Education of
A yearlong series that follows the training and development of a young stallion.
Toti The
By JP Giacomini
Regardless of the discipline one intends for the future of a young, athletic sport horse, most trainers will agree that the first year of work is focused on the basics. Although there are many roads that can “lead us to Rome,” this column will present the ongoing education of the four-year-old Warmblood stallion Totil Hit, or “Toti,” over a period of one year. From backing to his debut in competition, trainer JP Giacomini will present the tech- niques he uses for Toti, working in hand, on the lunge and long lines, free jumping and under saddle.
Collection is the state of the prancing stallion: always balanced, thanks to his arched neck; always mobile, thanks to his active legs; always beautiful. This is the image of the archetypal horse imprinted in the human psyche.
Training Journal #6 Introducing Collection with the Piaffe T
he collected stallion courting his mares or challenging his rival is the reason why riders of the past five centuries have followed the quest of Xenophon: searching for and discovering increasingly more effec-
tive ways to recreate this natural image and present the horse in the stylized version of all his movements. The Italians of the Renaissance, discovering the magnificent Iberian stallions of their invaders, tried to devise ways to get their heavier, less fiery horses to move in the same way. From this quest came the idea of collection, quite different from the simple utilization of the horse as a mean of transport. This is dressage.
Collection Defined in History In a nutshell, collection is the ability of the horse to shorten his frame, round his back a little, elevate his front end (from the front feet to the withers) to improve his balance and flex his hind legs as a way to transform forward thrust (the slower backward push of the hind feet) into activity (the quicker lifting of those hind feet toward the center of the body). The quicker the hind feet move and the more they come under the body,
the more they produce balance allied with mobility. This is traditionally called an “unstable balance,” meaning a dynamic equilibrium. Gustav Steinbrecht (a nineteenth century dressage master) said that one of the main purposes of training was to modulate the thrust from its maxi- mum to next to nothing and back to maximum. The ability to produce those variations from forward thrust to upward lift, (not from forward thrust to vertical thrust—which only happens in jumping), is the basis of modern dressage. La Guérinière had already defined collection as a way to put the horse
together (“unified action”), mostly for the eventual practice of the high jumps (high energy movements starting from a sitting position of levade). The stan- dard for piaffe until today (the lifted hind hoof elevated to the height of the standing hind leg fetlock joint, flexed haunches, forearm horizontal) was defined at that time and reflected the type of movement of Iberian horses who could sit in collection quite easily. Later on, Baucher (the French nineteenth century trainer, teacher, author and equestrian inventor) explained that there were two types of collection: one with concentration of forces and another without it. He came to this
Warmbloods Today 31
Shelley Giacomini
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76