By COACH KRYSTAL KELLY
Posted with permission from the author and publisher.
Seeing Distances
How to consistently see your distance to jumps is the number one question I get asked the most as an FEI II Show Jumping Coach. Everyone talks about being able to see your strides or see your distances or develop your “eye” to a fence… but if you ask 10 different Grand Prix riders or 10 different world class coaches, “How?” you typically get a vague-at-best answer.
That’s because seeing strides is complicated. There is no guarantee that you and your horse will get the correct distance over every single jump in every competition no matter what. It’s humanly, mathematically and physically impossible.
Even the best riders in the world, mess up a distance. The best horses in the world jump long, get too close to a jump or knock a rail down. It’s part of what makes show jumping such an incredible sport. As the jumps get higher and the courses get more technical, course designers are purposefully tasked to try and make the distances not easy to achieve. They are TRYING to trick you. They are trying to make the world’s best jumping horses and riders KNOCK POLES.
The aim is to weed out the best to make for an exciting jump off. They are aiming for a 10-20% clear round rate when they are building their courses. That means that the bigger the jumps get and the more you move up in the levels, the more important it is to increase your chances of jumping clear.
Yes, you can get lucky in show jumping, but not consistently. The best riders in the world aren’t “lucky.” The reason they are the best is because of being able to increase the percentage that they jump clear in the first round.
Seeing strides and distances is a HUGE part of it. The faster and better you can judge your distances to the jumps, the more likely you and your horse will jump it clear.
Here are a few things to know about mastering the art of seeing strides:
Distances change as the jumps get bigger. That is because in order for a horse to jump a higher fence, they need to jump further away in order to create the bascule (the highest point of the horse’s arc over a jump) over the correct spot.
That is why many amateur riders often get “stuck” at the height they have been for quite some time. Whether it’s staying in the 2’6 classes for years, feeling trapped in the 1 meters or peaking at the 1.20’s… a big reason that most rider’s can’t move up and get unstuck is a lack of being able to judge the distances once the height of the jumps have changed.
It actually happened to me, but in reverse. In my 20’s I was so used to jumping 1.30, 1.40 on a regular basis that when I started training a young 4 year old stallion to jump in the 1 meter classes I distinctly remember causing my horse to have a rail down at the competition due to me seeing my distances as being longer than they needed to be! Luckily, this stallion was a good sport and only had one rail down in each class that weekend despite my awkward start to the season.
That is why it’s important not to try to rush and move up in levels faster than you are ready for! If you cannot see distances over a single pole on the ground, you have no business trying to jump. If you can’t see your distances (let’s say at a 90% percent rate) at the 2’3 level, you are not ready for the 2’6. If you can’t see it at the 1 meter, hold off on moving to 1.10.
And that is where a lot of amateurs go wrong. They typically have a horse that’s capable of doing bigger than what they are jumping them (for some strange reason a lot of Americans love to import warmbloods from Europe that are already jumping 1.30-140’s just so they can compete them in the 80 cm classes at home). They rely heavily on the horse doing the “hard work” for them, hoping that if they don’t see the distance it doesn’t matter because their horse will.
THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT ATTITUDE TO HAVE!
We cannot call ourselves HORSE RIDERS and then be a passenger on their backs, letting our horses float around courses making all the decisions for us. That is not how you build a partnership. That is not what being a TEAM looks like.
Your horse knows it. You know it. Everyone watching knows it. You aren’t fooling anyone. So stop it. Right now.
Which brings us to this workbook! Yippee! You are probably here because you are aware of this and are determined to fix it! Congrats! The first step has been accomplished! That’s the awareness step.
Now, that we understand the importance of being able to see distances and become our horse’s teammate and partner, let’s talk strategy.
How do we fix this?
The wrong answer is to jump a lot and jump, jump some more. Jumping mindlessly won’t fix this. What we need is FOCUS. Structure. Systems. Basically, what you need is a plan. Welcome to your workbook!
How this training plan will work for the next 4 weeks and what you can expect to achieve if you stick with it:
Over the next 4 weeks you will be working on a few things simultaneously.
The first thing will be your warm up sessions. Plan to spend 10-15 minutes each ride on your warm up exercise. The warmup exercises are designed specifically to achieve one clear cut goal: Get you and your horse to be as “one.” Seeing strides is more than just “seeing.” Seeing doesn’t mean a damn thing if your buttons don’t work.
Have you ever been on an airplane or maybe seen a movie with pilots prepping for their flight? Before they take off, they have a whole checklist they go through. They push every button, check all the lights and make sure each and every piece of their machine is working as it should.
That is what your warm up exercises are going to be for. Checking all the buttons and making sure you and your horse are fully operational and ready to FLY for your main session.
Next will be your main exercise for the week. This exercise will be a very specific jumping or pole exercise designed to help you achieve your goal of seeing strides more accurately.
It’s important not to try to obsess over making the main session “perfect.” Remember, you will repeat each main session 3x’s before moving onto your week 2 exercises. You have plenty of time during these 3 rides to improve, practice and perfect it. There is no need to try to overdue it, especially on the first session when introducing the new exercise to you and your horse.
Once your main session is complete (allow yourself anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 minutes to complete this task), you will then move on to your Cool Down assignment.
Give yourself around 5 – 10 minutes to complete your cool down exercise for the week and let your horse stretch and relax after their intense workout. The cool down’s main focus is to let your horse stretch, cool down and relax as well as to spend dedicated time each ride to focus on YOU.
It’s impossible to help our horses if we need help. Just like on an airplane when the flight attendants tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first before helping a child, we MUST as riders put in the work to improve ourselves just as much as we demand our horse’s to work.
It’s a two way street! We want our horses to be athletes, we too must be athletes. No exceptions. The cool downs are going to be the perfect chance for you to work on reprogramming your body with correct muscle memory, building and increasing your rider fitness levels and preparing your body for the timing, coordination, strength and balance required to be considered an athlete.
Order your copy of our training plan books, “Show Jumping Guide to Seeing Distances” by clicking this link: https://coachkrystalkellybooks.com/
