Yucca Valley Equestrian Center

06/08/2026

As a competitor, instructor, and unrecognized dressage judge, here is what I wish people would know about how to score well in their dressage tests, particularly at the low and mid levels:

I'm talking 70%+ pure dressage (or in the 20's or lower for eventing dressage)

It's not about how flashy the horse is.
It's not about how great of a mover the horse is.

It's about correct foundational basics and consistency.

And honestly? It's about not *losing* points.

Scoring well isn't about gaining points for flashiness. It's about not losing points for poor ex*****on.
There are a couple schools of thought/training that real judges (i.e. not me) go through. One is that the horse/rider start at a score of 7 for each movement, and they can either lose point(s) for bad ex*****on or gain points for excellent work. But you start at 7. Which means as long as you maintain "satisfactory" ex*****on, you'll stay at 7, and end up with a 70%/30.0 just by default.

Here is what judges are looking for:
✅Rhythm/Consistency - nothing makes a test look more unappealing than inconsistent rhythm.
✅Consistency (part 2) - we're not looking for the perfect head carriage, but inconsistent head/neck carriage is going to make the whole package look terrible and make every score worse. It's better if a horse is slightly above/beyond the bit (but not super braced) but consistent with their carriage there.
✅Relaxation - Pretty much feeds into the rhythm and consistency, as it's hard to be rhythmic or consistent if the horse is tense.

Notice what those first three involve? Yeah, the first two steps of the dressage training pyramid.
Those three on their own will get you right about 30.0 (eventing)/70% (pure dressage) as long as you have some semblance of decent ex*****on of the test movements themselves.

That's it. Having your horse relaxed, rhythmic, and consistent will get you a 70%/30.0.

Additionally, to take it into the sub-30's/ 70%+:
✅Correct balance - the horse needs to be in balance, not on his/her forehand. They don't have to be elevated and ready to piaffe. They just need to not be on their forehand and/or rushing.
✅Accuracy in ex*****on - 20m circles should be 20m circles. Not 15m circles. Not 20m x 13m ovals.
✅Accuracy in ex*****on part 2 - Transitions should happen where they are supposed to happen. (Although caveat: better to have a good quality transition slightly early/late, than a bad quality transition accurately.)

Those 4/6 items were how I got my mare (pictured, from probably 2013?), who was basically an "average" mover in the grand scheme of her competition, to consistently score in the 20's, many times mid/low 20's, and almost exclusively winning the dressage every time out.
She was SO rideable and SO consistent that it allowed me to be extremely accurate and execute the test as it's supposed to be ridden.

Do you want to score 70%+/sub-30?
Of course you do.

So here are your action items:
✅Ride an accurate test. Geometry, location.
✅Train your horse to be consistent in their gaits and in their body.
✅Focus on establishing a consistent rhythm.
✅Corners are corners. Circles are circles. Circles are not corners. Corners are not circles.
✅Straight lines are straight lines.
✅20m circle is 20m. And a circle.
✅If your horse gets tense in a competition environment, figure out how to improve that. More schooling shows or even just excursions to new farms to ride. Change your warmup routine. Figure out what works to help your horse find relaxation at a competition.
✅Ride quality transitions (all the time). Transitions not only set you/your horse up to perform the next movement well, but they also can make/break the impression. AND at the lower levels, the transitions themselves are many times scored separately from the preceding/following movement.
✅Bonus - This will come from relaxation, but having a relaxed walk will rack up some points. It's multiple movements in most lower level tests, and sometimes with a double coefficient for the free walk.
✅Practice your halts. This is something easy and low-impact you can do. But you need to be consistent about it in order to train it correctly. Don't get lazy and accept bad halts at ends of rides. All halts, at the end and practice halts in the middle, need to be straight and square-ish. The ability to halt straight and mostly square will not only put you above most other horses on your halts (2 of them if you are pure dressage), but will also leave the judge with a good final impression that may bump your collective remarks up a half point.

This all starts at home. You have to train your horse well at home to even have a chance of performing well at a competition.
Most people lose their chance at performing well by being sloppy, inconsistent, and not diligent in staying on top of these basics at home.

