How the Judges Judge

Prospective judges undergo rigorous training in order to become licensed to officiate at dressage competitions. Much of that training focuses on instilling a process for evaluating a dressage test so that judges everywhere apply the same standard.

“The first thing I look at is the quality of the gaits,” says U.S. Equestrian “R” dressage judge Anne Moss of Coatesville, Pa. In dressage, the walk, trot, and canter are the underpinning of all training. Quality begins with purity of gaits: a clear, rhythmic four-beat walk, two-beat trot, and three-beat canter.

Some horses are blessed with more natural balance and freedom of movement than others, but training and riding affect the gait assessment for each movement.

“It’s not as if I decide that a horse is an 8 mover for every movement,” Moss explains. “The horse might be an 8 mover for one movement, but for the next movement it turns into a 6, and the next movement it could turn into a 7.”

Additionally, all three gaits are not necessarily of equal inherent quality, and how well the horse executes the individual movements will also move the needle up or down, she says.

You may have heard dressage enthusiasts voice concerns that only big-moving warmbloods can do well in the sport. Moss concedes that a horse purpose-bred for dressage may find it easier biomechanically to meet the demands of the sport. “[However,] I have gotten 7s on gaits on my Quarter Horse, my Thoroughbred, and my warmblood. A lot of it is the quality of training and how you’re presenting the gaits,” Moss says. In fact, the quality of the training is the second most important factor in the judge’s evaluation process.

The question becomes, “Is the training going in the right direction?” Moss is referring to the basics of dressage training, which are the fundamentals of correct gymnastic development (rhythm, suppleness, contact, impulsion, straightness, and collection). For each movement in the test, the judge looks for a demonstration of the basics appropriate to the level being shown (see diagram).

“[Then the judge considers] how well the horse did or didn’t perform the movement, or the transition, or the figure,” Moss says. How the element is executed is known as the essence of the movement.

Finally, modifiers can cause the judge to raise or lower the mark for a movement. If your horse stiffens and becomes momentarily inattentive, that lapse will negatively affect the score, and you may lose half a point or so. On the flip side, things like spot-on accuracy can give the mark for a movement a little boost.

Comments and Collective Marks

Next to each score box on the test sheet is a comments box. A judge will dictate comments to a scribe in real-time while watching a test, often noting the main issue that depressed the mark for that movement. Savvy competitors use the marks and comments to help guide their future training, formulating a plan to address weak points.

Every dressage test sheet concludes with a set of marks and comments written personally by the judge, known as the collective marks. Moss dubs this portion “the overall scorecard.”

The five collective marks—for gaits, impulsion, submission, rider’s position and seat, and rider’s correct and effective use of the aids—serve as a snapshot of the entire test. The fundamentals behind each collective mark are spelled out on every U.S. Equestrian dressage test sheet, which you can find at usef.org.

“[The collectives] tell you whether the training is going in the right direction and give a really concise assessment of how the training was on that day, for that test, in that ring,” Moss says. The judge’s intention is to guide you with a few directions for improving your training.

More Than a Pattern

“Most people just study the pattern of the test,” Moss says. “They don’t think about what the judge is trying to evaluate. I think that’s where the biggest disconnect is between riders and judges. Just riding the pattern is not dressage. Unless the horse is working correctly through his body, it’s not going to be a successful dressage test.”

Fortunately, the test sheets also contain cheat sheets! When you print off your test to begin memorizing it, carefully examine every movement for a list of “directives”—what the judge is looking for.

Example: in a 20-meter trot circle at Training Level, the judge wants to see “regularity and quality of trot; shape and size of circle; bend; balance.”

“Most times, the judge is commenting on things that are in the directive box,” Moss says. The other thing that’s printed on every test sheet is a purpose statement. The purpose of Training Level, for instance, is “to confirm that the horse demonstrates correct basics, is supple and moves freely forward in a clear rhythm with a steady tempo, accepting contact with the bit.”

“At the beginning and the end of the test, the judge is thinking about the purpose,” Moss says. “How well did the rider meet the purpose of the level?”

