Ride the Horse, Not the Test

I was asked recently to write a blog post on test riding. I thought about it and realized that I had a lot of opinions on it, more so now that I've gone through part one of the L program, probably even more in the future when I've gone through the rest of the program and the following programs.

As always, theory posts only reflect my own experiences as a rider and a trainer and my own perspective. I'm always learning and thinking about this stuff, so what I write now may not reflect how I feel about these things in the future. Read at your own risk. That being said, I've got some competition experience in all levels of this sport.

Best show pony

Here are my best tips:

Know Your Test

Obviously. But not just like, can you tell it to someone out loud or do you have it memorized? I mean know the SHIT out of your test. To the point where it haunts you. To the point where you're dreaming about it. To the point where I still have the Grand Prix memorized 6 years after my last one. I've not had a reader in years because if I feel like if I need one, I don't have my test memorized enough.

For every moment you have to think "wait, does this happen at V or K?" or "I think this transition happens here" OR for every brain cell that has to focus on what your reader is saying and then translate it to what you're doing, that's a brain cell or several that aren't riding your horse. And you need all your brain cells to ride your horse in a dressage test. You actually need more than the number of brain cells humans have, and that's why no one gets 100%.

I'm so happy how white I got his tail!

Have a Plan

Obviously having a plan is a good idea, this is such a stupid tip, but I like to memorize my tests AND my plan at the same time. Rather than saying, up centerline, halt, trot off, track left, shoulder-in, half circle, half pass.... I'll say:

"enter centerline tracking right, he'll try to zip up to X because he's eager so take that energy and recycle it twice, first at D and then at L, halt and make sure to keep him in my left rein so that he halts square and doesn't think about pawing, trot off, keeping him in the left rein until he's trotting well, then half halt around G to put him into shoulder-fore left and then track left, pushing him into my right rein as I do that. Use the corner to talk to his left hind to warn him about the shoulder-in, half halt coming into the shoulder-in and then for the love of god, Megan, do not run him in the shoulder-in, half halt outside rein to turn his shoulders into the half circle, then keep him on that outside rein into the half pass, making sure that I don't let his haunches fall in on the half circle so that I can keep his shoulders leading while also keeping him up to the outside rein"

Best pony last fall

Visualization

The number one thing I make sure I do prior to signing up for a show is visualize my tests vividly. I don't test ride too often, I rode the 3-3 once before our first show at the level and the 3-1 about five times, which is unusually high for me. But I do ride it a TON in my mind. If you can't visualize yourself riding the test perfectly, you won't ride it perfectly.

I've not only ridden my current Third level tests in my head, I can't tell you how much I've ridden the FEI tests on TC in my head. We will have cantered down centerline in my shadbelly together hundreds of times mentally before we ever do it in real life. It makes me think about each individual little thing in the test and helps me with my training of him now. Given the horse I have today, I know that the steepness in the Grand Prix half passes is a PROBLEM and so I keep that in mind while schooling my half passes at home. I know that he might get behind me in the canter pirouettes, so I am schooling the hell out of the quality of the canter at home. I know that he'll get crooked in the tempi changes, so I'm working on changes on the rail to prevent having that problem in the future.


Ride The Damn Corners

You only get a certain number of steps in the show ring. How many steps does it take to prepare for each movement? You can get more steps by going further into the corners! And the corners are a free chance to establish a better bend, more throughness, fix a straightness problem, and make sure your horse is responding well to each aid. Don't cut them like I want to do all the time!

