Following up from last week, once the horse is giving you a nice rounded stride over the second plank of our simple combination, by adding a second jump you will start to train your horse to make the link from trot to canter.

Placing the second jump is quite important — the length of one canter stride for the average horse is 12 feet or 3.6 metres. But, I want it to be a little closer on take-off to the second part.

Remember the aim is to turn a galloping machine into a jumping machine; by being just that little bit shorter with the distance than a normal canter stride it will help him make a little movement backwards onto his hocks so that he can push himself up, not just forward.

And remember, when riding any combination, don't ride into it with too much pace, because your horse will learn to jump flat and then run on landing. Give the horse time adjust his weight onto his hocks - and that means riding with stride regularity.

I always spend time working on the regularity of the canter. I start off by introducing a second non-jumping stride between my two jump combination, moving to three, four or even five or six depending on the horse.

This really makes the link for the horse between jumping out of trot and into canter and by placing my planks 12 feet, 3.6m apart, I can make sure the canter strides are nice and round and even. Think of it a bit like stepping stones. This is vital to ensure that a horse does not learn to rush on to the next jump but learns regularity of stride and balance in the canter with very little opportunity for things to go wrong.

An example of a line might be::

Plank in front of first fence (trot approach) 2.3m - fence - plank following first fence 3 m (a shorter distance because of the approach in trot) - second plank after fence 3.6m - third plank 3.6m - second fence.

This simple combination will allow your horse to trot into the sequence, give you a nice round stride over the plank, an exaggerated round stride over the first jump, a nice round even canter stride over the second (or third or fourth) plank and then make a little adjustment to his body position, onto his hocks so that he can bascule correctly over the second jump.

If you find yourself in difficulty, remember this checklist: Canter, rhythm, line. Gets it right every time.