Do You Have A "Good Eye?"

Good eye? See a stride? Most people go weak at the knees when these are mentioned. We want to try and make it simple!

I can't see a stride. How many strides?  Will be things of the past.

Firstly measure your strides against a tape measure laying on the floor. Make your stride as close as you can to 1 yard. Practice this until you feel comfortable your stride is 1 yard, and you can do this anywhere. Your horse's stride is 4 yards (pony strides will be less)

When walking a course, practice striding the distance between fences in doubles, combinations, and related distances.

If you are at a competition and have got confused about a distance, ask a professional who is there to help, they are usually very easy to spot and more than happy to help.

Practice walking courses even if you are not competing in the class, then watch other riders to see if you judged it correctly.

Distances

Horse strides - pony strides will be shorter

In a one stride double - 8 yards

This allows for 2 yards to land. 2 yards to take off, and 4 yards for the horse to stride.

In a two stride double - 12 yards

This allows for 2 yards to land, 2 yards to take off, and 8 yards for the horse top take 2 strides.

For 3 strides the distance would be 16 yards.

For 4 strides the distance would be 20 yards, and so on.

A good way to work this out is:
Total number of your strides minus 4 divide by 4 equals number of horse strides.
eg. 28-4=24 then 24/4 =6 so 28 yards would be 6 strides.