How to see a stride when jumping

Showjumping Accuracy Phase 2

How to see a stride when jumping. This is where you really start to work on your eye. Treat the cavaletti exactly as you would a jump. Make the necessary adjustments to your horse’s canter stride, to find a good take-off spot. Don’t worry about the misses, because there will be a good few. They will, however, become less and less, as your eye gets better, and you become more accurate.

Continue to train your horse to be adjustable

These exercises are especially aimed at helping you become more accurate. The thing to remember though is if your horse is not responsive to your aids, it’s very difficult to be accurate. In other words, if you need to shorten your horse’s stride to find your take-off point, and he will not shorten his stride, you’re going to miss. And the same applies to lengthening.

So if you’re approaching the cavaletti, and you’re trying to shorten your stride, but your horse is resisting, be insistent! Double the amount of aid you’re using. It doesn’t matter if you miss at the cavaletti, because you are teaching him that he needs to respond to your aid, and you will not let him off the hook until he does. And besides, it’s just a cavaletti, he can skip over it if you miss.

You may need to apply this tactic a few times, but you will eventually teach him to shorten when you need him to shorten. The same applies to lengthening. If he will not lengthen, give him a firm kick so he moves forward when you ask him to. So you’re training him to be responsive to your aids as well. You’re mastering your own little language, and it’s super important that the two of you are always on the same page. You may not have got phase one as good as you need to either. So keep working on that, especially when you warm up to do this exercise.

Train to see long and short distances

So if you’re feeling good about how to see a stride when jumping, I’d like to complicate things a little. Most riders have a preference as to how they like to find their take-off spot. You can break these preferences into two categories, and those are pushers and pullers. Some riders prefer to shorten the horse’s stride to find the take-off spot, and some riders prefer to lengthen their horse’s stride to find their take-off spot.

Both are perfectly ok, BUT you need to be able to do both equally well. So take note of what you predominantly do to find your take-off spot. If you predominantly pull to find your take-off spot, you need to practice riding forward to find your take-off spot. And if you predominantly ride to find your take-off spot, you need to practice finding a shorter ride into the cavaletti. Make sense? This will make you a more complete rider, and able to cope with all situations that come your way while showjumping.