Training Diary

What separates "I went riding" from "I trained"? Awareness. The training diary helps you go from incidental movement to deliberate work, without it feeling like academic study.

What's in a session?

Per training session you log what matters to you:

• Lesson type: dressage, jumping, trail, groundwork, lunging, lesson, others
• Duration: total session time (required)
• Gaits: walk, trot, canter, gallop, in minutes
• Difficulty: easy / medium / challenging (self-assessed)
• Performance: 5-point scale
• Mood: yours + your horse's (smiley scale)
• Notes: what worked, what didn't, what to do differently next time

Only date and duration are required. Everything else is optional, fill in what you need, leave the rest blank.

Quick entry after training

Right after dismounting you tap the key values in 30 seconds. Smiley for mood, slider for difficulty, one sentence of notes ("L-canter transition works now"), done. Your brain is warm, impressions are fresh. An hour later half of it would have faded.

Trends that tell stories

The training statistics show:

• Gait distribution: do you really canter as much as you think? (Spoiler: usually less.)
• Difficulty trend: is the level shifting in any direction, or staying constant?
• Mood trend: how does your fun score correlate with your horse's?
• Volume per lesson type: how much dressage per month? How much jumping?

These trends aren't an end in themselves, they help plan more consciously. If you've only been doing dressage for two months, you know it. If your horse is reliably in a worse mood after jumping, you see the pattern.

Shared with the riding partner

Training entries are part of the shared horse history, the riding partner sees how the horse was ridden in recent days. That helps especially when both train the same horse: nobody has to guess whether today already had a lot of canter or whether the horse seemed off yesterday.

Frequently asked questions

What can I record per training session?

Date, duration (required), lesson type (dressage, jumping, trail, groundwork and others), gait distribution in minutes (walk, trot, canter, gallop), difficulty, performance (5-point scale), mood of you and your horse (smiley scale) and notes.

Do I have to fill in everything?

No. Only date and duration are required. Everything else, gaits, difficulty, mood, notes, is optional. But the more you log, the more meaningful the long-term trends become.

How do I see progress?

Training statistics show gait distribution over time, volume per lesson type, difficulty and mood trend. What you don't measure, you can't steer.

Updated: June 2026