This guide is about show jumping from class M: what you take from the course walk and how you ride your plan. If you are ready for your first course, start with Your First Show Jumping Course: Course Walk, Lines, and Distances. It explains how the course walk works and how you pace off distances.
At class B and L, you often still get around a course on feel and a steady pace. From class M onward, the course walk itself becomes part of your result: the distances get tighter, the lines harder, and the difference between a clean zero and four faults often lies in how well you walked beforehand.
What the Course Walk Gives You at This Level
The course designer has chosen the fences and distances deliberately. The course walk is your only chance to read those choices before you're in the canter. From class M, it is mostly about the pressure points: the spots where the designer has built in a problem. Think of a short turn to an oxer, a combination after a bend, or a line from light into shadow.
What a Distance Tells You
Your own pace, the length of your particular horse's canter stride, and the footing all help determine how a distance actually rides. So always walk with your own, consistent pace, and calibrate it now and then against a distance you already know. How to pace off distances and convert them into canter strides is covered in the guide for your first course.
More important than the exact number is what the distance tells you:
- A tight distance (the designer has set the fences slightly closer than standard): ride quieter, shorter, and keep the horse between your aids.
- A generous distance: ride slightly more forward so the line comes out on the right number of strides.
- Combinations (one or two canter strides between elements): here there's no room to correct. Whatever you ride into on the first stride determines the rest.
Choosing Lines, Turns, and Pace
In the guide for your first course, you choose wide, safe lines. Here you choose deliberately between wide and tight. You don't ride a course fence by fence, but in lines. While walking, you decide where you'll arrive at each jump and how you'll turn toward the next one.
- Arrive square. Plan your line so you come straight at the middle of the fence. Approaching at an angle increases both the chance of a knockdown and the distance.
- Work out your turns in advance. Decide whether to take a turn wide or tight. Turning tight saves time but costs balance and sight of the next fence. During the course walk, you decide per turn what's sensible.
- Pace per section. A straight line over an oxer asks for more forward riding than a short turn to a vertical. Walk the course and identify for yourself where you'll push on and where you'll hold back.
- Memorize the route physically. Many riders walk the line exactly as they'll ride it, turns included, so it settles into the body and not just the head.
Also watch for environmental factors that can distract the horse: the entrance and exit, an announcer's booth, the transition from sun to shade, or a water trough. At the higher levels, those are exactly the spots where a round comes undone.
Riding the Plan
A good course walk is worthless if you abandon it once you're in the ring. Riding the plan is about holding onto it and keeping a constant, rhythmic canter.
- Ride your own canter, not the fence's. An even, carrying canter with enough impulsion produces the right distances by itself. Riders who only start steering right before the jump end up rushing or restraining the horse into a mistake.
- Look ahead. Fix your eyes on the next fence while you're still going over the current one. Your body follows your eyes; looking down or at the rail pulls your center of balance with it.
- Count your canter strides. Counting out loud or in your head on a line keeps your rhythm constant and lets you feel sooner whether you're carrying too much or too little canter.
- Treat combinations as sacred. Ride the first element quietly and straight, and don't try to adjust once you're inside it. Trust what you walked.
If a distance doesn't work out exactly, a small, quiet correction is always better than one big last-stride effort or a yank on the rein. A distance that didn't feel perfect but stayed clean costs you nothing; panic costs a rail.
When Something Goes Wrong During the Round
Even with a good plan, not every line rides the way you thought it would. What counts is how fast you recover.
- After a knockdown: ride on as if nothing happened. Looking back or holding back costs you the next fence too.
- After a refusal: collect the horse, choose a straight approach again with more forward riding and confirmation, and present the fence again. Up to and including the 1.15 m class, a second refusal costs eight fault points, with elimination only following on the third; from 1.20 m, elimination already follows on the second.
- On losing rhythm: use the next long line or turn to restore the canter before you ride into another difficult section.
The exact rules around faults, refusals, time, and elimination differ per class and can change; the current show jumping regulations are on knhs.nl (the Dutch equestrian federation). Don't rely on fixed numbers from this guide. Check them with the federation.
In Short
- Walk every course with your own, consistent pace; use the distance numbers as a guideline, not a law.
- Decide your lines and turns in advance, along with where you'll push on or hold back, and watch for distractions around the arena.
- Ride a constant, carrying canter in the ring, look ahead, and stick to the plan you walked.
- Treat combinations as untouchable: whatever you ride into on the first stride determines the rest.
- Recover calmly after a mistake, and always check the exact rules with the KNHS.
Sources (verified September 7, 2026, refusals November 2, 2026): KNHS: Show Jumping Discipline Regulations 2026 (art. 236)
See also: Your First Show Jumping Course: Course Walk, Lines, and Distances · Glossary for this level · Level: Competing More Seriously · KNHS: Show Jumping Discipline Regulations 2026