How to read a dressage test

"Reading a test" means two different things, and they get taught very unevenly.

The first is reading the sheet before you ride it, so you know what is coming and what it is asking of you. The second is reading the sheet you are handed afterwards, covered in numbers and short comments in someone else's handwriting.

Riders get shown the first, usually in a hurry the week before. Almost nobody gets shown the second, which is a shame, because that piece of paper is the most specific coaching feedback most riders will ever receive, and a great deal of it gets folded up and never looked at again.

What is actually on the sheet

Take any test sheet and you will find the same structure, whatever the level.

A column of movement numbers. The test is broken into numbered movements, and each one is marked separately. This matters more than it sounds: your ride is not judged as one impression, it is judged as a series of small ones, and a poor movement is over as soon as it is over.

A column saying where and what. This is the instruction, and it is written in arena letters: down the centre line, halt at X, working trot at C, and so on. If the letters are the part that trips you up, that is worth fixing first, and what the letters in a dressage arena mean covers the whole set including the ones that are not on the fence.

A directives column. This is the one riders skip, and it is the most useful thing on the page. It states what the judge is actually assessing in that movement: the regularity of the pace, the balance through the turn, the straightness on the centre line, the willingness of the transition. It is, literally, the marking criteria, printed on the sheet, given to you in advance.

A marks column, and a comments column. One mark per movement, out of ten, with room for a few words.

Collective marks at the bottom. These cover the ride as a whole rather than any one movement. What they are called and how many there are has changed over the years and continues to be revised, so read the collectives on the sheet in front of you rather than the ones you remember.

Coefficients, which sound harder than they are

Some movements carry a coefficient, usually shown as a small 2 beside the mark box. It means that movement counts twice.

That is the whole of it. A 7 on a coefficient movement contributes as much as two sevens elsewhere. Tests use them to weight the things that level cares about most, which is a very direct hint about what to practise: if the test has decided a movement is worth double, so should you.

Look down the sheet for the coefficients before you start schooling the test. It takes ten seconds and it tells you where your preparation is worth the most.

The scale of marks

Marks run from 0 to 10 per movement, and the words behind the numbers are standard rather than a matter of taste. Broadly: ten is excellent, nine very good, eight good, seven fairly good, six satisfactory, five sufficient, four insufficient, and it descends from there. Zero means the movement was not performed at all.

Two things worth knowing about that scale.

Six is not a bad mark. Riders treat anything with a five or a six in it as a failure, and it is not: satisfactory means the thing was done, correctly enough, without anything special. A test full of sixes and sevens is a decent test.

Eights are given for something, not for the absence of mistakes. A clean, tidy, uneventful movement is a seven. The eight comes when there is genuine quality in it, and that is a different thing from not having gone wrong.

Learning a test so it survives your nerves

Here is where most riders go wrong. They learn the test as a list, recite it correctly in the kitchen all week, and then lose it in the second movement on the day, because nerves take the list first.

Learn it as a shape instead. Walk it on foot in the arena if you can, or draw it, so that it becomes a path with corners and changes rather than a set of sentences. Riders who can see the pattern almost never go wrong, and riders who have memorised words very often do.

A few things that help:

• Learn the transitions and their markers, not the prose. Where does the pace change, and at which letter? The rest is joining up.
• Ride it in halves. Learn from the entry to the middle, then the middle to the final halt, then join them.
• Practise the entry and the final halt more than anything else. They are the first and last thing the judge sees, and both are marked.
• Do not school the whole test over and over. Your horse will learn it too, and start anticipating, which costs you obedience marks and can be a nuisance to undo. Practise the pieces, ride the whole thing rarely.

At the lower levels you can usually have somebody read the test aloud to you as you ride, which takes the memory problem away entirely. Whether a caller is allowed depends on the level and the competition, so check the schedule rather than assume. If you do use one, have them read it to you a few times at home first, because being read to at speed is a skill of its own.

Movements are marked where they are named

This is the single most common way riders lose marks they did not need to lose.

If the test says trot at C, the judge is marking the transition at C. Not approaching C, not just after C. Early or late is a lower mark for a transition that may in itself have been perfectly good.

The fix is preparation, and preparation happens earlier than people think. You cannot make a good transition at C if you are still thinking about it at C. The work goes in through the corner before, which is exactly what the arena letters are there to give you: fixed points to prepare against.

Reading the sheet you get back

This is the half nobody teaches, and it is worth more than the percentage at the top of it.

Read the comments first, then the marks. The percentage tells you how the day went. The comments tell you why, and they are written by somebody who watched your horse closely for five minutes with no other agenda.

Look for the same comment appearing more than once. One "needs more bend" is an incident. The same note against three movements is a theme, and themes are what you take into your next lesson. That is the genuinely valuable thing on the sheet.

Compare where the marks sit, not just what they add to. Two riders on 62% can have completely different tests: one steady all the way through, one with some sevens and a four. The first needs quality, the second needs consistency, and those are opposite pieces of work.

Do not argue with it in your head. Judges see one ride from one position on one day, and they are marking against a standard rather than against your history with the horse. Take the useful part and leave the rest.

I would say this: bring the sheet to your next lesson. A coach who can see what a judge saw, in writing, gets to work far faster than one who is being told about it from memory.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to memorise the test? Not always. Many lower level classes allow a caller to read it aloud, and it is worth checking the schedule for the competition you are entering. Even with a caller, knowing the shape of the test makes for a much better ride than being steered through it one line at a time.

What is a coefficient on a dressage test? A movement marked with a coefficient counts double, because the test regards it as more important at that level. Find them before you start schooling: they tell you where your practice is worth the most.

What is a good dressage score? For most riders working up the levels, the sixties are a solid, correct test and the low seventies are a good one. Scores also sit differently at different levels, so compare yourself to your own last sheet rather than to somebody else's number.

Where do I find the current tests? From the governing body running the competition, which for affiliated competition in Australia is Equestrian Australia, and from the schedule for the event itself. Tests are revised periodically, so always ride the current sheet rather than one you learned a couple of seasons ago.

What happens if I go wrong? You are usually signalled, told the correct line and allowed to carry on, with a penalty applied rather than elimination for a first error. It is far more common than riders expect and it is not the disaster it feels like from the saddle.