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Just over 10 years ago, I used to be out at a dressage or eventing competition almost every weekend, but since married life, kids & my own business have come along I don’t get out as much as I used to!

Anyway, I have a dressage competition coming up in about four weeks, so for the last few weeks myself & a couple of friends who’re competing in the same event have been running through some of the tests lately…which brings me to the subject of this article.

Easy Ways to Improve Your Score in a Dressage Test

Some aspects of a dressage test need months or years of work to perfect like collection, lateral work, transitions etc….& if you haven’t been doing the hard yards in the months leading up, there’s not going to be much you can do to change things during the test.

But there’s some things you can do, no matter what level of training your horse has or how much experience you as a rider have, that WILL get you MORE points than your competition! …& you don’t need to put in months or even weeks of work to do this.

As you’d know if you’ve done any dressage before, 1 or 2 points can make the difference between a placing & nothing, so it’s well worth knowing how to scrape up every last point from the judges!

1. Make Sure Your Circles Are Actually Circles.

Yep, doing ovals or squares instead of circles is a VERY common way to lose points in a dressage test and it’s so easily avoided.

How a 'perfect' 20m circle should be ridden.

Imagine the area in which you have to do your circle as a square, then draw a perfect circle within that square. Your perfect circle will just touch the middle of each side of the square for a very small distance before coming off and continuing the curve. This is how you should ride your circles in your tests.

2. Ride Your Corners

Now I don’t mean ride as far into the corner as you can, then yank your poor horse around a split second before they jump out of the arena, but ride as far into the corners as you possibly can before you start the turn.

Just how far you can ride into the corner before turning is something you’ll only work out by practising it. Do it a few times at home and you’ll soon know when you have to start turning.

Hint…Make sure your horse is nice & steady before entering the corner – if you need to, you can use 1 or 2 little half halts to achieve this. This will make sure that they’re balanced and steady as they start the corner making it much easier for you to rider them through it nicely.

3. Ride Your Test Accurately

If you’re supposed to trot at C, do your best to do it at C, & not 4 metres before or after it! But you say, it takes me 10 metres to pull up my horse?

Ok, well in the long term, this would be something you’d definitely have to work on, but for now there’s any easy solution to this – start to prepare them for the transition 10 metres before hand so by the time you get to the letter, they’ve slowed down sufficiently!

This goes for any transition in any test…start preparing your horse with ample time to make sure you can make the transition on the required letter.

It all comes down to a bit of practice and getting to know your horse!

So go out there & get those extra points…it could make all the difference!

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I’ve just spent the last few hours sorting through a few thousand pics that a friend took at Equitana back in 2010 – in case you don’t know, Equitana is a big, 3 day ’horse expo’ that they have in Australia every year. You’ll find everything there…breeds, English riding, Western riding, horse training sessions, trick training & riding displays, games and much more.

It’s horsie heaven…:)

But back on topic, I couldn’t help but notice something in a lot of the dressage pics. A lot of the dressage riders had the most grumpy, sour look on their faces…it really didn’t make for a pleasant picture.

Admittedly the horses looked absolutely stunning, but the riders, well [click to continue…]

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