Seeing a stride.

HorseManiac

New Member
Dec 19, 2005
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With Percy:)
Find it really hard and end up getting too deep or too far out, either over jumping or knocking it, got a nice bouncy canter, just need to see a stride, give with my hands so I don't sock him in the mouth and I'm sorted.

Any tips :) Xx
 
Practice. I know that's not very helpful but it's true. Also, learn the art of slipping the reins so it doesn't matter so much if you get left behind. The most important thing is for you to stay in balance. Practice riding in the forward seat a lot, find your balance, then ride into the fence in it and just fold when he takes off. Also, pole/grid work is good so you just steer straight he'll sort it out and you can see the stride as you know how many it's mean to be :)
 
umm...

you know when a horse jumps, he sort of collapses before he flies? (not very comforting LOOL!) thats when you need to fold, as he folds. try using those poles you put in front of a jump, the horse folds just behind it, you get the hang.
maybe you could put loads of canter strides in a row, so you could start seeing what kind of stride he has, and start timing your movements with his over the poles

(another useless rambling of randomness that probably wont work :p
 
It takes time and practice. Its not just seeing the stride, its pushing for it aswell. Sometimes the horse may went to go on a long or short stride and you need to either hold or kick on to get the stride you want.

Learning to slip the reins like sonnet said is great. If you get left behind then slipping your reins stops the horse from getting socked in the mouth :)
 
rhythm :)

the best way is to keep a nice forward rhythm to a fence becaue at least then if your stride isnt perfect the horse has the best chance to jump the fence

you also learn to judge your distances better :) using placing poles 2 or 3 strides out also help :)
 
At a jumping clinic recently, the chap running it had two key things, Rhythm and counting strides.

He got us to do exercises like putting 2 poles (and progressing to two jumps) a longish distance apart, and getting us to shout out the number of strides between the two poles. Then we tried to shorten or lengthen the stride, aiming for doing the reverse to the total number counted between the poles. I think this really helps you know how far your horse goes when they are in a particular rhythm.

Same with jumping two jumps at a distance-the more you work with a set distance between two things, you can get better at generally assessing distances in relation to your stride length.

At least that was his theory- I'm rubbish at it but planning on doing some of the above work this week.
 
At a jumping clinic recently, the chap running it had two key things, Rhythm and counting strides.

He got us to do exercises like putting 2 poles (and progressing to two jumps) a longish distance apart, and getting us to shout out the number of strides between the two poles. Then we tried to shorten or lengthen the stride, aiming for doing the reverse to the total number counted between the poles. I think this really helps you know how far your horse goes when they are in a particular rhythm.

Same with jumping two jumps at a distance-the more you work with a set distance between two things, you can get better at generally assessing distances in relation to your stride length.

At least that was his theory- I'm rubbish at it but planning on doing some of the above work this week.


This is what I was trying to say- thank you for helping my poor sad brain out! :D
 
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