"Seeing a stride" and "seeing a distance" are two names for the same skill: recognising how the fence is arriving out of the canter early enough to keep the approach smooth rather than make a last-second correction. If you have been taught one phrase and keep reading the other, you are not missing a different skill.
The difference is mostly language and habit. Neither phrase describes a separate skill. Each one simply puts the emphasis in a different place, and which you grew up with usually comes down to who taught you.
"Seeing a distance" emphasises the relationship between the ground remaining and the canter you are travelling in. "Seeing a stride" emphasises the strides that make up that approach. In practice, your eye is reading both at once: whether the rhythm you are in is bringing the fence up naturally, or whether the developing distance is becoming long or short.
"Seeing a distance" describes what you are judging.
"Seeing a stride" describes how riders often talk about judging it.
The underlying visual skill is the same.
Whichever phrase you use, your eye is reading the rhythm of the canter, how quickly the fence is approaching and how that pattern is developing from stride to stride. The distance may develop slightly short, slightly long or arrive naturally out of the rhythm, and the skill is noticing which while there is still time to keep things quiet.
Not really. The training is the same whichever phrase you use: build a repeatable canter, keep your eyes up and towards the fence rather than searching the ground for a take-off spot, learn to recognise whether the distance is developing good or off, count down to improve earliness, and get plenty of repetitions with feedback. The exercises page lays those out, and how to see a stride when jumping goes into the skill in depth.
Practise whichever you call it
Streyed trains the same visual skill through rhythm, good-or-off judgement, countdown and distance recognition, with feedback on every approach.
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