Help! Strides? CONFUSED

[Horse100]

Heya,

I'm thinking of taking up show jumping after having a lesson some time ago.

I was just wondering if someone could give me some information on counting strides e.g how do you actually count them and what exactly are they? :confused:

Any help much appreciated

Thanks

Horse100

[Mehitabel]

one stride is when the horse has moved all of its legs - they move the legs in sequence, so when the first leg moves for the second time, that's the beginning of the second stride.
so when, for instance, you are in rising trot, one of your rises is one stride - you go up-down in time with the stride, each up-down is one stride. in canter you count the 'one-two-three' of the legs moving.

if you watch a horse cantering, for instance have a look at the only fools on horses that is on at the minute, watch one front leg, and each time it moves that's one stride.

when you're jumping, you can ask the horse to take longer or shorter strides to arrive at the jump in the right place. for instance there might be 2 jumps and enough space between them for either 7 short strides or 6 long ones. so you need ot be able to count strides as you approach the jump, in order to know when you need to go into jumping position, and also because you can't influence their length until you can count and recognise them.

[xLuckibrunette]

Hm, this seems easy yet hard to explain. Lets start with this; You count strides between two jumps & two jumps is called a "line." Easy enough. :) I'm sure that you have jumped and in a jump you approach, Take off, land, and then take a step. In a line you wil approach the first jump (at a canter, hopefully) and then land then you count the lines so you might say "Land, 1 stride, 2 stride, 3 stride, 4 stride (etc.) then you take off for the next jump I hope that made sense. :)

[Horse100]

Wow, that actually makes a lot of sense and its cleared some stuff up for me
:D

Thank You!!