Common Faults as Judges See Them

The common dressage faults are the recurring ways a performance falls short of the standard, and judges classify them by the element of the training scale they break: rhythm faults, suppleness and tension faults, contact faults, impulsion faults, straightness faults and collection faults. The classification matters because it carries the diagnosis: the FEI Judging Manual instructs judges to mark down severe basic faults regardless of how impressive the rest of the test looks, and the fault named in a judge’s remark points at the layer of training where the problem lives. This hub maps the fault families and how judges weigh them; the major families have dedicated articles linked throughout.

Faults are training information

A fault, in judging terms, is a data point. Every mark below the standard traces to one of the six elements of the training scale, and the remark beside it usually names which. Reading faults this way, as symptoms with locations, is how professionals watch a test, and it is why the same vocabulary serves two audiences at once: the rider planning next week’s training, and the observer assessing an unfamiliar horse on a screen. For the second audience, the fault families below double as a structured way to watch a sales video, treated from the buyer’s side in reading sales videos.

Rhythm faults

Rhythm sits at the base of the scale, so its faults are the most serious in the book. The classic pair are the lateral walk, in which the walk’s four-beat sequence degrades toward a two-beat, pace-like amble, and the four-beat canter, in which the canter’s three beats break apart. Both put a ceiling on every movement ridden in the affected gait, both are named in the USDF’s training-pyramid guidance as signs of a problem in the basic training, and both are notoriously persistent once installed. Irregular or unlevel steps, rhythm faults of a different kind, additionally raise soundness questions no score sheet can settle. The pair, their causes and their prognosis are covered in rhythm faults.

Suppleness and tension faults

Tension is the most pervasive fault in the sport because it attacks the scale’s second element and everything above it. A tight back shortens the strides, stiffens the transitions, hollows the outline and hardens the contact; the judging system catches it twice, in the affected movements and in the submission or harmony collectives. Tension’s forms, from mild show-ring electricity to spooking, teeth-grinding and tail-swishing, and the way judges weigh them are the subject of tension: how it shows and how it scores.

Contact faults

The contact family covers everything that goes wrong between hand and mouth: a horse behind the vertical, above the bit, leaning, tilting its head, opening its mouth, or drawing the tongue up or over the bit. Judges are instructed to penalise contact and mouth problems wherever they appear, and the family divides usefully in two. Behind the vertical, the most discussed fault in modern dressage, is a frame and balance question with its own welfare debate. The remaining mouth and head faults (tilting, open mouths and tongue issues) are connection questions with a wider range of causes, from training through tack fit to teeth.

Impulsion faults

Impulsion faults are the quiet ones: nothing dramatic happens, and the marks sit stubbornly at six. A horse behind the leg produces movements that are correct and dead: transitions that dribble, mediums that flatten, collected work without cadence. The opposite error, running, trades rhythm for speed and is marked as the rhythm fault it becomes. Judges’ remarks for this family read “needs more activity,” “not enough ground cover,” “lacks engagement,” and the collective marks for impulsion track the pattern across the test.

Straightness faults

Crookedness hides at the lower levels and surfaces expensively later. Quarters drifting in on the long side, uneven contact in the two reins, shoulders falling out on circles: all are visible early to a trained eye, and all announce trouble to come, because straightness is the prerequisite for clean flying changes and sound pirouettes. The change-specific faults (late behind, swinging quarters in the tempi lines, croup-high changes) are catalogued in faults in the flying changes.

Collection faults

At the top of the scale, the faults are failures of carrying power: a horse on the forehand in the collected work, hindquarters trailing rather than lowering, “collection” produced by shortening the neck instead of engaging the haunches. The high-school movements each have their named faults (triangulation and unevenness in piaffe, balancé and lost suspension in passage, rhythm loss in the pirouettes), and all of them resolve, diagnostically, to the same question: is the weight genuinely carried behind?

Accuracy faults

One family belongs to the rider alone. Circles of the wrong size, transitions ridden past the marker, corners cut, a final change misplaced: accuracy faults cost marks without saying anything about the horse. Judges mark them matter-of-factly against the geometry of the arena figures, and experienced observers discount them accordingly when the purpose of watching is to evaluate the animal rather than the performance.

How the fault families shift up the levels

The dominant faults change with the level, in a pattern that follows the training scale upward. At the entry levels the marks are lost to rhythm, tension and accuracy: green horses, green riders, and gaits not yet confirmed under pressure. Through the middle levels the contact and straightness families take over, because collection begins there and both faults are what incomplete collection looks like from the judge’s chair. At the top, the collection faults dominate by construction: the coefficient movements are the high-school work, so a Grand Prix percentage is largely a referendum on the piaffe-passage block, and the lower families appear mainly as the causes behind its failures. The pattern has a practical corollary: a fault that is cheap at one level becomes expensive two levels up, which is why professionals project faults forward rather than pricing them where they stand.

How judges weigh faults

Three principles govern the arithmetic. First, the training scale sets the hierarchy: a rhythm fault outweighs an accuracy fault in the same movement, because it sits lower on the scale. Second, coefficients multiply: the same fault costs double in a coefficient movement, which is why weaknesses in the piaffe-passage work are so expensive at Grand Prix. Third, welfare caps apply: for clear signs of discomfort the FEI’s guidance caps the movement mark regardless of technical completeness, and blood, lameness or dangerous riding end the test entirely, as set out in judging and scoring.

Faults when evaluating a horse

Watched on a video or from a viewing gallery, the fault families sort into three bins with different consequences. Training faults (accuracy, momentary tension, a green horse’s balance) are the cheapest: they belong to the production, not the horse, and improve with correct work. Installed faults (a lateral walk, changes trained crooked, a habitual short neck) are expensive: they persist, and their repair costs time that must be priced. Ambiguous signs (irregular steps, persistent contact trouble) are the ones that require professional eyes and, where soundness could be involved, veterinary ones. The sorting method, applied fault by fault against sales footage, is the substance of the video-reading guide.

Sources

• Fédération Équestre Internationale — FEI Dressage Rules, 26th edition, 2026. https://inside.fei.org/fei/disc/dressage/rules
• United States Dressage Federation — Pyramid of Training, 2019. https://www.usdf.org/EduDocs/Training/Pyramid_of_Training.pdf
• Fédération Équestre Internationale — Dressage Movements 101 (movement faults), 2020. https://www.fei.org/stories/lifestyle/teach-me/dressage-movements-101-advanced-piaffe-passage-canter-pirouette
• United States Dressage Federation — Purpose of Tests, 2023. https://www.usdf.org/EduDocs/Training/purposeoftests.pdf