Elevate Sport Horses

Wow, what an amazing weekend we had with Marina Parris Woodhead of Hidden Oaks Horses for our Dressage and flatwork clinic at Elevate! We had riders from Intro Level all the way to FEI, as well as jumper students and members of our Lesson Academy, all come together to participate.

Here are just a few takeaways from the weekend:

• Ride the rhythm
• Start leg yield with a partial turn, then ride diagonal to letter as “magnet,” slowly add in aids
• Don’t overthink—RIDE from feel!
• You can’t ride from correction to correction. Ride from half halt to half halt and give space for peace ☮
• Build exercises up in steps
• Use your “airplane arm” to help steer the withers
• Begin transitions by lifting the horse’s core
• You control the horse from the withers—keep hands even and steady
• The first pattern, canter circle, etc. of the day doesn’t have to be PERFECT. Let it be what it is, figure out where your horse is, and go from there
• Be fluid through hips and inner thighs

A huge thank you to Marina for meeting each rider where they were at, keeping things fun and teaching us all something new. We are so grateful for your wisdom and can’t wait for next time! 📝

This 🙌

Let’s Talk About Trainer Rides.

There’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and it feels like an important conversation: Trainer rides.

Somewhere along the way, I feel like trainer rides have started to feel optional, like a luxury, or something only needed when things go really wrong. But I believe they are one of the most important parts of keeping horses happy, confident, and reliable in their jobs.

Especially the good ones! The steady school horses. The saintly kids horses. The show horses packing their riders around week after week. Those horses don’t stay that way by accident. They stay that way because someone with experience is checking in with them from the saddle.

Horses are athletes, but they’re also thinkers and feelers. Over time they develop habits, compensations, and questions, just like riders do. A horse gets a little crooked or starts dulling to the leg. They lose confidence in a certain question or quietly start carrying more than their fair share. These things can show up as the ride feeling harder, less smooth, less fun… until suddenly both horse and rider are frustrated. Or they start to voice their frustration and they get labelled as having “bad behavior”.

That’s where a trainer ride isn’t a luxury, it’s part of the care. A professional ride helps to clarify the aids, rebuild confidence on the flat and over fences, and supports them physically and mentally in the job we ask them to do. Then that carries over into the owner’s ride. And the rider gets to build their relationship on a solid, supported foundation instead of constantly trying to fix things themselves.

It’s also about fairness.

Our horses work hard. They try, they tolerate mistakes, they take care of their riders. It’s only fair that we give them rides where the aids are clear, the balance is correct, and they get help doing the job well. Those rides keep them happier in their work and help prevent the slow mental burnout we sometimes see in over-generous horses.
That’s not taking something away from the rider, it’s supporting the partnership.

When horse, rider, and trainer all play their roles, the whole system works better. Horses stay more reliable. Riders progress with less frustration. And the relationship between them gets stronger, not more strained.

At the end of the day, trainer rides aren’t about control. They’re about responsibility.



Photo Credit: Wild Griffin Photography

I’ll just drop this here… ⬇️

"As a trainer, I keep very few secrets from my clients. Where some may be more tight lipped or filtered, by nature I’m more of an open book. This is true for myself professionally and personally. It has served me well at times… and at other times caused me some issues. For the most part, my willingness to communicate and be transparent to the people who have entrusted me with their horses and their kids over the years has given me the ability to build a business based on honesty. That’s something I’m very proud of. However, there are a few hard truths that I don’t talk about so openly. I think some of these truths transcend past my personal experience, and are very relatable to most trainers. Also, they may be valuable for clients to take into consideration. So, I’ve decided I want to share them with you today.

1. When you have a bad lesson, I think about it probably more than you do.

When you struggle through a lesson, fail multiple times in an exercise, or fall off, you might think your trainer just lightheartedly rolls their eyes and after giving you a brief pep talk, moves right on with their day. We really want you to think we do this! Because it’s hard enough that you left your lesson feeling down on yourself and frustrated, it’s not our job to add our personal feelings to it. But… when I’m driving home that night, I’m thinking about your next lesson already. What can I do to fix it? Should I explain things differently? Did I raise that jump too quickly tonight? I don’t want you to have your confidence dashed. I’m doing mental gymnastics to get you and your horse back on track hours and sometimes even days after a bad ride. Maybe even long after you’ve moved on from it. We want you to succeed and we don’t want you to know that at times your struggles become our struggles too.

2. I pick my battles.

If you have a trainer who seems to nit pick or one who more readily lets things slide, I can guarantee you that both of those types of horse professionals are holding back. We want to call you out when you put your saddle away dirty. If you’re whispering to friends while auditing a clinic, we want to shoot you a look because you should be listening and learning respectfully instead of chatting. We pull out our phones to text you that you left your horse with a sweat mark after your ride, but often times put our phones back in our pockets without hitting send. Trainers are perfectionists. The good ones are, anyway. We have to be, in order to do what we do. Most of us were brought up with trainers who were pretty tough on us.

I remember once when I was about 15, I left my bridle out on the cleaning hook after a ride and forgot to put it away. It was an innocent mistake for a spacey teenager to make, and not one that I’d done before. But when I arrived to the barn the next day, my trainer had disassembled the whole bridle and hung each piece from the rafters of the hay loft. It took me most of the afternoon and some questionably unsafe ladder placement to retrieve them. I was tearful and quite embarrassed, but I never left that bridle out again. These days such “drastic” measures in teaching students to be more thoughtful and responsible aren’t as common. But one could argue that lax horsemanship is more rampant. So, I kind of understand where my trainer was coming from with that stunt. I did learn something, after all. I may not be hanging bridle parts from rafters… but there are days I think about it.

3. We blur the lines between work and our personal life, and we pay the price.

I try to answer texts from my clients in a timely fashion. That’s usually because my phone is glued to me at all times. iPhones have a feature, one we all know too well, that tells us our weekly screen time. I hate knowing this number. Most weeks it’s 8+ hours a day. I’m videoing horses during lessons, looking up horse ads online, calling and texting clients, farriers, chiropractors, various vets. Whether I’m physically at work or not, it makes no difference. I’m always working, to some capacity. This lifestyle has become the norm for me, but I often times realize I’m cheating myself and my family out of quality time together. A dinner at a restaurant where my phone stays in my pocket is something I owe to them, but don’t often do. When the texts message “ding” sounds, I instinctively reach for it. It could be the vet! I’m waiting to hear back from a seller about an offer that was made this morning. I have a client worried sick about an upcoming horse show and I’m trying to reassure them not to stress. It’ll just be a minute, I tell them, I swear. This makes me great at my job, but admittedly leaves me lacking in the mom and wife department.

I’ve realized at this point in my life and career that I have to get more comfortable leaving someone on read so that I can be present at home, and creating healthier boundaries. So when you call me at 9pm worried about your horses loose shoe or wondering what blanket he needs tomorrow… I don’t always want to answer. Some things can and should wait."

📎 Continue reading this article by Ariel Univer at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/01/24/things-your-trainer-may-or-may-not-want-you-to-know/
📸 © The Plaid Horse