Scoring 70%+ or Sub-30's is not about how flashy your horse is. It's not about getting 8's and 9's on every movement. It's about consistency and not *LOSING* points. A decently executed, consistent test is going to be a 70/30. The better you can show the ex*****on and consistency, that will bump your scores to 7.5/8's and get you into the 70s/20s.

Scoring well at the lower levels is all about not losing points. Have a good foundation and basics.

70's/20's tests typically don't look the flashiest. They look the most consistent and well-executed.

They're organized. In control. Comfortable in the ring and owning the ring.

06/05/2026

A good turn doesn’t happen at the corner. It happens several strides before it.

One of the biggest faults I see in the arena (or anywhere else) is the "last-moment adjustment." The attempt at executuon without sufficient prepapration, taking the horse by surprise, and leaving the rider desperate with their aids.

One example is when we wait until we reach the corner to ask for the turn, and then we wonder why our horse falls out through the shoulder or braces against the bit. Whether this is an actual corner or the "edge" of our described geometry off the track is all the same.

We are essentially asking them to make up for our lack of planning.

When you plan your lines with intention, knowing exactly where you are starting your turn, how you are preparing the bend, and where you are exiting, you create a "safety net" for your horse. They stop scrambling and stressing over what’s coming next and start focusing on how they are carrying themselves through the work.

Geometry is the map, and your intention is the compass.

The next time you enter the arena, identify your "preparation point" for each corner. Instead of waiting for the corner to start, start your preparation (like your half-halt or your shift in weight or your sest adjustment) several strides before the corner actually begins. Notice how much more "quiet" and balanced the turn becomes when the conversation starts early.

🐎 Give this a try this week and let me know... does your horse feel more "with you" when you give them the roadmap early?

06/03/2026

The canter depart, aka the transition into canter, is one of the most diagnostic moments in riding. It tells you immediately what the rider actually has and what they do not yet have in terms of balance, timing, feel, and preparation. A clean balanced canter depart on the correct lead does not happen by accident. It happens because the rider prepared the horse correctly, applied the aids clearly, and had the balance and core stability to stay with the transition rather than getting left behind it. Here is what goes wrong and how to fix each one...

1. The horse picks up the wrong lead.
This is almost always a preparation problem rather than an aid problem. The horse picks up the wrong lead when it is not balanced and bent correctly before the aid is given. Before the canter depart, ask for correct bend through the last corner or circle, confirm the horse is soft on the inside rein and connected to the outside one, and then ask. A correctly prepared horse picks up the correct lead far more consistently than one that was surprised by the transition from a straight or incorrectly bent position.

2. The horse runs into the canter.
A horse that accelerates at the trot before breaking into canter is a horse that was pushed into the transition rather than lifted into it. The aids came from the leg alone without a half halt first to rebalance and engage the hindquarters. A half halt two to three strides before the canter aid rebalances the horse, lightens the forehand, and creates the engagement that makes a clean upward transition possible. Without it, the horse falls forward into canter rather than stepping under and up into it. Teach your students to half halt first, every single time, before the canter aid is applied.

3. The rider gets left behind.
A rider who tips forward or gets launched out of the saddle at the canter depart lost their position in the transition. This almost always comes from one of two places, either bracing against the transition instead of following it or not having enough core stability to absorb the moment the canter stride begins. The fix for bracing is feel work such as lunge line transitions where the student focuses entirely on softening into the upward transition rather than stiffening against it. The fix for core instability is progressive no stirrup work and two point at the canter before asking for the depart itself. A rider who can hold two point through a canter transition has the balance and stability to stay with a depart without getting thrown.

4. The horse ignores the aid entirely.
A horse that does not respond to the canter aid is a horse that has learned it does not have to. This is almost always a rider problem that has become a horse problem over time. Repeated unclear or uncommitted aids train a horse to wait for a bigger signal and eventually the escalation becomes the normal aid. The fix starts with making sure the aid is clear deliberate and applied once before escalating, not a series of squeezes that the horse has learned to ignore. If the horse does not respond to a clear aid reinforce it immediately and consistently every time. Inconsistency in the response to the aid is what teaches a horse to test it.

