Untangling mysterious dressage judge comments at your next comp

The clipboard lands in your hand, and the smile that was still on your face from the last halt starts to fade as your eyes scan the judge's scribbles. One line reads neatly, but the next is a sentence that sounds like it belongs in a language you never studied. You walk Archie back to the truck at Boneo Park or wherever the warm-up trailer is parked, and you whisper the comment out loud a few times, hoping it will magically begin to mean something. Most riders have stood in that exact moment at some stage, and the gap between hearing a phrase and understanding it can feel enormous.

When you compete with the same horse week after week, dressage judging becomes part of your routine, but the vocabulary used by officials can still catch you off guard. Phrasies that seem interchangeable to a casual observer actually point to very different technical problems. A comment about "the length of stride in medium trot" is not the same as a comment about "the activity" in the same movement, and a remark about "the geometry of the circle" points somewhere entirely different from a note on "self-carriage".

There is no single trick that clears up every unclear line, but there is a process that almost always helps. Over the years, scribbling notes on scraps of paper and then losing them in the glovebox, I have built a small routine for the days when the judge's writing reads like a cryptic crossword. Archie has been the patient participant in most of those lessons, and the method below is what I now reach for whenever I stare at a comment that simply will not click.

The Australian judging community is also unusually approachable. At club-level competitions around places like Berrima, Tonimbuk, or the smaller SIEC warm-up arenas, the adjudicator is often a friendly face from a neighbouring branch. That openness changes what is possible once you leave the arena, and it shapes the practical steps worth trying.

Why judges phrase things the way they do

Every judge who sits in a car or a tower at a CDI, an official club day, or an Agricultural Society show has a long day, often writing across multiple riders in the baking Australian sun or under a covered arena's echoing acoustics. Their shorthand tends to drift toward economy. A busy scribbler will condense "the horse shortened behind the bit in the second half of the movement" into "tension behind, half halt through". They are not being obscure on purpose; they are simply conserving a hand that is already cramping from writing forty or more tests back to back.

Judges are also trained to describe what they see, not what to do about it. The directive half of the coaching conversation is reserved for your regular trainer. So when the test sheet notes "lacks engagement of the hindquarters", it is a descriptive label rather than a prescription. The commentary is meant to be a snapshot of how the picture looked from the letter on that day, in that light, on that surface. That distinction matters the moment you try to interpret it.

Another layer worth remembering is that judges often use terminology pulled from the official scale of training, but they also lean on classical riding phrases that have drifted through decades of European training traditions. Words like "throughness", "acceptance", "souplesse" and "connection" all sound interchangeable to a beginner, but they describe specific qualities at specific layers of the scale. When a phrase feels foreign, it is usually because the judge has reached for a classical term that rarely appears in everyday riding-club conversation.

Finally, each judge has a personal style. Some write full sentences, others write bullet-style fragments. Some prioritise the positive, others highlight only what to improve. Recognising that style is half the work. Once you know whether your judge tends to be terse or narrative, the same comment begins to land differently.

Slowing down and dissecting the wording

The first practical step is to slow down and read the comment aloud, ideally twice. Speaking the words forces your brain to engage them as sound rather than as a shape on a page, and that small change often catches a phrase you would otherwise skip past. I have a habit of reading mine aloud at the back of the float while Archie demolishes his hay net, and more than once the meaning has snapped into place before I finished the second sentence.

Once you have read it twice, pull out the nouns. Judges tend to anchor their comments around a body part, a movement, or a phase of the test. Strip the sentence down to its bones. If the comment is "your mare fell onto the forehand in the medium canter, lacks the uphill balance", the nouns are "forehand", "medium canter" and "uphill balance". The verbs and adjectives all describe how those nouns behaved. With the nouns isolated, you can begin to ask targeted questions rather than trying to translate the entire sentence in one go.

It also helps to check whether the comment contains technical dressage vocabulary that you may simply have forgotten. Even experienced riders blank on terms like "renvers", "travers", "shoulder-in" or "half-pass" when they are tired. If a single word is the obstacle, write it down on your phone and look it up the moment you have a signal bar. Many of the Australian Equestrian and state-dressage branch websites publish plain-language glossaries aimed at competitors at every level.

Then write the comment in your own words on the back of the test sheet. Summarising it forces you to interpret it, and if you cannot summarise it, that itself tells you the comment is genuinely ambiguous rather than merely unfamiliar. If your rewrite differs wildly from the judge's phrasing, the comment is probably worth showing to a coach before you start changing your riding.

Referring to the official scale of training

The scale of training is the backbone of dressage judging worldwide, and Australian judges are trained to write against it. The scale moves through rhythm, suppleness, contact, impulsion, straightness and collection, with each layer building on the one below. When a comment feels slippery, matching it to a layer of the scale usually clarifies the intent. A remark about "irregular rhythm in the trot serpentine" almost always lives in the rhythm layer, even if the wording does not say so explicitly.

