08/22/2026
𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐈𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐚 𝐏𝐨𝐧𝐲 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲
I am going to say this as a coach, and I already know some people will not like it, but it is not my job to entertain you. I am not there to make sure every single lesson contains jumping because that is the fun bit, or to keep changing exercises every five minutes because somebody is bored. I am there to teach you how to ride properly, and sometimes proper training is repetitive, frustrating and not particularly exciting to watch.
If I think you need polework, transitions, no stirrups or another half hour fixing your position, then that is what we are doing. If I put jumps up, they might be small, because I care far more about how you ride the line than how high the fence is. Simply making the jump bigger does not mean the riding underneath it has suddenly improved. Sometimes it just means the horse is carrying the same mistakes over a larger obstacle.
I taught some adults last night and we did very basic polework, transitions between the poles and work without stirrups. There was nothing flashy about it, but they actually felt the difference by the end. The joy when they got their stirrups back was hilarious, but that was exactly the point. They had to work properly, and then they could feel what had changed and add into the mix, my friends baby horse joined for its first ever group lesson so polework definitely was important! That is what coaching is supposed to be.
The problem now is that riding lessons seem to have drifted into this strange place where the person paying expects to decide what the lesson should contain, and the coach is somehow meant to keep everyone happy while quietly squeezing a bit of actual teaching in around the edges. That is not how training works.
If I tell you that you are not ready to jump higher, move up a group or do something more difficult, I am not being awkward. I am doing the job you are paying me to do. You are paying for my judgement, not for me to agree with you. And this matters far beyond whether somebody has a good lesson or not, because it becomes a horse welfare issue very quickly.
We are asking horses to compensate for more and more gaps in rider education. A good riding school horse can hide an unbelievable amount. They will forgive bad balance, bad timing, inconsistent hands and riders who are not quite sure what their legs are doing. Then that same rider eventually gets onto a younger, sharper or less forgiving horse and suddenly the horse is labelled difficult. Sometimes the horse has hairy moments . Sometimes the rider has simply never been properly taught. That is the uncomfortable bit nobody really wants to say out loud.
We spend a huge amount of time talking about producing better horses, better breeding and better welfare, but we do not talk enough about producing better riders. There is very little point breeding more athletic, more sensitive horses if the average rider is being rushed through the basics because everyone is terrified of boring them. You can jump a course and still have massive holes in your riding. You can compete every weekend and still need to go back to trot poles. You can own a very expensive horse and still need someone to tell you that your position is making the problem worse. That should not be insulting. That should be normal.
Good training has never been about making somebody feel brilliant every single week. Sometimes you need to hear that something is not good enough yet. Sometimes you need to repeat the same exercise until it finally clicks. Sometimes you need to go backwards before you actually move forwards. That is how riders are made.
So when people say there are no good trainers anymore, I am not convinced the trainers disappeared. I think we have created a system where coaches are expected to be entertainers, customer service staff and cheerleaders first, and trainers somewhere after that. Then we wonder why fewer people can genuinely produce a horse themselves. Maybe we need to get comfortable with being taught again. Maybe parents need to stop measuring progress by fence height. Maybe adult riders need to accept that paying for the lesson does not automatically make them the person who plans it. And maybe coaches need to be allowed to say, No, you are not ready without everybody behaving like they have just committed a crime against humanity.
Because my job is not to keep you entertained for forty-five minutes.
My job is to make you a better rider.
The horse deserves that much.
