GallopaHow to Improve Your Horse Riding Between Lessons
Most riders get one lesson a week. Some manage one a fortnight. And here is the uncomfortable truth: the lesson is rarely where progress is lost. It is lost in the six days in between, when the good habits your instructor spent 45 minutes building quietly unravel. The riders who improve fastest are not always the most talented, and they rarely have the fanciest horses. They are the ones who treat their solo rides as structured practice rather than pleasant wandering.
The good news is that learning how to improve your horse riding between lessons does not require more talent, more money or even more hours in the saddle. It requires a plan, a little honesty and a couple of simple tools. Whether you practice horse riding alone at a busy livery yard or school in a quiet field, the seven habits below will help you arrive at your next lesson better than you left the last one.
Ride with one focus, not ten
The biggest mistake riders make when riding without an instructor is trying to fix everything at once. Heels down, shoulders back, inside leg on, soften the hands, more impulsion, less speed. Ten corrections at once means none of them stick.
Instead, leave every lesson with exactly one thing. Ask your instructor directly: "If I could only work on one thing this week, what should it be?" Write the answer down before you drive home. That single instruction becomes the theme of every solo ride until the next lesson.
One focus does not mean ignoring everything else. It means that when your attention drifts, and it will, you come back to the same anchor. If this week's focus is a steady rhythm in trot, then every circle, every transition and every long side becomes a chance to check the rhythm. By your next lesson, that one thing has had six days of deliberate attention instead of six days of vague hope. Instructors notice the difference immediately.
Structure your solo schooling session like a lesson
Good instructors do not wing it, and neither should you. A simple three-part structure turns an aimless ride into genuine practice: warm-up, work sets, cool-down.
Warm up for 10 to 15 minutes: walk on a long rein on both reins, big shapes, let your horse loosen through the back before you ask for anything. Then ride two to four short work sets of five to eight minutes each, separated by walk breaks, with every set aimed at your one focus. Short sets keep both of you fresh and give the horse time to process. Finish with at least 10 minutes of relaxed walk to cool down, ideally on a loose rein.
Here is what a realistic week can look like for a rider with one lesson and three solo rides:
| Day | Session | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | Lesson (45 min) | Instructor's agenda, then ask for your one focus |
| Thursday | Solo schooling (40 min) | Warm-up, three work sets on the week's focus, cool-down |
| Saturday | Hack or fitness ride (60 min) | Forward, even rhythm; straightness on tracks; let the horse stretch |
| Sunday | Poles or transitions day (30 min) | Rhythm over poles, or 30 to 50 clean transitions |
Notice what is missing: riding every day. Three purposeful rides beat six aimless ones, and rest days matter for horses just as much as they do for riders.
Film yourself, then actually watch it
If you adopt only one habit from this article, make it this one. Prop your phone on a fence post, a jump wing or a mounting block at C or B, frame the whole arena in landscape, press record and ride your normal session. What you feel in the saddle and what is actually happening are often two very different things, which is exactly why professionals treat horse riding video analysis as routine rather than vanity. Dressage Today's guide to using video to analyse your ride has been recommending this for years, and the advice has aged well.
When you watch the footage back, look for four things:
- Seat: are you sitting centrally, or collapsing to one side on circles?
- Hands: are they still and level, or quietly fussing at the horse's mouth?
- Rhythm: count the strides down a long side; does the tempo stay the same?
- Transitions: do they happen when you ask, or four strides later?
Watching is one thing; knowing what to fix first is another. This is where an AI riding coach earns its keep. Apps like Gallopa can analyse a riding video and score your seat, hands, leg position, rhythm, transitions and overall harmony, so instead of a vague sense that "something looked a bit off", you get specific, prioritised feedback you can act on in your very next ride. Think of it as a second pair of eyes on the days your instructor is not there.
Pull-tip: film one ride a week and watch it the same evening, while the feel of the ride is still fresh. Comparing what you felt with what you see is the fastest feedback loop in equestrian sport.
Keep an honest riding journal
Memory flatters us. A month from now you will not remember whether the left canter strike-offs were sticky in early July or whether that was June. A riding journal fixes that, and it takes two minutes.
After every ride, write three lines: what you worked on, how the horse felt, and one thing to try next time. That is it. Over weeks, patterns appear that no single ride reveals: the horse is always tense after a day off, the right rein is consistently harder, the rhythm work is genuinely improving.
