And How to Progress With More Clarity and Less Frustration

By Annika McGivern, MSc, Sport and Exercise Psychology

Have you ever spent an entire ride working on something that should be improving… but isn’t? You’re asking for a consistent contact, a more balanced canter, or a smoother transition. You feel like you’re doing the right things. You’ve had moments where it clicked before. And yet, today it feels just as difficult as it did last week. By the end of the ride, frustration starts to creep in. Why is this still so hard? Shouldn’t I be further along by now? This is a familiar experience for riders, and it’s often misunderstood. What feels like a lack of progress is usually something else entirely. It’s the reality of learning a motor skill.

If this sounds familiar, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you’re not alone, and this is not a sign that you’re a poor rider. It’s a sign that you’re learning. The bad news is that there is no way to skip this stage. It is an essential part of skill development. Riding is not just about knowledge or effort. It’s a complex coordination-based skill that develops through a specific process in the brain and body. When we understand how this process works, two things happen: We stop interpreting slow progress as failure, and we gain clarity on how to improve more effectively.

What is Motor Learning? 

At its core, motor learning is the process of developing coordination, timing, and control through practice. It is how we learn to feel a correct canter transition, maintain balance over a fence, or apply an aid with precision rather than guesswork. Importantly, this learning is not happening in your muscles, despite common references to “muscle memory.” It is happening in your brain and nervous system.

Every time you ride, your brain builds and strengthens neural pathways that allow you to execute skills more efficiently. This process takes repetition, feedback, and time. Progress is not linear. You will not improve in a smooth upward line. Instead, you will experience bursts of improvement, followed by plateaus, and moments where things feel like they are going backwards. This is not a problem; it’s how learning works. Everything you need to become a better rider can be broken down into skills you are capable of learning, but those skills must develop through stages that cannot be skipped.

Related: Goal Setting for Equestrians: Become the Horse Rider You Aspire to Be

Related: Riding the Nervous System: The Horse and Rider Connection

The Three Stages of Motor Learning

Stage One: The Cognitive Stage 

This is the “figuring it out” phase where riding feels effortful and often frustrating. You are thinking about everything you are doing — where your hands are, whether your heels are down, what your horse is doing, and what you’re supposed to be doing next. Mistakes are frequent, timing is inconsistent, and success feels like getting lucky rather than a repeatable experience.

For example, do you remember learning to sit the canter? One stride felt balanced and connected; the next felt completely out of sync. You may get it right for a few moments, but you cannot yet explain how or reproduce it consistently. At the cognitive stage, your brain is building the initial blueprint of the skill. This requires a high level of conscious attention, which is why it feels mentally exhausting. Many riders get discouraged here because progress gets messy, but messy is exactly what this stage is supposed to be.

Stage Two: The Associative Stage

At this stage, things start to come together. Movements become more consistent, and you start to recognize what feels right and what doesn’t. Instead of large, obvious mistakes, you begin making smaller, more subtle adjustments. At this stage I hear many riders say things like, “I know what I’m supposed to do, I just can’t always do it.” For example, your transitions may now be mostly balanced, but occasionally late or abrupt. You can feel when something is off but correcting it in real time is still a work in progress. 

More than anything, this stage requires patience. Progress here is often slower and less obvious because skill refinement happens slowly across many repetitions. Many riders mistakenly interpret this stage as a plateau, when it is where most of the learning happens.

Stage Three: The Autonomous Stage

At this stage, finally, the skill becomes automatic. You no longer need to think consciously about every element. Your mind and body respond more intuitively, which allows you to shift your attention to higher-level aspects of riding, such as strategy, feel, and connection with the horse. For example, instead of thinking about how to ride each stride in a course, you are able to focus on adjusting the pace, mapping the line, and responding fluidly to your horse. This is the level of performance that many riders are aiming for. However, it’s important to understand that reaching this stage requires a significant amount of time and repetition. Remember, there are no shortcuts.

Why Progress in Riding Feels Slow

If motor learning follows a predictable process, why does improvement in riding seem to come slower than in other sports? There are a few key reasons. 

The Horse Factor: In most sports, the environment is relatively stable. In equestrian sport, you are working with a thinking, feeling partner. The horse has their own balance, coordination, sensitivity, and emotional state. This means that every repetition is slightly different. You are not just learning a skill. You are learning to apply that skill within a constantly changing system, which is much more challenging for your brain. 

Limited Repetition: Motor learning depends on repetition, but many riders can only ride a few times a week, or once a day at most. Compare this to other sports, where athletes can practice multiple times a day, often with hundreds of repetitions per session. Riders simply do not get the same opportunities for volume of practice, which naturally slows the learning process. 

High cognitive load: When you ride, you are managing multiple variables simultaneously. You are attending to your position, the aids, your horse’s response, the environment, and your emotions. This level of complexity increases the demand on your brain, particularly at the cognitive stage, and can slow progress.

Emotional Interference: Equestrian sport can be especially emotionally charged. Frustration, pressure, fear, and self-doubt are not just uncomfortable; they actively interfere with learning. When we are caught up in negative emotion, our ability to focus, problem solve, and adapt is reduced. This means that even if you are physically practicing, your brain may not be learning as effectively.

Related: Psychology for the Horse Rider - From Self-Sabotage to Success

Related: How to Ride Better by Thinking Less

How to Speed Up Your Progress

While you cannot bypass the stages of motor learning, you can influence how efficiently you move through them. Here are five tips to ensure you are optimizing the precious time you get in the saddle. 

1. Focus on Quality Repetition

Quantity is helpful, but how you use your time matters even more. Instead of riding passively, look for opportunities to repeat specific skills within a session. For example, practice multiple transitions on a circle, or repeat an exercise until it feels consistent. Small, focused repetitions build skill faster than unfocused riding.

2. Train Your Brain Outside the Saddle

Motor learning does not only happen when you are riding. Visualization has been shown to strengthen the same neural pathways used in physical practice. Taking time to mentally rehearse a movement, including how it feels, can accelerate learning. This is especially valuable in a sport where physical repetitions are limited.

3. Improve the Quality of Your Feedback 

Your brain learns faster when it receives clear, specific feedback. This can come from a coach, from video, or from your reflection. Instead of ruminating on the fact that something didn’t work, ask yourself why. What changed? What felt different? What can you adjust next time? Learning is driven by awareness.

4. Simplify Your Focus

Trying to fix everything at once is one of the fastest ways to slow your progress. In the cognitive stage especially, choose one or two key focuses per ride. This helps reduce overload and allows your brain to build clearer, stronger connections.

5. Regulate Your Nervous System

Your ability to coordinate and execute skills is directly influenced by your state of mind. When you are tense or overwhelmed, your movements become less precise. Simple tools such as breathing can help regulate your nervous system and improve your ability to learn and perform. 

Slow progress means you are doing exactly what is required to learn a complex skill. Riding asks a lot of us. It requires coordination, timing, emotional control, and the ability to work in partnership with another athlete. It is not meant to be mastered quickly.

The riders who improve most understand the learning processes, work with them, and stay committed through the stages that feel slow. In riding, as in all motor skill development, progress is not about speed. It’s about building a strong, lasting skill set that allows us to sink into the joy of synchronized performance with our horse.

Related: Succeeding as an Equestrian Takes Knowledge and Motivation

Related: Overthinking in Horse Riding: When Analysis Helps and When It Hurts Performance

More by Annika McGivern

Photo: Clix Photography