There's one reason you're stuck. It's not talent, it's not effort, and it's not your horse. Send me 60 seconds and I'll name it.
A Grand Prix rider watches you ride, names the one thing holding your riding back, and writes you a six-week plan to fix it - for your horse, by name.
You're already doing the hard 90% - you turn up, and you ride. What's missing is the 10% nobody ever wrote down for you. In your hands within 72 hours, then fifteen minutes on Zoom with me.
You're already doing the 90%.
Let's get this straight before we go anywhere.
You turn up. In the rain, before work, after work, on the days you really don't feel like it. You've done that for years. You pay the agistment, you do the feeds, you book the lessons, you hitch up the float. You've built the fitness, the seat, and the relationship with a horse who knows you.
That's the 90%. That's the part nobody can do for you, and it's the part most people quietly give up on.
So let's put the three things you've been telling yourself to bed. You're not short on talent. You're not short on effort. And it isn't your horse.
What's missing was never effort. It's direction.
That's the 10%. And it's the 10% that decides what the other 90% is worth.
It's also the only part you can hand to somebody else. So hand it to me.
You're not riding badly.
You're riding in circles.
You get to the arena with a vague idea of what you're going to do. Mostly you try to remember what your coach had you doing last time they were out.
So you do that. Some of it. Not quite the way they'd have you do it, because you can't fully remember why they wanted it, or when it was meant to happen, or what it was supposed to feel like when it worked.
Then you do a bit of everything else, because you're here anyway.
Then you go home. And next ride, you do roughly the same thing again.
You don't know why you're doing what you're doing, when you should be doing it, or how you'd know if it was working.
And after enough months of that, something worse than frustration shows up: you stop wanting to ride.
Not because you've stopped loving it. Because nothing is changing, and there's only so long anyone can keep putting the effort in for nothing.
And you're not standing still.
You're going backwards.
Riding without a plan isn't neutral. Every time you get on, you are practising something.
So five days a week, you're embedding. If you're not focused on the right thing, in the right order, then you are confirming the wrong things - into your horse's body and into your own - a little deeper every single week.
That's why the same comments keep coming back on the sheet, year after year.
You're not failing to fix them.
You're rehearsing them.
Your horse knows there isn't a plan.
Without one, he is one of two things.
Bored
Same thing, same order, same ride. Nothing to be curious about, nothing to try for.
Or confused
Because you're confused. You change the question every ride, so he never finds out what the right answer was. He never gets a clear "yes - that."
And a horse can't get confident about something that was never confirmed.
With a plan, neither of you is bored and neither of you is confused - because for the first time the rider actually knows what she's doing, and a horse can feel that immediately.
Your horse doesn't need a better rider. Just a clearer one.
Your test sheet gives you symptoms.
It has never once given you the cause.
- Needs more engagement
- Losing balance in the turns
- Contact inconsistent
- More activity behind
Those aren't problems. Those are symptoms. And they're usually symptoms of the same thing, showing up in different movements - which is exactly why you keep collecting the same comments no matter how many of them you try to fix.
Because here's what's actually going on. A judge marks the whole picture, and that picture is made of a lot of moving parts. And in almost every combination I watch, there is one primary constraint - one single thing - quietly costing you marks in every movement of the test.
Chase the eight symptoms and you'll be exhausted, and your score won't move. Fix the one constraint, and every mark on the sheet improves at once.
That's what I'm doing when I watch your sixty seconds. I'm not asking "what's wrong with this rider" - there's always a list, and most of it doesn't matter. I'm asking one question:
What is the single thing that, if we fixed it, would fix the most?
Almost nobody in this sport works this way. Coaches fix what's in front of them, in the moment they see it, because that's what a lesson is. Very few strip it back and go after the root cause.
I've coached riders in 23 countries, and I'll tell you what I've learned: it's almost never a talent problem. It's almost always one constraint that nobody ever named.
Why six weeks? Two reasons.
Nobody can hold seventeen things in their head while riding a horse.
So your plan gives you one. You work that one thing until it's automatic - until you genuinely aren't thinking about it any more - and only then does the plan move you on.
And every week is built on the week before it. Week 3 only works because week 2 happened. That's not decoration, that's the entire reason it works: you cannot master everything at once, so you master it in the order that makes each next piece possible.
Six weeks of that and you are not a slightly improved version of yourself. You're a genuinely different combination than the one that started.
You don't watch grass grow.
You come out one morning and go: right, I need to mow that.
Six weeks is exactly long enough for that to happen with a horse. Long enough to see the change and - more importantly - to feel it underneath you.
Any shorter and there's nothing to notice week to week. Much longer and it stops feeling like a plan and starts feeling like a life sentence - you get distracted, you lose the thread, you quietly stop.
Six weeks is the window where the work is still exciting and the change is already obvious.
Six weeks is when you reassess.
