When I was eventing I had two trainers … one for flat work and another for jumping. While I did have two regular trainers I would also go and have ad hoc lessons with other trainers. For example, I had an absolutely fantastic one off cross country lesson with Lucinda Green and a very good one off show jumping lesson with Tim Stockdale.

However, since I have changed to dressage and only have one discipline to focus on I have changed and become very loyal to one trainer at a time. I don’t even go to other trainers for ad hoc lessons.

The advantages of having a single trainer are:

• consistency – you do not get two trainers telling you to do two different things
• development – your trainer understands your goals and develops you and your horse at your own individual pace
• clarity – I understand what my trainer is asking Razz and I to do the why we are doing specific exercises
• long term goals – my trainer understands my goals and has a training plan to achieve these goals

The disadvantages of having a single trainer are:

• there will always be things that my trainer is saying that I either do not understand or have mis-interpreted
• selective deafness – unfortunately after a while I only hear the bits that I want to hear which may mean that I am missing some key things that would improve our performance

Over Christmas 2011 I decided to change my dressage training in 2012. I have to be honest the decision was primarily financial but after a few months with this new training regime I think that it is actually a much better training routine … and it is cheaper

There are two fundamental differences in 2012:

• training once every two weeks – this actually enables Razz and I to go away and work on exercises that my trainer has given me so that there is a clear difference (hopefully an improvement) by the next lesson.
• two trainers – both trainers are trained by Carl Hester so there is a lot of consistency in what they are saying to me. I have a lesson with each trainer once a month.

I believe that Razz & I have made enormous improvements since the start of this new training regime. There are two key improvements:

• same things said in two different ways – for me this seems to make the message more effective.
• training is more complete because each trainer focusses on different aspects of my riding and my horse

With only having one lesson a month with each individual trainer both trainers have asked me what I would like to work on during the lesson. Since each trainer sees me only monthly there is too much of a gap for them to plan the long term training so the responsibility for this is now mine. This is not a bad thing but it is new to me and I now need to spend a bit of time before each lesson to think about what I want to achieve in each lesson.

In summary, I would recommend multiple trainers with an interval between training to allow you to work on exerecises and improve between lessons. However, you do need to consider what you want to achieve from each lesson and give your trainer goals for each lesson.