If there’s one skill that separates a combination who can excel in eventing from one who merely jumps around a course, it’s adjustability. In her new video on Practical Horseman+, five-star eventer Sara Kozumplik says the ability to lengthen and shorten your horse’s canter stride smoothly, on command and without losing balance, rhythm or connection is crucial for navigating both cross-country and show-jumping courses.

Cross country requires your horse to gallop and cover ground efficiently and then immediately rebalance for a corner, angle or a related distance that changes with varying terrain. Show jumping asks for a similar skill set in a smaller space; horses need to collect for a tight, related distance one moment and open back up for a longer one the next.

Kozumplik stresses that if your horse only knows one canter—his own natural, comfortable stride—he will always be fighting the course rather than working with it. On the other hand, a horse who’s been taught to confidently open and close his stride gives his rider options, and options allow you to navigate technical questions safely and correctly.

Adjustability is not just a jumping skill, she explains. It’s built through consistent transitions between lengthening and collecting on the flat, and it’s confirmed and sharpened by testing it over fences, where the consequences of a lack of adjustability become obvious quickly.

Kozumplik notes that every horse’s natural canter is different, so it’s crucial that you ride the horse in front of you and not just rely on a generic formula. “For a horse that doesn’t naturally have a lot of ‘airtime’ in the canter, you have to create that jump in his stride,” she says. “That’s what our dressage is all about.” On the other hand, a horse with a naturally big, uphill stride can easily offer plenty of length but he might need more encouragement to shorten.

In this lesson, Kozumplik coaches a Training-level pair and a four-star combination through exercises on the flat and over fences to help them improve their horses’ adjustability. Here, we highlight the exercises and training tips she offers the riders, so you can apply them in your program. (To watch the full video on Practical Horseman+, click here.)

Exercise 1: Open and Close Your Horse’s Stride on the Flat

Kozumplik had the riders start with simple lengthening and shortening transitions in the canter on the flat. She notes that this helps train your horse to respond to the aids for lengthening and shortening independent of a jump, so that when you add a fence, he already understands the question.

Here are her key takeaways from their flatwork transitions:

Maintain a straight line from elbow to bit. When trying to collect, Kozumplik says a lot of riders tend to drop their hands too low. “This breaks your connection and can be quite firm on the bars of your horse’s mouth,” she says.

As a horse comes to a fence, his frame naturally comes up a little, she explains, so having low hands can easily create resistance. Focus on keeping a straight line from your elbow to the bit regardless of whether you’re lengthening or shortening.

Building adjustability starts on the flat. This teaches your horse to respond to your aids for lengthening and collecting without a fence involved. Click here to watch the full video on Practical Horseman+! Already a member? Watch the full video here.

Use your seat, not just your hands. To open the stride, Kozumplik advises riders to get into a light half-seat to allow a bigger, freer canter. “To close the stride, sit down in your seat, stay tall in your body, and reorganize your horse’s canter,” she says.

It takes more leg to collect than you might think. Many riders instinctively think “shorten” means to pull back, Kozumplik notes. But collection is created from back to front—leg first to keep the hind end engaged and stepping under, then a light hand to contain the resulting energy.

Use extension to make collection easier. A horse who is already forward is much easier to rebalance than one who is behind the leg. “Use the extension of the canter to get your horse’s hind end moving, so that when you stretch up to collect, it makes your life easier,” she says.

Exercise 2: Straightness is Key for Adjustability Over Fences

Before working on adjustability through a line of related distances, Kozumplik had the riders start over a warm-up 2-foot vertical to establish what she calls the non-negotiable basics of every jumping effort: You must approach the fences straight, jump straight and land straight. “Straightness in, over and out of the fences is the priority. Everything else can be sorted out after,” she says.

Before working on adjustability through related distances, the riders warm-up over a small vertical to focus on straightness before, during and after the fence. Click here to watch the full video on Practical Horseman+! Already a member? Watch the full video here.

Through the exercise, Kozumplik advised riders not to fixate on which lead their horses landed on. “When you overly obsess about your landing lead, it causes you to twist your upper body in the air, which messes up the horse’s jump,” she says. She recommended riders organize after the fence by halting in a straight line, or with a flying change, if confirmed in the horse, or a simple change.

What happens after the fence is just as important as what happens before it. You can’t jump a line and then mentally check out, Kozumplik stresses. Land and immediately go back to riding every stride, so you’re prepared for what you need to do next.

Exercise 3: Adjustability for Accurate Related Distances

In the upper levels of traditional show jumping, course designers often include distances that might be considered tricky, but Kozumplik explains that in eventing show jumping, the distances are based off a standard 12-foot canter stride.