So we work in six-week blocks, and at the end of each one you reassess - what moved, what's next, and what the new one thing is.
Advice is not a plan.
Your coach tells you what to do in the moment they see it happening. That's what a lesson is, and it's genuinely valuable.
But they're not there on Tuesday.
And what you're left holding is a memory of an instruction - which you can misremember, misinterpret, half-apply, or simply forget by the time your boots are on. Most riders get, at best, something generic to take away. Ride him more forward this week.
Written down, word for word, there is no ambiguity. Nothing to misremember. No version of it that drifts by Thursday. It's just there - and it's still there in week five.
You can get a lesson. You can get a clinic. You can buy a course, a video library, a subscription. But who has ever handed you a written, week-by-week plan, built around your own horse's actual constraint, with a checklist to tick off as it happens?
That's the thing I want to change.
Three steps. Seventy-two hours.
Claim your place
One payment of $98.50, and your personalised training plan is underway. Then a few quick questions - your level, how many days a week you ride, and what you think is going on.
Three minutes, and you're done. That's the whole of your side of this.
Send me 60 seconds
Whenever it suits you, film a minute of a normal ride and send it over. I watch it, find your primary constraint, and write your Individual Rider Development Plan myself.
Not a template. Not an assistant. Me.
Your 15-minute unpack
You read the plan. Then we get on Zoom, one to one, and I take you through it - what I saw, why this is the constraint, what to ride first, and what to do on the day it all falls apart.
Bring me your questions. You'll get off that call knowing exactly what you're riding tomorrow.
It does not need to be good. Prop your phone up in the corner of the arena, let it film your whole ride, and send me sixty seconds of it.
It doesn't need to be filmed properly, and it doesn't need to be a good day. Honestly, a slightly messy ride tells me more than a polished one.
Over 20 pages.
Written for your horse, by name.
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Your Initial Assessment
What I saw in your video. Strengths first - the things you're already doing well and don't give yourself credit for - then your areas for development, written about your horse specifically. Not "the horse." Yours, by name.
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Your Primary Focus
Your constraint, named, with one clear focus for the whole six weeks - plus the ten specific things you and your horse should be able to do by the end of it.
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Your Success Checklist
Twelve boxes. You tick them off as they happen. This is how you'll know it's working before a judge tells you it's working.
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Weeks 1 through 6
Every single week you get:
- The objective - what this week is for
- The exercises - the exact movements, patterns and transitions to ride
- How to Ride It - step by step, in order, including what to do when it goes wrong
- The goal by the end of the week - so you can check yourself
And one thing to say to yourself in the saddle
Every week closes with something to think while you ride. Real lines, from real plans:
- "Slow your body before you slow the horse."
- "Don't stop the energy. Give it direction."
- "Body first. Hand second."
- "The transition must lift, not dive."
Real pages from a real Sprint plan. Only the rider and horse names have been blacked out.
Two riders. Opposite problems.
Two completely different plans.
These are real Sprint plans. I've only taken the names off.
Her horse ran away with her.
"HORSE has a tendency to become too forward and tense, making it difficult to maintain a consistent rhythm… RIDER currently relies too heavily on the reins to control HORSE's speed, causing the hands to become higher and travel backwards."
"Don't stop the energy. Give it direction."
Her horse had switched off.
"HORSE is currently working behind the leg and needs to develop a more immediate reaction to the forward aids. The balance is frequently too downhill, with HORSE tending to lower the poll and fall onto the forehand."
"Go now, not in five strides."
One rider was told to stop trying to slow her horse down. The other was told to wake hers up.
Same six weeks. Same $98.50. Opposite instructions - because they are opposite horses.
That's what personalised has to mean. Not your name printed on page one. A different answer, because you have a different horse.
You cannot write either of those from a template. You can only write it after watching somebody ride.
The thing riders tell me
isn't usually about scores.
It's this. "I feel so much more organised." "I have so much more focus when I ride." "I feel confident, because I finally know what I'm doing when I get on." The scores come. But that comes first.
These three opened their Sprint plan in the last few weeks. This is what they wrote back.
"This is amazing. I love it. It all makes sense. Thank you, thank you xx… I'm ready to give it my best shot - never really had a clear plan before."
"Wow!! Thank you so much. This is amazing and so thorough!! The exercises in week 4, 5 and 6 is combinations I haven't even thought about! Really excited to try!"
"That is perfect. Thank you. That's what I hear from the judges and coaches. Now I have other strategies to fix my problems. Thank you so much."
"I went from scoring 58% to 68% using Natasha's training plans."
"I have been struggling with contact for over 10 years with my horse. I watched and read your teachings on connection and within 10 minutes, I had a solid supple and even connection at all three gaits. His throughness was incredible."
"Omg Tash, I did your checklist today when I started my ride. It was amazing. It put my brain into thinking where the horse is. He even didn't seem to fall in. Onwards and upwards."