Me thinking about how I'm going to cut
all my damn corners and not be prepared
enough for the movements

Stress Yourself Out at Home

Lots of times, we dumb down the work we do at home. I am guilty of it as a trainer saying "when you have a quality walk, head into trot" when in no test does it say "eh just show us all the movements whenever it feels right, try it again if you mess up." You don't have to practice your test to get good at test riding. Just set yourself up for failure at times. Examples:
- put transitions at specific places and force yourself to ride them, for example, ride a transition at every quarter of a circle while also riding a serpentine and/or ride a transition EXACTLY every ten steps
- combine lateral work and transitions like leg yield to canter to ten meter circle to trot to leg yield and again and again
- ride test patterns at home, I only school full tests occasionally, but I school test patterns constantly
- drill lateral work zig zags and staircases (leg yield to straight to leg yield, half pass to shoulder-in to half pass) and count your steps in there too


Focus on Flow

One of the best ways to reduce your score is to make the movements not flow together. Take for example the 4-1. You have to ride half pass to centerline, a ten meter circle, then ride shoulder-in up centerline. If you ride the half pass, then go "oh god the circle" then faulter onto the circle, then ride straight out of it and think "oh yeah, shoulder-in" and start it a step late, it all looks choppy and weird. The movements that happen right after one another need to flow together. Your half pass should end when you turn onto the ten meter circle, your shoulder-in should start on that ten meter circle. Choppy tests lose in the submission, rider effectiveness, and in the movement scores.

TC says, these tests are so easy, mom, what we do at home is
way harder

Gimme Movements

When I'm working with TC, I think a lot about how many times I have to do a movement in a row before I like what I'm getting. For example, his shoulder-in is as good as it's going to be the first time we do it, there's no improving it with doing a second or third shoulder-in. This, to me, means that the shoulder-in is show ready.

In comparison, when I ask for half pass, the first one is not show ready, we have to do it probably four times in a row to get one that I like and that Tanya has said is an 8. But we don't get an 8 in the show ring because they don't let you do four half passes in a row and then pick the highest scoring one.

So when I'm wondering why at home I get such a great half pass that my trainer says is an 8 and then I go into the show ring and get a 6.5, it's not that my trainer is a liar. It's that I need to get that half pass to be an 8 the FIRST time I ride it

This is also important for warming up (see below)...



Perfect Your Warm Up/Trust Your Training

Related to above, knowing how many times you need to school a movement to make it show ready is really important for designing your warm up!

When you're at Training, First or even Second and Third to an extent, you can totally ride every single movement in warm up a few times and still have a live animal to ride in your test. Once you reach the FEI levels, there's no warming up every movement or you and your horse will pass out before going into the show ring.

You need movements that are good without any warm up for those levels. That takes a long time to develop. An old trainer once told me that you aren't ready for the next level when you can get all the movements right, you're ready for the next level when you can't get any of the movements wrong.


In addition, know the difference between what you'd like for yourself in warm up vs what your horse needs in warm up. I'd love to ride more changes in warm up for myself, to really know that they're going to be good, but too many changes is not something TC can handle right now.

Rico's warm up for the FEI levels was about ten minutes long. It wasn't about me in that moment. It was about him. His first set of one tempis was as good as we were going to get, so I had to go in cold as a rider. His canter half pass zig zag was great every time, so I had to go in cold on that. It's nerve wracking as a rider. It's really rather scary to canter down centerline very aware that the last time you rode a canter half pass zig zag was much earlier in the week. But I did it for him and I can 100% tell you that this is why we were successful at those levels.

Still love this picture so much

The Test Should Improve The Horse

The tests aren't set up to be unfair to the horse or rider. They are made to improve the horse. Every movement you ride should make your horse better, more through, more responsive, more submissive.

Figure out what the purpose of each test movement is and how to use it to your advantage. TC gets out behind in the mediums, but he does have a better outline in the medium and it helps to get more power in him. So I can tell myself, okay, I'll use the medium to get him more powerful and more out to the bridle, but I'll use the down transition and the corners to get him more engaged because I will have lost the engagement in the medium. I use the shoulder-in to get him better connected. I use the half pass to make sure he's staying upright. I use the extended walk to get him to loosen up his back and use the walk pirouettes to put him in a better collection before we have to do a walk to canter.