The key word is honest. Record the bad rides too, because they carry the most information. A journal full of "great session!" teaches you nothing. A journal also transforms your lessons: instead of answering "how was your week?" with "fine", you can tell your instructor exactly what happened, and they can coach the real problem instead of guessing.
Measure the boring numbers
Feelings lie, numbers do not. Some progress only shows up in data: how many minutes you actually spent in trot (riders overestimate this wildly), how many rides you truly did this month, how your canter work is trending.
Tracking time in each gait is quietly revealing. If your goal is to build canter fitness but the numbers show four minutes of canter across a whole week, the plan and the reality have drifted apart, and now you know. Ride frequency matters too: consistency over months is what builds horses and riders, and a streak you can see is a streak you protect.
You do not need a clipboard for any of this. A horse riding tracker on your phone, or a glanceable Apple Watch horse riding app, can detect walk, trot, canter and gallop automatically and log every ride for you. The effort you are putting in becomes visible, and visible effort is far easier to sustain.
Ride different types of sessions
Schooling six days a week makes horses sour and riders stale. Variety is not a distraction from progress; it is part of it.
- Hacking days build fitness, refresh the horse's brain and test your one focus in the real world. A steady rhythm on a woodland track counts just as much as one on the centre line. If you ride out, the British Horse Society's riding out and hacking advice is worth a read, covering route planning, visibility and staying safe on the roads.
- Pole days improve rhythm, straightness and the horse's attention without drilling the same movements. Four poles on a circle will tell you more about your rhythm than twenty laps without them.
- Transitions days are the cheapest training gains available. Thirty to fifty transitions in a session, ridden with care, improve balance, sharpness and the conversation between your leg and hand.
Rotating session types also protects your horse physically. Different work loads different structures, and that variety is a soundness strategy as much as a training one.
Know when to stop
The hardest skill in solo riding is ending the session. Without an instructor calling "that's lovely, finish there", most riders keep going, and the extra twenty minutes is where good work gets undone.
The rule is simple: end on a good note. If you get a genuinely good version of your one focus twenty minutes in, praise the horse, walk on a long rein and be done. The horse remembers how the session ended far more than how it began, and so, honestly, do you.
And always put welfare first. Heat, hard ground, a horse that feels flat or off, your own fatigue: any of these is reason enough to cut a session short or skip it entirely. A tired horse cannot learn, and no single ride is worth more than the animal's wellbeing. Stopping early is not failure. It is horsemanship.
FAQ
How many rides a week do I need to improve between lessons?
Two to three purposeful solo rides on top of your weekly lesson is plenty for steady progress. Quality matters far more than quantity: a focused 40-minute session beats an aimless 90-minute one. Build in at least one full rest day for your horse.
How do I film my horse riding if I always ride alone?
Prop your phone on a fence post, jump wing or mounting block at the side of the arena, film in landscape and frame as much of the school as possible. A cheap tripod or a tracking mount helps but is not essential. Film the same exercises each week so you can compare like with like.
What should I practice when riding without an instructor?
Work on the one thing your instructor highlighted in your last lesson, using short focused sets with walk breaks. Transitions, rhythm work and simple pole exercises are safe, high-value choices. Avoid teaching brand-new movements alone; save those for lessons where someone can help you get them right from the start.
Can an AI riding coach replace my instructor?
No, and it should not try to. A good instructor reads you, your horse and the partnership in ways software cannot. An AI coach fills the gap between lessons, giving you objective feedback on seat, hands, rhythm and transitions from your own videos so you turn up to each lesson further along than you left the last one.
Ready to make your solo rides count? Gallopa is free on the App Store: automatic gait detection and ride tracking on iPhone and Apple Watch, plus an AI video coach that scores seat, hands, leg, rhythm, transitions and harmony from a single riding video. Download it before your next ride, and see what your instructor sees.
Track it, don't guess it.
Gallopa records your route, speed and time in every gait automatically, and its AI coach reviews your riding videos. Free on iPhone and Apple Watch.
Emma has spent over thirty years around horses, from a Pony Club childhood on a borrowed Welsh cob to adult life combining low-level eventing, hacking and far too much time reading about training theory. She writes Gallopa's riding and horse fitness guides, and her rule for every piece is simple: if she would not act on it with her own horse, it does not get published.