January 8, 2025 
Having stepped back from championship-level competition in 2021, four-time Olympian Beezie Madden is like the Tracy Chapman of show jumping.
We don’t get to hear or watch her ride nearly as often as we’d like to, but when we do, chef’s kiss.
Thankfully, one place we reliably get an annual dose of Madden magic is the USEF Horsemastership Training Series, held last week at the Adequan® Global Dressage Festival showgrounds in Wellington, FL.
Each year, the series unofficially opens 12 weeks of Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) competition and—with the mere purchase of a ClipMyHorse.tv premium membership… huzzah!—you can get a front row seat to multiple clinics and demos by the likes of Anne Kursinski, McLain Ward, and yes, Madden herself.
The best part? We’ve done the homework for you, starting with Madden’s gymnastics demo on Saturday—which this year featured many actionable tips you can incorporate into your day-to-day riding.
For instance… have you ever wondered if Madden shortens her stirrups before she jumps? How does she continuously achieve that picture-perfect leg position? Can you actually pet your horse too much? (Yes you can! We didn’t know either.)
Read on for the answers to these questions and many more quotable quotes and tidbits from Queen B herself…
1. Position: Yes, it’s important to be effective (saw that coming!), and with this little move, you can improve your leg during every ride.
“Let’s start with my leg position. I can check that when I’m working on my own, and I get up in my two-point, bouncing in the stirrups a little. Then I want to sit in the saddle without my lower leg moving.”
2. Back, back, back it up.
“I think backing is a good exercise for horses. He has to accept my hand; you want him to stay very straight when you back him. [A lot] of horses that come from Europe or wherever you get them from, they don’t always know how to back. So, if you want to teach a horse to back it’s really important—again—the use of the aid, and the reward. I ask for step, then I release him. Ask for another step, release him.”
3. Symmetry is golden.
“Whenever you do an exercise, do it both directions, equally, the same.”
4. Prioritize the carrot, not the “stick.”
“When you’re asking for a lateral movement, [I] don’t want to just hold him in the movement. I want to get a reaction with my leg [and] take it away; get a reaction and take it away…. [The] reward is more important than the asking with the aid.”
5. Don’t just go from flatwork to jumping; bridge the gap with a hybrid exercise.
“We have to put flatwork in with our jumping. This is the first attempt at [this course], so I’m going to do cavalettis, and I’m going to ask for a lot of this adjustability we’ve been working on [on the flat]. And, also, some kind of lateral exercise at the end of the ring so that I incorporate flatwork with the gymnastics. I also want to work on getting my horse soft after each gymnastic, so that it’s easy for me to approach the next fence.”
6. Adjustability trumps natural talent.
“[Horses] have to be adjustable, and they have to be there for you when you call on them. I’ve never been the most talented rider, but I work hard to make my horses adjustable.”
7. Stirrup length isn’t static.
“I’m going to shorten my stirrups for jumping.”
8. Introduce more challenging fences on their own when you’re training.
“I don’t want some stupid thing like coming one direction and the sun glaring on the liverpool to create a problem with the liverpool or water. I’m going to catch that as a single, so I can ride it just how I want the first time, maybe with a little pressure.”
9. Be judicious with your rewards.
“We have very few ways to reward a horse, right? So if I have my leg on him and he’s backing [when I don’t want him to], don’t pet him. He’s got to go forward. And then, when he does something right, then you pet him.”
10. Every corner is an opportunity for a circle, transition, lateral movement, etc. (Literally. Every. One.)
“Don’t lose the opportunity for training there; he can’t run around the end [of the ring].”
11. There’s one, major component that separates dressage training from show jumping.
“[In dressage] they need a horse that doesn’t anticipate [the next movement]. They want that horse to wait until they tell them to do something. [Show jumpers] need that [kind of obedience], but also need to be able to think on their own on the fly a little bit.”
12. The hardest question of your time in the saddle is often when to end it.
“You as horsemen need to decide: Has my horse done [the exercise] to the extent that I want to do it today, and is that enough? [Sometimes] that dreaded ‘one more time’ can put you back and erase everything you did that day.”
