Help with Piaffe, X/C question

[SailleCinza]

My instuctor switched barns again, and I followed her. Now I'm riding her horse, a retired Grand Prix dressage horse. He's sweet and wise, almost 18hh! I love him, but he's a lot of horse.

She told me that oftentimes people can't ride him, even trainers she's had come visit. I had reservations, obviously, once she told me this.

We did everything pretty well, with true collection. Another woman said I did "amazing" for my first time on Avatar, and not considering I'm only 13. Whoot!

Anyways, I have a question. We finished with piaffe, and I'm wondering the role of the seat in piaffe? It's obviously very bouncy, and I need a soft and flexible lower back. Do I simply open my seat and absorb the movement? Please explain.

Also, and please keep in mind I'm in America, when someone says Prelim, do they mean prelim x/c, or is that a level of dressage in the UK? Here, I'm led to believe dressage is level novice, training, 1, 2, 3, 4, gp. Please explain this as well.

-Alyssa

[IrisSilverMoon]

Prelim is a UK thing, some other countries have it too, I dont know the order of levels, or what is involved in each one, but I do know that advanced medium is approximately equivilent to our 3rd level.

I would say for the seat in Piaffe one of the important things is to not do too much with it. Its really easy to want to wiggle around to try to get piaffe (i'm definately guilty of this), but if you do that the horse can't move into piaffe. So probably the best advice I would give is to absorb the movement, but don't really concentrate on it too much, don't do more than you have to. Ideally piaffe will come from a slight change in elevation of the horse. You bring him up and he starts to piaffe, but to stop, you would stop absorbing with the seat and it will stop...:)

make sense? hehe...everytime someone posts a question like this i have to stop and think about what I'm doing...:p i hope i got it right.

[Tor&Warrior]

We had two retired Grand Prixe Dressage horses at college and when we did Piaffe on them the instructor would always tell us, once we've prepared them for it to just do as little as possible and let them get on with it. If we thought or tried to help we'd tense up and not help them one bit!

Prelim is the first level of dressage, then Novice, Elementary, Medium, Advanced Medium, and Advanced.

Torx

[SailleCinza]

Thank you - I had a feeling you were just supposed to absorb it. You were very helpful - I was worried about screwing Avatar up. Ok, so Tor, the list u gave are levels in the UK? Thx!

[Tor&Warrior]

Yeah there the UK levels!

Torx

[Zip_n_Prin]

The levels in the US go

Intro Level
Training
First
Second
Third
Fourth
Pre St. Georges
Intermediate I
Intermediate II
Grand Prix

Hope that helps!

[LouiseEdwards]

Tests in the UK are graded as follows;- (ascending in order of difficulty) Preliminary, Novice, Elementary, Medium, Advanced Medium, Advanced, Prix St George, Intermediaire I, Intermediaire II, Grand Prix and Grand Prix Special.

Dressage rules!!!