“It’s your responsibility as a rider to get your horse straight and balanced to find jumpable distances and to understand what type of canter you need for the height of the course,” she says. “It’s your horse’s job to jump the fences.”

To help the riders accomplish this, she had them practice a simple line of two small fences set six 12-foot strides apart until they felt comfortable with the striding.

To get a feel for how the line rides on a “normal” 12-foot stride, the riders first mastered the line in six strides. Click here to watch the full video on Practical Horseman+! Already a member? Watch the full video here.

For this line, she recommends using elevated cavalletti or small verticals instead of poles. Ground poles are so unassuming that horses can go over them flat, making it hard to tell if you made a mistake, she notes, but a small vertical will give you honest feedback the moment you take off to help you smooth out what you might have done wrong.

“If you come into this line a little quiet or too bold and miss the strides you’re aiming for during the first few passes, that’s OK. I don’t expect you to be McLain Ward,” Kozumplik jokes. “But you should start to understand what you need to change to make it easier for your horse coming out of the line.”

She offered the riders the following troubleshooting tips:

• After you’ve ridden the line once, note how you arrived at the first fence. Were you a touch close? Was there a gap? Were you straight and jumping over the middle of the fences?
• If you were a little forward over the first fence, you might need to balance a bit earlier through the line, so you don’t run out of room and chip or rush the second fence.
• If your canter was a little weak on the first fence or if you got a short distance, allow your horse to land and ask him to move forward a stride or two to make up the ground.
• In the last few strides before any fence, your work should already be done so you’re not interfering with your horse’s jumping effort. He should feel balanced and straight because that’s when he can jump his best.

Exercise 4: Building the Range of Strides

Collection and extension build upon one another. “You’ll start to notice that the more you can collect your horse’s stride, the more you can extend, and the more you can extend, the more you can collect,” Kozumplik says.  

Once the riders were confidently riding the line in the “normal” six strides, she had them start adding and subtracting strides to sharpen up their aids for adjustability. For example:

1. Ride the line in six, normal 12-foot canter strides.

2. Come back around and add one stride to ride it in seven strides. You’ll need to collect and shorten your horse’s step while keeping the same quality of canter and staying soft at the base of the fence.

3. On your next pass, shorten and collect even more to add an additional stride to ride the line in eight.

4. On your fourth and final pass for this exercise, open your horse’s canter back up and ride it in six strides again.

In this exercise, Kozumplik had the riders add and subtract strides on the line to sharpen up their aids for adjustability. Click here to watch the full video on Practical Horseman+! Already a member? Watch the full video here.

As your horse’s adjustability improves, Kozumplik says you can expand the range in both directions. “A grand prix show jumper or more advanced eventing horse could very easily do five strides this line and could collect enough to get 10 strides,” she says. The wider the range a horse can produce while staying balanced and rhythmic, the more adjustable and rideable he becomes on course.

Once you’ve practiced collecting for the shorter number of strides and returning to the normal six strides, Kozumplik suggests reversing the exercise. Start with the collected number of strides on your first pass and then lengthen back out; you might start with eight strides, go up to seven, then six strides, before going back to seven or eight.

Exercise 5: ‘Call-It-In-the-Air’ Test

This exercise will build upon the skills you’ve been working on, improve your reaction time and teach you how to make quiet adjustments. Kozumplik explains, however, that this is a more advanced test of true adjustability, so it’s best for riders who have mastered the basics of opening and closing their horse’s stride length.

For this exercise, she had the riders jump into the line with an average 12-foot stride. As they were going over the first fence, she called out what number of strides she wanted them to produce in the line without any advanced warning.

Here, the rider demonstrates the “Call-It-In-the-Air” test, adjusting her horse’s stride based on Kozumplik’s instructions over the first fence. Click here to watch the full video on Practical Horseman+! Already a member? Watch the full video here.

“This is good practice because you don’t always get the ride you planned for on the way in,” she notes. “It will help you find out how much leg and hand you need to rebalance or open up the stride to get the number of strides you want, so you can start to do it more subtly and softly.”

Keep in mind, however, that the unpredictable nature of this exercise is not useful for all horse-and-rider combinations. Kozumplik says new partners or horses who are still learning the basics of adjustability will benefit more from repeating a clear, logical progression of strides (e.g., six–seven–eight–six) than being surprised by random numbers. “The goal is to always build confidence and communication, not to trick the horse or rider,” she says.

Takeaway

With consistent practice, Kozumplik says adjustability will become second nature, and you’ll be able to produce the exact pace you need to tackle a tough cross-country track or a technical show-jumping course.

For More:

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