Empire Farms

09/04/2026

This is a good reference for any new riders. 🙂

One of the hardest parts of teaching riding lessons is knowing when to let a student move on to the next skill. Sometimes the rider is eager to canter, jump higher, drop the stirrups, ride a more challenging horse, or move into a more advanced group but being able to perform a skill once doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ready to progress from it.

Here are a few red flags I look for...

- They can only perform the skill with constant reminders. If you stop coaching every few seconds and the skill immediately disappears, it probably isn’t established yet.

- Their position falls apart as soon as you add difficulty. A rider may look secure on the rail, but lose their leg, balance, or upper body control when you add transitions, poles, figures, or a less automatic horse.

- They rely heavily on the horse to make the exercise work. A very experienced school horse can make a rider appear more independent than they actually are.

- They can do it on one horse but not on another appropriate horse. Riders don’t need to ride every horse the same way but some transfer of the skill should be happening.

- They’re completing the exercise without understanding what they’re doing. Following instructions is different from understanding the purpose of the aids and recognizing when something needs to change.

- They can’t identify or correct their own mistakes yet. As riders progress, we should gradually see more self correction instead of every adjustment coming from the instructor.

- Increasing the difficulty causes all of the foundational skills to disappear. If adding speed, height, complexity, or independence causes everything underneath it to unravel, the foundation probably needs more time.

That doesn’t mean the rider has to be perfect before learning anything new. Progression is part of learning and sometimes introducing the next skill actually helps the previous one make more sense but there’s a difference between challenging a rider appropriately and moving them ahead before they have enough foundation to succeed.

Sometimes the best thing we can do for a student is make the level they’re already riding at more interesting, more challenging, and more productive instead of automatically moving on to the next thing.

What’s one sign that tells you a rider isn’t quite ready to move up yet?

08/22/2026

This is a good read. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but so true. You always learn the most from the hardest lessons.

𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐈𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐚 𝐏𝐨𝐧𝐲 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲

I am going to say this as a coach, and I already know some people will not like it, but it is not my job to entertain you. I am not there to make sure every single lesson contains jumping because that is the fun bit, or to keep changing exercises every five minutes because somebody is bored. I am there to teach you how to ride properly, and sometimes proper training is repetitive, frustrating and not particularly exciting to watch.

If I think you need polework, transitions, no stirrups or another half hour fixing your position, then that is what we are doing. If I put jumps up, they might be small, because I care far more about how you ride the line than how high the fence is. Simply making the jump bigger does not mean the riding underneath it has suddenly improved. Sometimes it just means the horse is carrying the same mistakes over a larger obstacle.

I taught some adults last night and we did very basic polework, transitions between the poles and work without stirrups. There was nothing flashy about it, but they actually felt the difference by the end. The joy when they got their stirrups back was hilarious, but that was exactly the point. They had to work properly, and then they could feel what had changed and add into the mix, my friends baby horse joined for its first ever group lesson so polework definitely was important! That is what coaching is supposed to be.

The problem now is that riding lessons seem to have drifted into this strange place where the person paying expects to decide what the lesson should contain, and the coach is somehow meant to keep everyone happy while quietly squeezing a bit of actual teaching in around the edges. That is not how training works.

If I tell you that you are not ready to jump higher, move up a group or do something more difficult, I am not being awkward. I am doing the job you are paying me to do. You are paying for my judgement, not for me to agree with you. And this matters far beyond whether somebody has a good lesson or not, because it becomes a horse welfare issue very quickly.

We are asking horses to compensate for more and more gaps in rider education. A good riding school horse can hide an unbelievable amount. They will forgive bad balance, bad timing, inconsistent hands and riders who are not quite sure what their legs are doing. Then that same rider eventually gets onto a younger, sharper or less forgiving horse and suddenly the horse is labelled difficult. Sometimes the horse has hairy moments . Sometimes the rider has simply never been properly taught. That is the uncomfortable bit nobody really wants to say out loud.

We spend a huge amount of time talking about producing better horses, better breeding and better welfare, but we do not talk enough about producing better riders. There is very little point breeding more athletic, more sensitive horses if the average rider is being rushed through the basics because everyone is terrified of boring them. You can jump a course and still have massive holes in your riding. You can compete every weekend and still need to go back to trot poles. You can own a very expensive horse and still need someone to tell you that your position is making the problem worse. That should not be insulting. That should be normal.

Good training has never been about making somebody feel brilliant every single week. Sometimes you need to hear that something is not good enough yet. Sometimes you need to repeat the same exercise until it finally clicks. Sometimes you need to go backwards before you actually move forwards. That is how riders are made.

So when people say there are no good trainers anymore, I am not convinced the trainers disappeared. I think we have created a system where coaches are expected to be entertainers, customer service staff and cheerleaders first, and trainers somewhere after that. Then we wonder why fewer people can genuinely produce a horse themselves. Maybe we need to get comfortable with being taught again. Maybe parents need to stop measuring progress by fence height. Maybe adult riders need to accept that paying for the lesson does not automatically make them the person who plans it. And maybe coaches need to be allowed to say, No, you are not ready without everybody behaving like they have just committed a crime against humanity.

Because my job is not to keep you entertained for forty-five minutes.

My job is to make you a better rider.

The horse deserves that much.

07/30/2026

The Empire team wants to welcome Jackie Bushore and her horse S’more. I was late on the post but we are happy to have you!!

07/27/2026

New sand and a new course! Empire always strives to keep our training arenas in top shape for our horses and riders.

07/26/2026

Arena maintenance… NO we don’t cancel lessons, we do a “field trip” 😉

07/16/2026

All together a pretty awesome week at the Hunters Run B/C/pony show
- Jamie G and Lexie Leatherdale’s Tucano S winning the field derby
- Jennifer Stamat Mannino and Midnight Riff winning the low adult medal and getting reserve champion in the mature adult hunters
- Lola Lambiris and Made in the Shade championship novice pony hunter
- Coco Lambiris and Sprucehills first addition were reserve champion in the novice pony hunters as well as Shannon and Milo reserve champion in the very green hunters
Fantastic rounds by Katelyn Cartwright, Amy Wayne and Lily Katherine Bommarito and Melanie B earning great ribbons in their divisions.
I’m so proud of you all! Thanks to Debra Shinkle and Suz Bates for hosting this wonderful show every year.

07/12/2026

Congratulations Jamie G and Tucano S for winning the field derby at Hunters Run tonight!!