Your success in navigating any jumping round starts with an effective course walk. It might seem simple, but this is one of the most crucial skills for competitive riders to master. Why? Because it enables you to create a strategic plan for your ride.

By practicing my course-walking techniques, you’ll develop the ability to create effective plans that leverage both your strengths and your horse’s natural abilities, leading to more successful jumping rounds. This will also help boost your confidence on show days and prevent competition nerves from derailing your performance.

Here, I’ll explain how I execute course walks, starting from the approach to the first jump to creating rhythm and pace on course to set you and your horse up for success. We’ll cover how to walk and ride connected straight lines and explore various track options on bending lines to help you determine the right option for your horse. Plus, we’ll discuss how to tackle tricky combinations that so many riders worry about.

Why Your Course Walk Matters

After you learn your course and create an initial plan for how to ride it, walking it will help you get a better idea of how the course will ride in real time, as well as how your horse might respond to the course based on its design.

Learning how to strategically walk courses will help you:

• Better understand what questions the course designer is asking
• Determine if your original plan is feasible based on the course design
• Or, if you’ll need to make adjustments based on your and your horse’s abilities
• Create a mental map of your ride to keep you focused on course and confident in your plan for each element
• Learn how to approach the first fence to start your course off right
• Learn how to establish and maintain rhythm and pace throughout your course
• Identify various track options on bending lines
• Tackle combinations with confidence

Find Your Stride: First-Fence Approach

Your approach to the first fence on course sets the tone for your entire round, so make it count. After determining which direction you’re coming in to the first jump (off the left or right), find the most straightforward and fluid path for your approach. Based on where the first fence is positioned, ask yourself: Would it be better to stay on the rail for your approach? Or is there a clear gap between fences that would make for a more flowing line?

You also need to evaluate the type of jump you’ll be facing at the first fence—whether it’s an oxer, vertical or triple bar—to determine your ideal takeoff distance. For oxers, your takeoff point is a little farther back than it would be for a triple bar, but closer than for a vertical.

I’m German, so I walk courses in meters with each step indicating a meter (see the video below for an example), but if you’re more comfortable walking it in feet or yards you’ll just need to make that calculation accordingly. (You can find free conversion calculators online.) To determine your best path, start at the first fence and walk backward toward your approach.

I walk eight steps for my one-stride-out point (this allows for your landing distance and the first stride) and then walk another four steps to find my point two strides out. At this point, you should be nice and fluid on your track to the first fence. Look at the track coming off the rail to determine if you should hug the rail on your approach or if staying slightly on the inside track would be the better choice to get your horse perfectly straight and dialed in to the first fence.

After you’ve planned your approach to the first fence, you need to immediately focus on your landing and where you’re going next. Having a clear departure plan will help you determine if you’re going to fade in, stay on track, make a rollback or inside turn. If you’re turning left after the first fence, for example, you should already be zoned in on the track you determined during your course walk.

If you’re taking the inside turn, you want to jump the first fence a little farther out with a slight angle on the oxer so you can land and already be introducing your horse to the inside turn. Having a plan after jumps will also tell you if you need to adjust your approach to account for your departure path to the next fence.

Navigating Connected Straight Lines

The next part in our course walk is determining the number of strides between fences in a connected straight line. For the purposes of this article, I have a vertical-to-vertical line set up that we’re going to walk to determine how many strides we’re looking for—and if they’re steady, forward or normal. All of this can be determined just by walking the line and making an educated assessment.

The 7-4-4-4 System for Home

At home, the line will be set slightly shorter than you’ll see at shows. Starting at the first fence on your line, walk seven steps for the first stride and then each subsequent stride as four steps. Walking this line as 7-4-4-4 results in a perfect five-stride line at home.

To successfully ride this line, come in with a normal stride to the first fence, then sit up, have your horse nice in your hand and just maintain a steady rhythm to second fence for a flowing five strides.

The 8-4-4-4 System for Shows

Next, we’re going to walk the exact same line but measure it on a horse-show step, as the show lines are usually set a little bit longer than we would have them at home. So, I walk the first stride in eight steps with each subsequent stride again being four steps.

When I walk the line this way, I come up 1 meter short to a perfect five-stride line. So, at shows, this tells me I need to approach the first fence normally and then address the missing meter coming in to a true five. This means you need to land and settle your horse a bit to create room for the tight five. That way, you’ve made the adjustment early and won’t have to worry about it by the time you get to the second fence.

Rule No. 1 for making adjustments for tight distances is to do it early in the line. The worst thing you want to do is land, do nothing and then fight to get the last stride in. You need to land and settle your horse to create room for the short distance, so you have two or three strides where you don’t interfere with him before the next fence.

Navigating Bending Lines

Another important element of your course walk is assessing bending lines. This is crucial because bending lines can present multiple track options. Depending on your horse and what best suits his rhythm, pace and how do you want to arrive from the first fence to the second, you can stay on the inside track for a shorter distance, follow a true track for a medium distance or take the outside track for a longer distance.

Approach the first fence of a bending line exactly the same as you would the first fence on a straight line or a single—straight with a rhythmical, forward-moving stride while also keeping your horse balanced on his hind end.

Starting at the first fence in the bending line, walk straight off it using the 7-4-4-4 system (since we’re at home) with the goal of finding the ideal pivot point where you’ll introduce the turn to the bending line. For the line I have set up, I’m slightly past the pivot point where I would introduce the turn to the second fence by the fourth stride. So, this tells us that you’ll need make your pivot point somewhere between stride three and four.

To accommodate for this, I re-walk the line and shift my track slightly to the inside to achieve a more true, straightforward approach to the second fence. On this track, I end up being 1 meter away from a true seven stride on this bending line. So, I have two options here: I can stay slightly on the inside track and make this a true seven by arcing my parabola a little bit more in and making the apex a little bit closer to the right side. Or I can shift my horse a little bit more to the outside, open up that apex and jump it slightly on the outside track for an eight-stride line.

This flexibility allows you to choose the best track for your horse’s natural stride length and movement style. If you have a forward-moving horse, the seven will show up naturally. If your horse is a slower mover, just steady up a bit and come on the outside to get the eight.

Worry-Free Combinations

Last, but not least, we’re going to address walking our always fun and often feared combinations. These include multiple elements of verticals or oxers in sequence divided by one or two strides. In this example, we have a triple combination with a vertical coming in, followed by an oxer in the middle and a vertical going out.

Approach the combination exactly the same as you would single jumps. A lot of riders have “combination phobia,” fearing that all the elements coming so fast together will be a problem. This can be eliminated by simply focusing on approaching the A element with a balanced, forward-moving horse and just fading out what happens on the B and C elements.

This combination walks one stride between elements A and B and a little more than 11 steps between B (oxer) and C (vertical). Horses tend to land a little shallower over oxers. Since this walks a bit over 11 steps, it tells me I need to travel a little farther across the oxer to make the spread over two strides between the B and C elements. Then, land and steady and just allow the C element to come up naturally.

Takeaway

These are all individual building blocks that you can work on and put together to improve your overall course work. And by implementing these course-walking strategies, you’ll be able to come through the in-gate at shows calm, confident and with a solid plan to navigate a successful round.

Watch & Learn on E+

• To watch Ronny’s course-walking strategies in Part 1 of his EQUESTRIAN+ video series on finding distances, click here.
• You can find the full series here.

About Ronny Riemer

With over 20 years of experience, Ronny brings a wealth of knowledge from both the European and American riding styles. A grand prix competitor at the FEI and national levels, he’s trained under legends like Paul Schockemöhle and Franke Sloothaak before building RCR Equestrian Inc., in Ocala, Florida.