Welcome to Trainer Tuesday! Each week we ask trainers a question and gather their answers for you. These trainers have a range of experience, backgrounds, and focus points of their programs, so the answers have as much variation as you would expect and also probably much more similarity.
This week’s question posed is: If a rider is a distance perfectionist to a fault, how can they learn to be bold and find jumps out of stride?
Here are their answers:
“Learn to find a balanced canter. Horses find the distances if we just communicate path on a balanced pace.” –Leslie Terry
“Exercise: Two cavaletti on an 84 ft curve, with soft styrofoam rails making a V on the ground channeling the middle of each cavaletti.
On any horse, canter the two cavaletti while counting the strides on the curve. Any number of strides works. After the rider repeats that number three times, change the number to one or two fewer strides. Repeat.
Then change the number of strides to one more.
Keep repeating this in both directions until there is a rider’s recognition of setting the pace, track, balance, and impulsion regarding jumping in and out of the exercise related to the number choice. Ideally, making adjustments to the horse’s pace before the line jumping into the exercise and fitting in the number at the second cavaletti so all the horses’ strides match.
I find riders catch on that the distance is the byproduct of pace, line, balance, impulsion….distance.” -Diane Carney
Read more from Diane and listen to her on The Plaidcast here.
“Set a line that’s a comfortable distance (5-6 strides), foam rail or cavaletti to a small jump (or another foam rail). After jumping it once, roll the rail out a few feet. Continue to do that until you’re out of your comfort zone/galloping and then repeat the exercise until riding with pace starts to feel “normal.”
If you have a tendency to pull, you can do this exercise with a driving rein (hands turned over).” -Traci Brooks
Read more from Traci here.
“Most of the time, when a rider has problems with distances in general, it’s a symptom of another problem. When I have riders that struggle with being a perfectionist—or any other distance-related problem, I work on track and rhythm.
Every distance is a result of your rhythm and track. Once you learn to control that, you can be accurate out of any canter.” –Lauren Kardel
Read more from Lauren here.
“One of my favorite distance finding exercises is the ‘3-2-1’ exercise. I have my riders come through the corner and add leg out of the turn so they’re going forward to the jump. From there, I have them count out loud down from 3, when they think they are 3 strides out. I’ve seen this exercise done counting upward (1-2-3) as well, but I have found that counting down is more definitive and gives the rider less chance to change their minds or second-guess what they’re seeing.
Go forward, count down, and the distance will find you! You won’t have to find it. Finding a good distance is about your turn, your pace, and your commitment to staying in rhythm.” -Ariel Univer
Read more from Ariel.
“For a person who is a perfectionist when it comes to seeing a distance, I’d focus on a couple of different things. The first being the quality of canter. Is the canter balanced, does it have the appropriate pace for the jump, is it rhythmical? If the answer is “no” to any of these questions, it will be difficult to find the correct distance, no matter what. I’d next pay attention to the approach I’m taking to the jump.
As you approach the jump, the horse should feel even or straight between your aids, with their shoulders squarely approaching the jump. If they’re bulging one way or the other, the distance can be affected and change as you get closer to take off. Lastly, horses can see a distance to a jump as well. Using little jumps, I encourage riders to guide their horse to the jump with little interference from the hand or leg.
The horse may not pay attention to the fence at first. But after a few tries, you’ll begin to feel them pay attention to what’s in front of them and make their own decisions. I find it’s much easier to jump when your teammate is also focused on the task in front of them! More often than not, less interference can benefit the horse when, as a rider, you’ve set them up with a good quality of canter and approach.” -Emily Szokol
Read more from Emily here.
“Such a hard habit to break! The biggest thing I do to stop the distance perfectionist is making them stick with the canter they have- creating a great canter for their horse’s needs. Focus on definitely not changing pace out of the turn.
It takes a long time and a lot of reassurance that when they have a “not perfect” distance, it’s okay! So their brain stops worrying if they aren’t “perfect.”
The canter is what matters, then straightness–then you’ll have options and more perfection for what the course is asking. Just trust the canter.” -Dana Hart-Callanan
Read more from Dana here.
