Stride Adjustment

For horses especially learning to be clever with their feet while jumping out of a rhythm is very important. Ponies are known for being able to get their riders out of many deadly fixes just by adjusting their stride to take off at just the right moment. Horses, on the other hand, need some extra help. Teaching your horse to think for itself by adjusting their own stride can make life much safer. 

Horses have been jumping for thousands of years and do not need us controlling their every stride, they know what they are doing and we need to trust them to do their job. I am not saying that we should ride like passengers and just expect our horses to jump, we need to be ready for stops, run outs and weird takeoffs at every fence. 

For me, I found that the exercise below really helped teach my horse to set himself up for the fences and allowed me to solely focus on my position. The bounce striding meant that he couldn't speed up without finding himself in the middle of a fence. The different alternating heights meant that he had to concentrate on the fences and picking his feet up. And the trot poles in the middle forced transitions to get him sitting on his hindquarters and bouncing up and ready for the next grid.