10/13/2025
"I’m taking back the phrase “amateur hour.”
People usually say it like it’s a bad thing. “Wow, this is such amateur hour,” meaning messy, disorganized, not professional enough. But honestly? That’s exactly what I’m going for these days.
Because the more time I spend as an adult amateur, the more I realize that amateur hour is actually where all the good stuff happens.
It’s the early mornings with coffee in hand, trying to convince yourself you have the energy to braid your horse’s mane. It’s the horse shows where you forget half your course but laugh about it all the way back to the trailer. It’s the small wins that only you and your trainer will ever know about. The quiet little moments where something finally clicks.
For me, amateur hour is about taking the pressure off. No one’s paying me to do this. I’m not training for the Olympics. The only person I need to beat is the version of me from last week who couldn’t get a left lead to save her life.
It means I get to decide what success looks like. Maybe it’s getting through an entire lesson without feeling like I’m going to fall off. Maybe it’s remembering all my diagonals in a flat class. Or maybe it’s just having a good, happy hack after a stressful workday. And honestly, sometimes it’s just about getting out to the barn at all. Some weeks, that’s the win.
Being a junior rider felt like constant pressure to impress, to prove something, to stay on the same level as everyone else. And pros have a different kind of pressure. Their clients are watching, their reputation is on the line, and their paycheck depends on results.
But us ammies? We get to choose how serious we want to be. We can show up at 6 a.m. every day to ride before work… or not. We can spend every weekend at horse shows… or pick just one or two that sound fun. We can decide that this year is just for trail riding or that this is the year we learn to jump higher than 2’6”.
The best part is, we don’t have to have all the answers. We can ask the dumb questions. We can put the wrong boots on the wrong legs and laugh about it. We can watch ten different YouTube videos about lead changes and still mess it up—and no one’s career is ruined.
The older I get, the more I think that being a little bit of a hot mess is part of the charm. You can have it all together with a pristine show outfit, a half-million-dollar horse, and hours of drilling and picking apart every piece of you and your horse’s performance. And then it can all be for nothing when your horse spooks in the ring or pulls up lame on show day. So why not have fun with it?"
📎 Continue reading the article by Jessica LaVoy at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/10/06/reclaiming-amateur-hour/
📸 © Heather N. Photography
