Stop Guessing. Start Riding on a Surface Built for Your Sand.

Sand is 95 to 98 percent of your riding surface by mass. It is the foundation ingredient in every arena footing blend on earth — and it is the variable that most arena owners know the least about. There are over 10,000 distinct types of sand in North America. There is no ASTM material specification for "equestrian sand." The term has no regulated definition, no standard gradation, and no minimum quality threshold. When a quarry sells you "arena sand," they are selling you whatever they've sold to other horse owners before — often mason sand, concrete sand, or fill sand that happens to be the right color. And when a footing company recommends an additive without analyzing your sand first, they are guessing.

Performance Footing does not guess. Every footing tuning system we design — every FIBR, FLEX, and LOCK recommendation — begins in our lab with your sand sample on the sieve stack. Because the additive is not the recipe. The sand is the recipe. The additive is the seasoning. And you cannot season a dish you haven't tasted.

Our in-house laboratory performs a comprehensive analysis covering every property that affects how your arena rides, drains, compacts, and ages. The deliverable is not a raw data sheet that leaves you guessing — it is an interpreted report paired with your ArenaSpec™ profile data to produce actionable recommendations tied to your discipline, your climate, and your goals.

The sieve analysis is the core of the report. We run your sample through a calibrated 7-mesh sieve stack (US Mesh 18, 35, 60, 100, 140, 270, and pan) per ASTM C136, weighing retained mass at each level to produce a complete particle size distribution curve. This tells us the ratio of coarse, medium, and fine particles in your sand — the single data point that determines whether your arena compacts into concrete, drains too slowly, generates excessive dust, or provides the cushion and responsiveness your horse needs. We compare your results against our proprietary indoor and outdoor sieve targets, which are calibrated to FEI surface science research and over a decade of field performance data across thousands of arenas.

Particle shape and magnification imaging is the second layer. We examine your sand under magnification to assess angularity — whether the grains are rounded, sub-angular, or angular. Round sand (common in river deposits and mason sand) does not interlock and creates a loose, shifting surface. Excessively angular sand (common in crushed manufactured stone) packs too tightly and becomes hard and unforgiving. Sub-angular is the target: enough geometry to grip, enough irregularity to resist over-compaction. We capture magnified images of your sample so you can see exactly what your sand looks like at the particle level — many owners are shocked to discover how round or angular their sand actually is.

Mineralogy assessment determines the hardness and longevity of your sand. Quartz and silica sands score 7 on the Mohs hardness scale and resist breakdown for decades. Limestone and carbonate sands are softer (Mohs 3–4) and degrade into fine dust over time, creating compaction and respiratory problems. We identify the dominant mineral composition of your sample and flag any degradation risk.

Fines fraction analysis quantifies the dust and silt content — particles smaller than 0.063 mm that are invisible to the eye but devastating to performance. Fines cause compaction, generate airborne dust, seal the surface against drainage, and create the hard, dead feeling that horses resist. Our outdoor target holds pan retention near zero. If your fines fraction is elevated, we identify the source (sand degradation, contamination, improper base separation) and address it in the tuning plan.

Lab data tells us what your sand is. ArenaSpec tells us what your arena is. Together, they produce a footing tuning plan that no lab report alone — and no phone questionnaire — can match.

When you purchase a Sand Analysis Kit, you receive a link and QR code to the ArenaSpec™ app at arenaspec.com. While your sample is in transit to our lab, you complete a detailed arena profile in the app. ArenaSpec captures the information that shapes every recommendation we make: your primary discipline and whether you cross-train, your arena dimensions and whether it's indoor, outdoor, or covered, your base construction type and drainage setup, your daily horse traffic and intensity level, your current moisture management system, the groomer or drag you use and how often you drag, what problems you're experiencing (compaction, dust, depth, drainage, inconsistency), and what outcome you're looking for — from a targeted improvement to a full rebuild.

This data pairs with your lab results in our analysis workflow. Your sieve gradation tells us what sand you have. Your ArenaSpec profile tells us how that sand is being used, maintained, and stressed. The combination produces recommendations that account for variables a lab alone cannot see — like a dressage rider in Arizona with no watering system whose sand is technically correct but functionally failing because of climate and maintenance, or a jumper barn in Vermont whose good sand is degrading because the arena is dragged with the wrong equipment.

ArenaSpec also becomes your ongoing arena record. As you retest annually and update your profile, the app tracks changes in your sand condition and surface performance over time — creating a longitudinal dataset that makes each subsequent tuning adjustment smarter and more precise.

Most footing companies offer some form of sand evaluation, but there are critical differences in what you actually receive and how the data is used.

Some competitors offer free sand analysis — but the analysis is a sales funnel, not a diagnostic tool. The "report" is a brief assessment designed to lead you toward their product line regardless of what your sand actually needs. If the sand doesn't suit their product, you may never hear that. The analysis serves the company, not the customer.

Other companies charge for lab testing but outsource it to a standard geotechnical soil lab. The lab runs ASTM C136 competently but has zero equestrian expertise. You receive a gradation report and no interpretation — no discipline-specific targets, no additive compatibility data, no footing tuning plan. You're left holding a technical document with no translation.

Performance Footing runs the lab work in-house, interprets it against proprietary discipline-specific targets developed from FEI surface science research and field-verified performance data, pairs it with your ArenaSpec™ arena profile, and delivers a tuning plan tied to our FIBR, FLEX, and LOCK product system. The analysis does not exist to sell you product — it exists to determine whether product is even what you need. Sometimes the answer is: your sand is wrong and no additive will fix it. Sometimes the answer is: your sand is excellent and you need less product than you think. The lab report tells the truth either way, because a system built on the wrong data fails — and that failure costs us a customer.

We maintain this standard because Performance Footing is not a product company. We are a tuning system. And every tuning system starts with measurement.