The dressage world is filled with riders, judges, trainers, and “critical eyes” who can tell you all about the correct way to ride and train. They will post articles on self carriage, read books on classical training, sprout in-depth conversations about the feeling of lightness and harmony, attend courses with the world's classical masters, and boast about the health and happiness of their philosophy and their horse. It is difficult to learn if you take an attitude that decides "this is the perfect circle, watch me do it I’m awesome at it."

Perhaps you are awesome at it, but most of us aren’t and thinking more along the lines of “this is the problem I have when I try to get the perfect circle, I know it should be this, but I do this. "So what steps can I put in place to help me achieve what I’m after," might be just the thought process that gets you to were you want to be.

The good riders will know how it is supposed to be, but they will also be aware of the fact that they have limitations, or what they think they are feeling may not be exactly what it happening. One of the single most important aspects of dressage – as a rider – is the ability to be honest with yourself, about yourself.

Firstly it is a good idea to set some realistic goals. This can range from riding a good first level test at the local competition to aiming for international competitions in the future. But always be honest with yourself! Honest about whether your horse is good enough, whether you are good enough, whether your trainer is good enough, and whether the talk you talk,is really the walk you walk. We can spend hours watching videos of others and critiquing them for this and that, but when we watch a video of ourselves can we do the same?

It does not matter how much you ride or how much money you spend or how much you love your horse or riding. It doesn't matter how much technical understanding you have, if you do not have self awareness you will never make it. Why do some people have this and others not? Does it depend on a particular type of personality or can you learn to have it?

Dressage is an art that takes patience, but also a great deal of humility and self-awareness. It requires the ability to understand the theory but also realise that putting it all into practice takes the right mental skills. We all remember going home and being frustrated with the judges for the low scores. However, often if we look over our test sheets we can see a trend appearing and maybe the reason we aren’t getting the seven we want is because we aren't addressing the problem.

If you want to compete then you are putting yourself out there for judgment and criticism. At some point you have to accept what the judges tell you. If you think they don't know, than don't compete. We can blame everybody else for low marks, but the key might actually be in understanding what areas we need to work on and making sure the basics are correct.

If your trainer tells you you are brilliant and the judges are saying you horse is incorrect, ask yourself why the two aren’t talking the same language to you. If one judge tells you your horse is incorrect think about their comment. If three judges concur that your horse is incorrect on several occasions, ask yourself what is really going on?

The world of dressage sport looks different from the art performed by classical masters in the last century. However the principles underlying should both remain the same and this aspect is the responsibility of the judges.

There are trainers in the world of sport dressage who mask themselves as “classical” and then host clinics telling riders to pull the horse's head off. The worst is the people who blame the horse, who decide that if the horse is going badly it is because he is in some way an evil horse and has just decided to be like that. In these cases we can look a little deeper, in my opinion, and one often sees a rider-trainer relationship in which the trainer is paid to tell the rider just how wonderful s/he is. So the rider goes home and thinks "well if I’m wonderful it must be my horse."

One of the greatest assetts a rider can have is a trainer or pair of eyes on the ground, who has enough knowledge to tell you exactly how you are going. This can be very difficult to deal with from a person who is close to you – your partner, a family member – but it is a must in this sport. You must have someone who you trust to tell you the truth no matter how difficult it is to hear. And you must have the humility to accept what they say.

If you don’t have someone to tell you, video yourself, and when you watch the video, don’t just think, "Oh I’m great." Think more along the lines of "what is the difference between this and the horse and rider I aspire to be like." Be honest with yourself. Can you look at yourself critically and see all the problems or do you look at it with rose colored glasses?

Outside the competition world there are the classical “gurus” who can tell you exactly how things should be, but they have never actually tried to apply their knowledge to anything accept their 12hh, 18-year old which has just learnt to go with the flow. All of this is ok, until they begin condemning everyone else, or telling everyone else how brilliant they themselves are at classical dressage. You can find pleasure for sure in being able to analyse others, but the true victory, the victory we should really be searching for, is the ability to detect, accept, analyse and improve the problems we ourselves face in daily training.

To me, the lowest of the low is when riders use methods that put the horse in physical pain and worse and, worse, convince themselves it’s ok. No-one is perfect, but having the guts to admit you are not perfect is a start! You are one step further than everybody else if you prove your ability to say that even if you follow the right philosophies it doesn’t mean you can automatically hop into classical mastery autopilot.

Analyse yourself, analyse your test sheets, ask yourself “is my horse understanding me?" Before you condemn others, consider whether you have authority to criticize anyone else. And if you “talk the talk” of classics, lightness and harmony and even if you can’t “walk the walk” perfectly, make at least sure you are aware of what’s missing. Make sure that you are trying your guts out to walk that much better every single day.

Written by me (Sarah Warne) originally published on Eurodressage.