What to Do on Bad Ride Days (Without Spiraling)

We’ve all had them.

The rides where your horse feels like a stranger. Where everything you ask for comes back wrong. Where you leave the barn wondering why you even bother with this sport.

Bad ride days happen to everyone — from the amateur rider on their first horse to the Grand Prix professional. The difference isn’t whether you have them. It’s what you do with them.

First: Stop Beating Yourself Up

Here’s the thing — replaying every mistake while you’re still in the saddle (or worse, in the car on the way home) isn’t helping you. It’s actually making it worse.

When we’re emotionally activated, we don’t process information well. Our brain is in threat-detection mode, not learning mode. So that detailed self-critique you’re running? It’s not teaching you anything. It’s just cementing the negative feelings.

The research on this is clear: mentally reviewing a bad experience while still upset about it strengthens the emotional memory, not the learning. You’re more likely to remember how terrible you felt than any actual insight about what went wrong.

So step one is to put the ride aside. Not forever — just for now.

Give It 24 Hours

I know this sounds counterintuitive. When something goes wrong, we want to fix it immediately. We want to understand it, analyze it, solve it.

But trying to dissect a bad ride while you’re still frustrated is like trying to have a productive conversation in the middle of a fight. You won’t be objective. You won’t be kind. And you probably won’t be accurate about what actually happened.

Wait a day. Sleep on it. Let your nervous system settle.

When you come back to it with fresh eyes, you’ll see things differently. Maybe your horse was having an off day — they have those too. Maybe you were bringing stress from work or life into the arena. Maybe there’s a legitimate training hole that showed up, and now you know what to work on.

All of those insights are more accessible when you’re calm.

Check Your Expectations

Here’s a question worth asking: What were you expecting from today’s ride?

Because sometimes a “bad” ride is really just a realistic ride that didn’t meet unrealistic expectations.

Training isn’t linear. If you expect every ride to be better than the last, you’re setting yourself up for constant disappointment. That’s not how learning works — not for you, and not for your horse.

Progress looks like two steps forward, one step back, a weird sideways shuffle, three steps forward, and then a day where it feels like you forgot how to ride entirely. That’s normal. That’s the process.

The goal isn’t perfection — it’s progress. And sometimes progress means having a messy ride and not completely losing your mind about it.

Do Something Useful

Okay, but you still have to finish the ride. What do you actually do?

1. Lower the bar dramatically. Whatever you were trying to accomplish? Put it away. Today is not the day. Find something — anything — that your horse can do well, and do that. Walk on the buckle. Practice your halts. Do a few easy transitions. End on something achievable.

2. Get off earlier than planned. There’s no rule that says you have to ride for an hour. If things aren’t working after 20 minutes of genuine effort, it’s okay to call it. A short ride that ends peacefully is better than a long one that ends in frustration.

3. Switch to groundwork. Can’t find anything productive under saddle? Get off and do some ground work. Lunging, in-hand work, just grooming and hanging out — all of these still count as training time. All of these still strengthen your relationship with your horse.

4. Walk breaks and cookies are not optional. I say this all the time because it’s true. Walk breaks lower the nervous system arousal in both of you. Food rewards release dopamine. Both of these help reset the emotional tone of the session. Use them.

Zoom Out

On bad ride days, we tend to zoom in. We focus on every little thing that went wrong. We start questioning our abilities, our horse, our life choices.

Try zooming out instead.

Think about where you were six months ago. A year ago. When you first started with this horse. Can you see the progress? Can you remember all the hard things that are easy now?

One bad ride doesn’t erase any of that. One bad week doesn’t either.

You’re building something over years, not days. The bad rides are part of the data set, but they’re not the whole picture.

What I Do (Honestly)

I’ll tell you what works for me when I have a terrible ride: I go home, I complain about it to someone who will listen, and then I actively stop thinking about it.

I do not watch the video. I do not analyze it. I do not make a training plan. Not yet.

I let it go for the rest of the day. I do something completely unrelated. And the next day, I go back to the barn with a clean slate and see what happens.

Nine times out of ten, the next ride is fine. The terrible one was just a blip — something temporary that felt permanent in the moment.

And on that tenth time, when the problem shows up again? That’s when I know I actually need to address something. That’s when the analysis is useful.

The Truth About Bad Rides

Bad rides feel significant because they hurt. But they’re usually not as meaningful as they feel.

The rides that matter most are the boring ones. The consistent ones. The ones where you show up, do the work, don’t push too hard, and chip away at the same skills day after day.

One spectacular ride doesn’t make you an amazing trainer. One terrible ride doesn’t make you a fraud.

It’s what you do most of the time that counts. So go have your bad ride, handle it with grace, and come back tomorrow.

You’ve got this.