Judges look for this, they look for a better quality trot after a medium, a more connected horse after lateral work, and so on.

Happiest horse hanging with his new best friend, every ring
steward ever

Mistakes Happen, Recovery Matters More

TC and I have been showing together for three years now and we just had our first clean test last show! Every test we've had a spook, a bolt, a lead swap, or a break. Every single test except that one. The horse has scored very well regardless.

Mistakes can happen in a few different ways but it honestly doesn't matter what the mistake is, what matters is how you ride afterward. If the mistake happens in one movement and then you recover immediately and your test sheet looks like "7, 7, 4, 7, 7" then that's totally fine! Whatever, a singular four, even in a double coefficient, shouldn't affect your test significantly. BUT if your test looks like "7, 7, 4, 5, 4, 3" then there's a big problem there. In the last situation, the mistake wasn't the problem, the recovery was.

At home when making a mistake, it's easy to stop and go back or to ride some circles to get the horse back to you and then go back. Instead, force yourself to learn to recover and go back to normal ASAP. Make yourself ride through the test movement that you're practicing even when it goes poorly. Learn to recover from mistakes and the mistakes won't be a big deal even when they do happen.

In addition, change the perfectionist mentality that is so common in dressage riders. That's not helpful at all. You see tons of riders go in and ride one way when things are going well and then the moment they make one singular mistake, you see everything deflate as the rider begins to focus on how frustrated they are about the mistake. Don't worry about if a mistake will be made (it will), worry about how quickly you can recover and forget about the mistake.

TC after earning a 73% at 1-2 while making mistakes

Know Your Downtime

Figure out where there is downtime in the test. Downtime is anything that isn't a movement. At Training level, there's TONS of downtime, it's fabulous. At Training 1, you track left, do a circle, then you have half the long side, a corner, and half the short side to get ready to canter. If you made a mistake on the trot circle, you've got all that time to fix things before the next thing you get scored on happens (note: they are still judging you there, but the circle is the essence and therefore most important).

Downtime decreases as you move up the levels and is one of the reasons why the tests feel like they're happening so fast as you move up (pro tip: wait to show a test until the test feels like it ISN'T going by so quickly, time moves faster in the dressage court so if it feels fast at home, it'll be impossible to ride in the show ring). There's one significant bit of downtime in the Grand Prix, between when you pick up the canter and when you start your 2 tempis. That's kind of it unfortunately. But it was CRUCIAL to use it to get Rico forward and in a quality canter when I was showing him at that level.

Knowing your downtime means that you can identify where you can easily recover from mistakes. Any movement with tons of downtime afterward is where you can freely make mistakes. Doesn't mean you don't school those movements, but like, in the 3-1, you have SUCH a long time after each change that you can make a massive mistake without affecting your medium canter or trot transition that follows.

But in that same test, if the shoulder-in has a mistake in it, you have a half circle (that is judged with the half pass) before the half pass, that's it! So while the changes in the 3-1 seem like the most daunting part of the test, not having a good shoulder-in could have an effect on thirty points vs the change being worth twenty. In addition, those thirty points are way more steps in the test, so making a mistake in the lateral work at that test is worth more in the collectives than making a mistake in one change.

He was so dapply a couple years ago

Ride the Horse, Not the Test

It's easy to get in the ring and be like centerlinehaltturnleftmediumtrotshoudlerinohgodohgod and suddenly the horse is off the bit, drifting from the track, and you're sitting there shoving the horse through the movements, when at home, everything seems to ride really well.

I forget who told me this piece of advice, to ride the horse, not the test, but it's something I always think about. I think that this is advice that combines three things: having your test memorized so well that it haunts you, knowing your downtime, and also making sure the test improves the horse. But I think it's worth mentioning on its own too.

Basically use the test moments to ride the horse, don't use the horse to ride the test movements.

First level pony

What is the best piece of advice you have heard for test riding?