She encourages riders to use the dressage tests as valuable training tools.

“Judges try really hard to give helpful comments that are understandable,” says Moss. “The goal of all judging is to improve the quality of riding and training so that the horse can have a better life, and hopefully progress up the training scale.”

This article about how to improve your dressage score appeared in the June 2022 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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Excerpt from The Athletic Equestrian, by Sally Batton and Christina Keim

When your two-point seat is correct, you will have developed the alignment and balance that serves as the basis for all future work. But many riders have not been taught the proper mechanics of the two-point, and instead of sinking into their leg and closing their angles, they stand over or even ahead of the pommel. They are then both unbalanced and unable to apply their aids correctly. In addition, they are using their back to hold the two-point, rather than allowing the legs and abdominal muscles to support the position.

If you can correctly execute the two-point position, you will be balanced and able to hold the position for multiple circuits around the arena, or galloping cross-country, without worry of falling back into the saddle or onto the horse’s neck. In a correct two-point, your leg joints—including the ankle, knee, and hip—are fluid and shock absorbing, and the major muscle groups of the leg (quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves) are engaged.

Where do you stand on the “Rider Awareness Scale” when it comes to your two-point position? To find out, try this series of four exercises.

Also Read: Overcoming Fear After Falling Off a Horse

Test 1

In the first exercise, you will exaggerate putting your leg out of position until you develop a kinesthetic sense of how this impacts your upper body balance.

Start by getting into your two-point at the trot, then bring the lower leg so far forward that you can see the toe of your boot. You will immediately feel your upper body shift backward to compensate, and you will likely fall into the saddle.

Next, try bringing your lower leg too far back. I haven’t met very many riders that can stay off their horse’s back for too long when in this position; most people have to put their hands down onto the horse’s neck just to stay in the saddle!

Practice this exercise until you develop a clear awareness of the position of your lower leg, and the resulting negative effect on your balance with your leg in each incorrect position. Riders who have practiced this exercise enough will almost instinctively know the necessary correction if they experience a loss of balance in the future.

Test 2

The next mounted exercise requires the assistance of a friend. Starting at the halt in the center of the arena, get into your two-point position, and have your friend place her hand or a thin, tightly rolled magazine about 2 to 3 inches in front of the cantle (back) of the saddle. Your friend is now going to try to push you forward with pressure from her hand or the rolled magazine on your tailbone. If you have opened the angles of your ankle, knee, and hip, your friend will easily push you onto the horse’s neck.

Now re-center yourself in your full seat and rise into two-point while keeping your friend’s hand or the rolled magazine in contact with your tailbone the entire time. Imagine the feeling of “squatting” while unmounted—your weight goes down into your feet and the muscles of your legs engage. The angles of your leg joints close and the hip tips slightly. This is the same feeling you are trying to create in your mounted two-point.

Keeping this “squat” feeling in mind, your friend is now going to try to push you forward, while you do everything possible to resist her. If you have been successful in sinking down through the leg while rising into the two-point, she shouldn’t be able to push you forward. When riders find this correct position, they are amazed at how strong and secure they feel in the tack.

Test 3

Finally, have your friend keep her hand or the rolled magazine just in front of the cantle, and get back into your corrected two-point. Transition from the two-point seat to the full seat, alternating between them without letting your tailbone break contact with your friend’s hand.

If you do this correctly, your seat will still be clearing the saddle when you are in two-point position, but it will likely be much closer and more centered than it was before. I tell riders to imagine that their femurs (thigh bones) are pushing their seat bones toward the cantle, rather than thinking about their shoulders coming forward.

Whenever I do this exercise with riders for the first time, they usually comment on how strange it feels, and they think they are not far enough out of the saddle. But for a jump of 3 feet in height or less, your seat only needs to be about 3 inches out of the saddle.

