The purpose of this study was to examine if a delay in rehabilitative motor training after spinal cord injury affects functional motor recovery. We studied a skilled motor task in which rats traversed a raised horizontal ladder and quantified errors in accurate stepping, i.e., foot slips between rungs. Following lesions to the dorsal quadrant of the thoracic (T8) spinal cord that aimed to unilaterally sever the corticospinal and rubrospinal tracts, rats were re-trained to walk across the ladder, either immediately after injury or following a three month delay period. Before training, the error rate in accurate stepping of the affected hindlimb was similar in the immediately (69.4 ± 23.6%) and delay (62.7 ± 17.0%) trained animals (not significantly different), suggesting that accurate stepping did not improve spontaneously if rats were not exposed to the ladder. Following a three week course of training (30 runs across the ladder per day, 5 days per week), improvements in accurate stepping performance were greater if training was implemented immediately after injury. On average, immediately trained animals reduced the number of stepping errors by 61.5 ± 28.2%, whereas the delay trained group improved by only 34.9 ± 28.8% (significantly different). The degree of damage to the corticospinal and rubrospinal tracts was very similar in the two group of animals, indicating that differences in lesion size did not contribute to differences in performance improvement. Animals with large lesions (> 70%) to the cortispinal and rubrospinal tracts (especially delay-trained animals) displayed poor recovery from training, suggesting that these two pathways were important in mediating improvements in accurate stepping. In addition, the time course of recovery of accurate stepping was not related to the time course of recovery of stepping-like descending and segmental reflexes. We conclude that training of a skilled motor task that relies on descending control is more beneficial when initiated immediately after a partial spinal cord injury.