05/24/2026
There is a certain kind of rider who arrives at the barn with a spreadsheet, Parker Worthington writes. Not literally, perhaps, but figuratively armed with podcasts, clinician quotes, training philosophies gleaned from social media, and a very clear picture of exactly the kind of rider they intend to become. They have identified the inefficiencies. They have a plan. They are ready to optimize.
And then the horse walks out of the stall, and none of it applies yet.
This is one of the quieter frustrations of learning to ride well, and one of the least discussed. We live in a time period that is obsessed with optimization, with doing things faster, smarter, more efficiently, with less wasted motion and more measurable output. That framework works beautifully in a great many areas of life. It works considerably less well when you are trying to develop a feel for a thousand-pound animal that thinks and moves and responds in ways no spreadsheet can fully anticipate.
The problem is not ambition. Ambition is essential. The problem is sequencing, the belief that you can skip the long, unglamorous, deeply inefficient middle part of learning and arrive at mastery by identifying the right shortcuts early enough. You cannot. And the attempt to do so ends up taking more time than doing the right way to begin with.
Here is what actually happens when a rider tries to optimize before they have a foundation to optimize from: they get better at executing a technique they do not yet understand. They can produce the position their trainer described, but only when they are thinking about it. The moment something unexpected happens, like a spook, a missed distance, or a horse that drifts unexpectedly to the left, the technique evaporates, because it was never truly theirs. It was a performance of competence rather than competence itself. And because the foundation was never poured properly, there is nothing beneath the performance to catch them when it falls apart.
📎 Continue reading this article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2026/05/22/you-cant-optimize-what-you-havent-built-yet/
📸 © Heather N. Photography