If you look at photos of most riders jumping fences in this height range, you will see that many of them are much more than 3 inches out of the saddle. Their upper body is ahead of the motion, a serious rider jumping fault that makes the horse’s jumping effort more difficult and will result in a point deduction from the judge in an equitation class.

Test 4

If you don’t have a friend to help you try this while riding, you can practice an unmounted variation of the exercise at home with a family member. Standing in an open space on level ground, place your feet about shoulder-width apart and get into a full squat. Slowly reopen your angles until you are about halfway between a full squat and standing positions, and ask a family member to push you on your tailbone. Notice how this affects your balance.

Next, start to get back into your squat, and stop when your angles have closed enough that you are simulating a correct two-point position. Again, ask a family member to push you on the tailbone and see if she can disrupt your perfect balance.

You’ll find that in your full two-point/squat position, you will remain balanced and centered. But when your leg angles are in the halfway open position, your family member will be able to easily push you forward.

This excerpt about perfecting your two-point position is adapted from The Athletic Equestrian by Sally Batton and Christina Keim, and is reprinted with permission from Trafalgar Square Books. This excerpt first appeared in the May 2022 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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Many times, I have seen riders canter to the first jump of a course and have it be less than stellar. But then they land, change their canter, and lay down the ride of a lifetime. I have named this “first jump-itis.” The cure is to establish a quality canter right away so that you can approach your first jump with impulsion and confidence, rather than using it as a reminder that you didn’t quite have enough pace.

Mastering the Canter Transition

It all boils down to a need for better preparation. First, examine the canter transition itself. In a lesson, you can’t use the whole ring to get going, as you and your horse are going to be exhausted before you even get to the first jump. In a group, you will get reprimanded for wasting time. At a show, you are only permitted an opening circle or 45 seconds, depending on your discipline.

Before you ask for the canter, be sure your horse is responding to your leg by developing a marching walk. This walk will feel as though your horse is truly taking you somewhere, not as though you are begging him to take each step. If the squeezing leg aid is not enough, don’t hesitate to give him a kick or tap him with a crop behind your leg.

Once the marching walk is established, use your inside leg to step your horse over toward the rail for a few steps, getting him thinking about his hind end.

Next, bring your outside leg back for one or two steps at the walk, then squeeze to give the canter aid. Be sure to sit tall and stay back (not throwing or perching your body forward) throughout all of this. The best transitions into the canter have an uphill, lifted quality to them, and this will be difficult to achieve if your weight is forward over your horse’s shoulders.

If your canter transition tends to involve a few (or many!) trot steps, be sure to do your homework to correct this. Your horse should move directly from the walk to the canter. Should the situation call for cantering from the trot, you can set your horse up to canter in a similar manner as described above but in a sitting trot. The whole process, once practiced, will take less than 10 seconds.

Canter Quality

Now that you have the canter, focus on its quality. It’s always better to have a little more pace in the canter than you think you need, as that will allow for you and your horse to have more options to choose from if you need to adjust as you approach the jump.

If your horse is being responsive to your leg, it will be easier to ask him to move up for a longer distance or collect for a tighter distance while still maintaining a springy energy to the gait. This indicates continued engagement of the hind end, called impulsion.

What typically happens when your first jump goes poorly is that the canter lacks impulsion, so you’re left with only the options of hoping to get to the jump at a good distance or to chip in to a tight distance. The option to move up to a more forward distance is not available if you never tuned up your horse to engage his hind end to be responsive to your leg aid.

Practice Makes Perfect

Remember, there’s no situation where a canter lacking impulsion will be useful. Whether there is a scary filler in the first jump on a hunter course or a tight turn after the first jump in a jumper course, a slow, weak canter won’t help to answer the question at hand.

A great exercise to actively practice building your pace to the first jump is by only jumping one jump: Set up a jump on both quarter lines of your arena, one for each lead (see opposite page). Make the jumps a comfortable height for you and your horse, 3 to 6 inches lower than the highest you regularly jump, or your competition height if you show.

For hunters, practice an opening circle and then head straight to the jump. Once you’re consistently meeting the jump with power in your canter off of each lead, increase the difficulty by adding in some attention-grabbing filler to the jump or make the jump an oxer.

