Reading some of the older posts I see that at one time there was a great deal of interest in training fig trees into a stepover system, but I haven't seen many posts on the matter since 2014.

If anyone has tried this system I'd be very curious to hear about how it is going.

What is a stepover system?

A step over system is one of those things that can be found with the wonderful forum search function.  There is a lot of info on figs espaliered as well.

Not being smart A$% but the search function is a great tool and it is a hell of a lot easier to learn from than dead tree lessons.

Of course, the first thread you find will be full of images that say, "please update your account to enable 3rd party hosting."  So, old threads may not be as useful as they once were.

Ortegojeffrey, a stepover is an espalier system where you train the tree to a very low horizontal system. The benefit for figs is that you would prune off the vertical growth every winter and all the remaining wood would be so close to the ground that it would be very easy to protect from the cold. There were a lot of posts about this several years ago but I'm not sure how many people tried it. I'm very curious to find out who tried it and how it went. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXfoDd6_Vp0

Thanks Danny you're a great guy, great help! Thanks for the answer Scott.

Here is my attempt at a step over project. The first photos show the first year's growth and winterization, the last photo is what they look like today. There are no ripe figs yet, but there are quite a few ripening.

I finally finished my patio and I want to 'move' the figs closer to the wall and make the bed smaller, so I plan to redo the project this fall. I am air layering the two varieties I want to keep.   So far the only thing I would do differently is to put support wires low (even with the central wire but about a foot away) as well as high (which is recommended in the other posts but I hadn't gotten to before I decided to redo the setup). The low wire would allow easier training of the shoots the first few years to grow horizontal and the higher wires are needed to keep the shoots growing straight up.

 
      

Christian, that's awesome!

Ortegojeffry, in addition to my work in physics, I also study human learning. In particular I research differences in the ways that experts and novices learn new information. Experts tend to subconsciously perceive the underlying structure of new information even if that information is presented in an unorganized manner. Experts often have difficulty understanding the struggles of the novice because, to the expert, the information appears to be so well organized. 

It's only natural that a new user of the forum would have a hard time searching through and mentally organizing SO much new information. It's also natural that an experienced forum member could get frustrated that the novice can't see what they see. It's what we call "the curse of knowledge."

@Christian, a great job and very glad its working well for you in Zone 7A! 

I tried a similar method here in Zone 6 and it didn't work out.
I tried some figs leaned over and held in place along the wire and some figs new 2yr growth bent along the wire.  The problem was the new growth kept coming at the ends and the buds along the main trunk would not grow.   Could be not enough winter protection for the trunk.  Also with figs that low they seemed to be at perfect level for rabbits and gophers so when fall came they would start chewing the stems.