The Education of Toti
the horse lifts the seat of the rider at each stride, he is on the forehand and his front feet will be overloaded, walk- ing and delayed in the diagonal action. The forwardness of the transition will be compromised. If the horse is made to sit too much behind by
repeated half-halt actions, the hind legs will lose their lift and the horse will go toward a levade, first keeping one of his front legs up. Forwardness will again be lost. The delicate balance of the horse is fundamental
to the piaffe. Each pair of legs must have the correct loading and the correct form of activity (flexing and lifting behind, rebounding in front). Vertical front legs are ready to rebound and produce a clean depart into passage, or trot, or canter. The proper balance of the horse and the correct mechanics of the movement affects the transitions in and out of piaffe, which are as important as the piaffe and passage themselves. This is why this movement is considered the pinnacle of dres- sage work and deserves all our attention. It reflects the quality of the rest of the training and reveals underlying problems to the educated eye. A good piaffe requires the horse to understand
several concepts and be able to: move in very small steps until moving in place; synchronize his diagonals by increasing his
throughness from back to front (every time we touch the horse behind, he must lift the opposite front leg); respond to the whip by lowering his haunches
rather than raising them; reduce the length of the strides by quickening the
tempo rather than slowing it down as in the passage. In short, a passagey trot does not lead to a correct
piaffe. Instead the horse must learn to achieve transitions down by modulating the thrust from its maximum to nearly nothing (as Steinbrecht recommended). In Portu- guese, we say that to prepare the piaffe under saddle, the horse must learn “to trot like a little pig,” meaning a short, unimpressive gait with quick little steps. I qualify this as a shuffle, a little four-beat.
Keys to Success Many repetitions of a movement, asked in a low inten- sity mode (proportional to the horse’s degree of willing- ness and ability) without any pressure toward a perfect posture or any intensity of performance, is usually the best way to get there. When a novice trainer sets the training standard on the level of a show performance level, everybody gets anxious and frustrated (particularly the horse) and the work shows more resentment than willingness. The mechanics of the movement must be mastered first at a low level; the expressiveness comes (much) later.
34 May/June 2016
Here is a piaffe in its final form: the author’s stallion JP Orion and JP working in hand, exhibiting a piaffe with a completely uphill topline, flexed hind legs, tail showing calm, ears showing trust, and JP using his Endostick. (Orion’s knees could be a little higher.)
The second great secret of a good piaffe is to teach the
horse to start it at any time, and in many different places, as well as to teach him to stop on command (by a light leg or whip pressure) before he wants to stop. Immobil- ity is the opposite of piaffe and it is always important for the rider to be able to control both sides of every concept (fast and slow, impulsion and balance, forward and back- ward, animation and complete calm, etc.).
What Not To Do When I hear that a horse has “talent for piaffe and passage,” as a whole, I am immediately suspicious about the method used because the two movements are very different in nature. Passage is based on thrust and slow cadence (not really a collected gait, just an elevated one), while piaffe is quicker, with engagement and vertical lift, the true “concentration of forces.” It is standard practice today to attempt a passage
step from the medium trot by a half-halt with an increase of activity. This method doesn’t work very well as far as collection is concerned. We see many irregular passages resulting from this approach. If the horse is not perfectly symmetrical, when the pace is reduced in speed, the asymmetry becomes amplified since speed tends to hide problems. It is very rare that a horse needs to be taught passage
before piaffe. Those are usually very active and nervous horses who need the calmness of the cadenced gait. The trainer can then reduce the length of the passage steps very carefully until the horse passages in place. This is not a true sitting piaffe, but a horizontal form of the air (the Baucher method). This work requires a very experi- enced rider.
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