For jumpers, don’t allow yourself more than half the ring to cultivate the canter you need. After being successful with the exercise from both leads, add a cone about 42 feet (three strides plus landing) beyond the center of each jump and turn before it to simulate a jump-off track.

Congratulations, your canter is a success!

This article about canter quality for jumping appeared in the April 2022 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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Choppy gait, gaping jaw, and bulging muscles on the underside of the neck: As riders and handlers, we all recognize the signs of tension in our horses, but not everyone understands how to help their horses soften and relax under saddle.

Due to sheer size, it’s obvious that you can’t force your horse to do anything. But what you can do is help him become more aware of his body and understand how to better engage the muscles that you would like him to build, which include the muscles of the topline as well as the abdominals. You can also engage your horse’s mind with an interesting task rather than allowing him to focus on any worrying stimuli in his environment.

The following exercises focus on connecting your horse from back to front so that his whole body is working together to move him, rather than overloading one muscle group. When the weight of the load is shared, it becomes less stressful to manage, but the horse needs help understanding how to achieve this and get relaxed.

Once the whole body is warm and working together, the tense area will follow suit. It’s important to have a peaceful frame of mind when riding these exercises, remembering that your horse wants to understand the exercise and do the right thing. Whether your horse carries tension in his back, neck, poll, or jaw, you will see and feel it melt away.

The Onion

This is a great exercise incorporating concentric circles (those that share the same center). It can be ridden at the walk, trot, or canter, but be aware that it’s hard work for your horse and shouldn’t be done for long periods of time.

Start on a 20-meter circle. Now imagine the layers of an onion, evenly spaced and just inside of one another. Once you have completed one circle, it’s time to move inward to the next layer. Continue this until you have reached the smallest circle your horse is comfortable with. I usually find it beneficial to drop to the sitting trot once I reach the center.

Whether you are riding a small circle or your horse is advanced enough to be in a turn on the haunches or pirouette, as soon as you feel him sit on his haunches and lift his front end for a few steps, start to retrace your steps back out through the layers of the onion.

Be sure to catch your horse with your outside leg in case he starts to drift too far in response to your inside leg that is asking him to move out. A trot on a long rein after this exercise generally yields some great stretching through the topline.

Once your horse understands the feeling of pushing from behind and suppling through his ribcage, the counter-canter (cantering purposely on the wrong lead) is a great exercise to try. Success comes from your horse responding to your outside leg by shifting weight onto his inside hind to prevent a change of lead.

Other productive exercises include shoulder-fore (a shoulder-in ridden with less bend angle through the spine to move the shoulders off the track) and leg-yield (moving forward and sideways with a straight spine and slight flexion at the poll).

Figure-8

Riders consider a simple figure-8 at the trot to be a common and simple school figure, but there is actually quite a bit of work involved for the horse! The circle portions of the eight, especially when ridden on a smaller scale, require the horse to activate a number of muscles.

When ridden properly, your inside leg gently tells the horse to step out every stride, leading him to lift and cross over with the inside hind leg. This will cause him to engage his abdominals and back, then soften through the ribcage. When your horse is supple from withers to tail, it becomes much easier to open the inside rein and show him how to relax his neck down and flex gently in the direction of the circle.

You will need to use your outside leg and occasional half-halts on the outside rein to remind your horse of the boundaries of the circle and to encourage him to drive through his outside hind leg. As your horse changes direction through the center, he must shift his weight to the center for a few strides and change everything to the opposing side.

When ridden repeatedly, your horse will begin to soften and relax under saddle even more, anticipating the change of direction and becoming fluid in his change of bend from nose to tail.

The key to relaxation is to warm up your horse with his body mechanics in mind and without force or confrontation. Once this is achieved, his flexibility will improve, the tension will melt away, and you will be well on your way to maximizing his potential as an athlete.

This article about how to get your horse to relax under saddle appeared in the January/February 2022 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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