5. The depart is correct but falls apart immediately.
A clean depart that breaks down within a few strides tells you the horse was not genuinely in front of the leg or balanced before the transition and that the rider got lucky on the depart itself but there was nothing underneath it to sustain the canter. The fix is the quality of the trot work before the depart. A horse that is forward off the leg, genuinely connected, and balanced through the corners will maintain the canter after the depart because the energy that created the transition is still there. A horse scraped into canter from a flat disengaged trot has nowhere to go but back to trot.

Here are some exercises that actually fix canter departs...

- Transitions on a circle. Ask for the depart at a specific point on the circle such as at the top, at the side, etc and ask for a downward transition back to trot after four to six strides. Return to the same point on the circle and ask again. Repeated short canter transitions on a circle develop the horse's balance in the depart and the rider's feel for preparation and timing without the pressure of sustaining a full canter around the arena.

- Trot to canter over a ground pole. Place a single ground pole on the track and ask your student to trot over it and pick up the canter on the landing side. The pole encourages the horse to step under and lift through the transition and gives the rider a clear preparation point to work toward. A horse that rushes to the pole is a horse that needs more half halt work before the exercise. A horse that steps over calmly and picks up the canter cleanly has found the right balance for the transition.

- Canter from walk. For more advanced riders a walk to canter transition bypasses the rushing trot entirely and requires genuine engagement of the hindquarters and clear preparation from the rider. It is harder than a trot to canter depart and fixing it fixes the trot to canter at the same time because the aids and preparation are identical but just more obvious in their absence at the walk.

A clean canter depart is not luck and it is not natural talent. It is preparation timing and balance built through correct progressive work. Fix the preparation and most canter depart problems fix themselves.

What is the most common canter depart problem you see in your students and what fixed it?

05/29/2026

One of the biggest problems with incorrect training is people mistake “working the face” for collection.

A horse with its nose tucked in is not necessarily collected. In fact, many horses that appear collected are actually moving completely on the forehand, hollow through the back, disconnected behind, and carrying themselves poorly. The headset fools people into thinking the horse is soft and balanced when mechanically the horse is doing the opposite.

True collection starts from behind.

The hind legs step underneath the horse, the back lifts, the horse carries more weight on the hindquarters, and the front end becomes lighter as a result. The face and poll reflect what the body is doing, not the other way around.

That is also why I believe a lot of people spend too much time flexing, softening, and working the neck before they ever teach the horse how to truly engage the hind end. All that early focus on the face often creates the illusion of collection long before the horse has developed the mechanics for real collection. In many cases it actually makes true collection harder to develop later because the horse learns to give the face without learning to round the back and engage from behind.

You cannot pull a horse into collection with your hands.

In reality, a lot of riders are simply teaching the horse to give its face while the body remains strung out and heavy. That is why you see horses with pretty headsets but poor stops, poor transitions, heavy shoulders, front-end soreness, and little true self-carriage. The rider is teaching a shortcut that creates an illusion of what is correct instead of developing the horse correctly.

05/29/2026

05/16/2026

05/12/2026

As riding instructors we spend a lot of time managing the gap between what new students expect riding to be and what it actually is. Most of that gap could be narrowed significantly with one honest conversation before the first lesson ever happens. So here is everything I wish every new student and every new riding family walked in already knowing...

1. Riding is harder than it looks
This is the one that surprises people most. Watching a good rider looks effortless but it is not effortless. It is years of muscle memory, feel, balance, and body awareness built through consistent work over a long time. Your first lessons will feel awkward and uncoordinated and that is completely normal. Every rider you have ever admired felt exactly the way you feel right now when they were starting out.

2. The horse is not a bicycle
It is a living animal with its own personality, its own opinions, and its own good days and bad days. It does not always do what you ask the first time and that is not always your fault but it is always your responsibility to figure out the communication. Learning to work with a horse rather than on top of one is one of the most valuable things riding teaches and it starts from the very first lesson.

3. Progress is not linear
Some weeks you will feel like you have jumped forward three levels. Other weeks you will feel like you have forgotten everything you learned last month. Both are completely normal parts of learning to ride. The students who improve consistently are not the ones who never have bad lessons but they are the ones who show up anyway and keep working through the frustrating ones.