"I took on your advice and ignored all the negative people who told me not to go out and compete. On the ANZAC weekend I went out and came home with the Weekend Dressage Jackpot for Level 5 and won our first rug."
"Honestly, this program has worked for me. I am riding my big girls again after so many years of being scared to ride."
"Yes, but -"
Then you'll have one tomorrow. Prop your phone in the corner of the arena, hit record, ride your normal ride, send me sixty seconds. It doesn't need to be filmed properly and it doesn't need to be a good ride.
Because those plans weren't written for your horse, and they never told you the one thing that mattered - so every week felt like homework instead of progress. This one names your constraint on page two, gives you one focus instead of seventeen, and hands you a checklist so you can see it happening. People stick to things that visibly work.
You don't have to. A test sheet is optional and helps a little, but it isn't required, and plenty of riders I write these for never enter a test.
Then the plan is built for a green, older, or returning horse. That's the whole point of writing it after I've watched yours.
The questionnaire asks exactly that, and I build to it. A plan you can't fit into your actual week isn't a plan.
Neither do a lot of the riders I write these for. That's usually why they need one.
Fair question - the internet is full of the second thing. Read the sample above, then read my guarantee below. I've set it up so that if it reads like a template, you get your money back and keep the plan.
Is the Sprint for you?
This is for you if:
- You're riding somewhere between Intro and Medium
- You've been at the same level longer than you'd like to admit
- You get good lessons but lose it between them
- You keep getting the same comments on your sheets
- You want to know what to ride tomorrow, not just what's wrong
- You can film sixty seconds of yourself riding
This isn't for you if:
- You want it fixed without riding
- You want a lesson, not a plan
- You can't send any footage at all
- You're working above Medium - come and talk to me directly instead
Hi, I'm Tash.
I'm a Grand Prix dressage rider and coach, and the first rider in Australasia to train a Friesian stallion to Grand Prix.
I've coached riders all over the world - most of them amateurs, most of them fitting riding around a job, a family, and a horse with opinions.
I started writing these plans because I kept having the same conversation. Someone would describe their problem for ten minutes. Then I'd watch thirty seconds of video and know exactly what was going on.
Not because I'm clever. Because I was watching, and they were riding. You can't see yourself - you're inside it.
Everyone deserves someone to look at their riding and name the real thing. It shouldn't take a float trip and hundreds of dollars to get it.
So: $98.50, sixty seconds of video, and I'll tell you what I see.
The "That's My Horse" Guarantee
Open your plan and read the first two pages - the assessment I write after watching your video.
If it doesn't describe your horse - if it reads like something you could have downloaded off the internet with your horse's name pasted in - email me within 14 days and I'll refund every cent.
Keep the plan anyway.
I'm not worried about this one. You can't fake having watched somebody ride.
Everything you get for $98.50
The Mastery Sprint
Your Primary Constraint - named
The one thing holding your riding back. Found by a Grand Prix rider actually watching you ride, and written down in plain English so you can never un-know it.
- Your Initial Assessment - what I genuinely see in your riding, strengths first
- Your 12-point Success Checklist - so you watch it working before anyone else confirms it
Your six-week plan, written for your horse by name
Over 20 pages. Every week: the objective, the exact exercises, how to ride them step by step, what to do when it goes wrong, and how you'll know you've got it.
Your 15-minute unpack with Tash
You read it, then we get on Zoom one to one and go through it together. Bring your questions. Always me, never an assistant.
72-hour turnaround, and the "That's My Horse" Guarantee
In your inbox within 72 hours of your video landing. If it doesn't describe your horse, full refund within 14 days - and you keep the plan anyway.
🔴 10 places open this week. I write every one of these myself - when they're gone, they're gone until I've finished them.
Questions riders ask
How soon do I get my plan?
Within 72 hours of your video arriving. Not from purchase - from when I have something to watch. The sooner you film, the sooner you start.
What if my video is terrible quality?
Doesn't matter at all. Phone propped on a jump wing is perfect. I need to see how your horse moves and how you ride, not cinematography.
How long should the video be?
Sixty seconds is enough. Send more if you like - I'll watch it.
Who writes the plan?
I do. Every one. That's why there are only 10 places.
Is the unpack call with you or an assistant?
Me. Always me.
Do I need to compete?
No. A test sheet is optional and helps slightly, but it isn't required.
What level is this for?
Intro through to Medium.
Is this a subscription?
No. $98.50, once. Nothing recurs.
What if it doesn't describe my horse?
Full refund within 14 days, and you keep the plan. See the guarantee above.
If you've been at the same level for longer than you say out loud, this is the cheapest way I know to find out why.
Click the button, answer the questions, and go and film sixty seconds tomorrow. I'll see you on Zoom.
Claim my Sprint place - $98.50 →Big love,
Tash