If you have a printed or digital copy of the current scale on your phone, you can scan it for the closest term. The FEI scale is freely available, and Equestrian Australia publishes member resources that summarise it in plainer English. When a phrase from a test sheet matches a line in the scale almost word for word, you have your translation. Many of the lines I struggled with as a younger rider turned out to be direct quotations from the scale, and recognising that saved me from overthinking them.

The movements section of the rulebook matters just as much. The directive for a given movement explains what the judge is looking for, and a comment such as "expect more bend in the half-pass" reads very differently when you have the directive open beside it. For lower-level tests, the official Australian riders' handbook often contains diagrams and arena layouts that match the warm-up arenas at venues like Werribee Park, where the geometry of the arena itself can make a phrase easier to picture.

If the comment is about a movement you have only ridden a handful of times, do not be afraid to admit that. The honest answer might be "I do not know what a correct shoulder-in looks like yet", and that answer is the doorway to learning. The comment becomes a bookmark in the rulebook rather than a riddle to solve in isolation.

Asking coaches and trusted barn mates

There is real value in showing the comment to your regular coach before doing anything else. Coaches have usually seen hundreds of similar remarks and can translate the shorthand almost instantly. If your coach is travelling with you to the comp, ask on the same day while the test is still fresh in everyone's memory. If you trained independently that weekend, photograph the test sheet and send it through that evening so the conversation can happen before the wording grows stale.

It is worth asking more than one person. A second reader, ideally someone who has ridden at the level above you, often catches a different layer of meaning. I have had comments where my coach interpreted a line as a balance issue, while a friend at the same event read the same line as a contact issue. Both readings were plausible, and the truth was probably a mix of the two. That kind of triangulation saves you from fixing the wrong problem.

Bring the conversation back to your own horse's reality. Point out exactly where in the test the moment happened, what the weather was doing, how warm Archie was beforehand, and what the warm-up felt like. Riders sometimes forget that judges see a single snapshot, while you have lived through the whole warm-up arc. Context shapes interpretation, and the more context you provide, the better your coach can decode the line.

Australian dressage culture is also full of small, regional WhatsApp groups, branch forums and club chats where riders swap test sheets. If you trust the group and the tone is constructive, posting an anonymised version of the comment can unlock a wealth of experience. Just make sure the conversation stays kind and practical, because comparing scores publicly can turn sour fast.

Watching video and comparing movements

A clear video of the test is one of the most powerful decoding tools available. Many Australian venues, including SIEC, Boneo and the Werribee covered arena, allow a friend or family member to film from the warm-up gallery or the rail. If you have footage, play the comment back over the matching moment and watch for what the judge described. The mismatch between the words and the picture often reveals the meaning faster than any textbook.

Once you can see it, compare the picture to reference videos of the same movement performed at your level. Equestrian Australia's member platform hosts a growing library of demonstration videos, and YouTube is full of international dressage channels that show clear, slow-motion examples of movements at Preliminary, Novice and Elementary levels. Watch your own footage, then watch a reference, then watch your own again. That loop trains your eye faster than anything else I have tried with Archie.

There are also good Australian-specific resources. State dressage branches occasionally host clinics and online seminars where judges explain how they write comments. When those events pop up in the calendar, they are gold, because you hear the actual thought process behind the wording. Listening to a judge talk through three or four real test sheets is the closest thing to standing in the judge's booth without being there.

Finally, write the comparison down. Note what you saw in the reference video that you did not see in your own, and vice versa. Those notes become the practical checklist for your next training session. The comment is no longer an abstract phrase; it is a list of visible, repeatable ingredients.

Turning the comment into a training plan

Once the comment has been decoded, give it a home. Paste it into a notes app, drop the date and the venue, and add one or two sentences in your own words about what it really means. Over a season, that archive becomes a treasure. Trends start to appear. Maybe every judge has mentioned "the transition into canter" at three events in a row, and suddenly a vague recurring feeling has a name.

Then set a training goal. One comment, one session, one focused exercise. Trying to fix five comments at once dilutes the work and frustrates both horse and rider. With Archie, I pick the most pressing comment, plan a fortnight around it, and revisit the test once the goal feels solid. The next outing at a local Berrima or Tonimbuk event becomes the test of whether the fix actually held.

Keep the goal small enough that Archie can win at it. Dressage improvement is built from tiny successes strung together, and a confusing comment becomes a milestone when it is the seed of a clear, kind, patient training block. By the time you face the judge again, the original mystery has usually been replaced by a quiet sense of progress, and the next unreadable line feels a little less daunting than the last one did.