4. One lesson a week is a start but not a program
A single lesson per week gives you exposure to riding. Two lessons per week builds skill significantly faster. The riders who progress quickest are the ones who ride consistently and frequently enough that their muscles and nervous system have time to develop real memory around what correct feels like. If budget allows for more than one lesson per week it is worth it.

5. Your position will feel wrong before it feels right
Correct position in the saddle feels deeply unnatural to most people at first. Heels down feels like you are pushing your foot through the floor. Sitting tall feels like you are leaning back. An independent hand feels like you are doing nothing. Trust the process and trust your instructor. The things that feel strange now become automatic eventually but only if you commit to doing them correctly rather than defaulting back to what feels comfortable.

6. The time around the lesson matters as much as the lesson itself
Grooming your horse before you ride. Learning to tack up correctly. Understanding how to read your horse's body language in the cross ties. This is not the boring part before the real lesson begins. This is horsemanship and it makes you a better rider than an hour in the saddle alone ever will.

7. Bad rides happen to every rider at every level
Including the ones you look up to most. A bad lesson does not mean you are not cut out for this, it just means you are learning something hard and doing it on the back of a living animal that is also having a day. Come back next week and it will be different.
Your instructor is on your side.

8. Every correction we give is in service of your progress and your safety
We are not pointing out what is wrong to make you feel bad but we are pointing out what needs to change so you can get where you want to go faster and more safely. The students who improve fastest are the ones who hear a correction as information rather than criticism and apply it without taking it personally.

9. Riding changes you in ways you will not expect
The patience it builds, the confidence that comes from communicating with an animal ten times your size and being understood. The resilience that develops from falling short of a goal and coming back for it anyway. The community you find at the barn. None of that shows up in the first lesson or even the tenth but it will show up at one point. For most riders it becomes one of the most significant things in their life and not just what they do on Tuesday afternoons but part of who they are.

If you are a riding instructor share this with every new family who walks through your gate. If you are a new student or a parent of one - welcome. You picked something genuinely worth doing!

What do you wish someone had told you before your very first riding lesson?

05/10/2026

💭 Following on from yesterday’s post - some people commented that the rider on the right is “ahead of the movement.”

But people often get so focused on the horse and saddle that they forget the rider still needs to balance independently of them.

If you remove the horse and just look at the rider and stirrup as a balance system, the rider on the right actually appears much more stable.

Why?

Because their centre of mass sits more directly over the base of support.

On the left, the rider’s mass sits further behind the stirrup and the stirrup is angled forward. The rider has to work harder to hold themselves in this position, which will only increase once the horse starts moving.

Being behind the movement also means that if the horse suddenly stops, turns, or changes direction, the rider’s momentum is more likely to continue behind the horse’s movement, making balance adjustments harder.

Some comments suggested that position 1 would become more balanced once the horse’s movement is added.

But balance is still balance.

You cannot really be mechanically unbalanced in a static position and then suddenly become balanced once movement is introduced. Usually movement exposes balance problems more, not less.

If the rider’s mass is already sitting behind the base of support before movement is added, the body has to work harder to stabilise once forward/backward and upward/downward forces are introduced.

On the right, the rider hovers more directly over the stirrup itself, allowing force to travel more vertically through the leg into the tread.

The joints are also in a position to flex and extend more effectively for constant micro-adjustments as the horse moves, helping the rider keep their centre of mass over the horse.

It is also worth remembering that jump saddles are designed with a more forward stirrup bar than dressage saddles specifically to allow the rider to transfer their weight further forwards when out of the saddle. When in half seat/two-point, balance shifts more over the stirrup. That is where we need to look at balance - not just the rider’s position relative to the saddle.

Like any sport, riding needs an athletic “ready position” that allows the body to react, absorb force, and adapt quickly to movement - even more so on a half-tonne moving animal.

Balance is not subjective. It is physics.

And I think riding needs to start focusing more on how the body actually balances and transfers force, rather than just what a position traditionally looks like.

This is exactly the type of biomechanics and rider position work I’ll be covering in my new Riding Ready online program coming soon.

11/18/2025

😮❤️🐎