| Author | Message | ||
     Adam Member Username: Adam Post Number: 11 Registered: 01-2011 |
How are these monsters warmed up before a race? I have some ideas about kicking in different energy systems before an event, but before I go on a rant would love to hear from the horse folk here about what is actually done. I have heard the term "scoring down" to get a spleen dump. I understand the release of RBC's, but how is it done? What else? Are they ran, walked, made really excited an nervous? And what is the point of each way to get them ready? | ||
| Joe_geiser Senior Member Username: Joe_geiser Post Number: 220 Registered: 07-2008 |
Adam Not sure about how t-breds warm up immediately before a race, if they do at all, but yes standardbreads "score down". We go out on the track for 10 minutes or so and do whatever the trainer and/or diver thinks a particular horse needs to do to get optimal performance for the mile. It's pretty much perception (see, feel and hear). Sometimes the horse is allowed to go all out for a short distance to "Get her on the bit". Sometimes a horse is walked mostly because "He is so hot and too much speed before a race will cause breaking stride [pace/trot] so we need to settle and get collected." Each horse is different and it's as much art as science. I think there is only one absolute, the notion of using the "spleen dump" to enhance performance in a race is pure manure. My sources tell me that the blood completely re-circulates 3 times a minute in a resting horse. Furthermore I’m told that spleen dump relates to beats per minute and it doesn’t take too high a heart rate to make it happen. So when the horse goes to the start the spleen may have already dumped and the system is wide open. So figure it out from there and I hope to waste no more time on considering pre-race spleen dumping. Tell us something we don't already know. Next thought. Andrew keeps coming at me with "Long slow distance conditioning builds endurance muscles." I keep telling him that we are not dealing with endurance horses, we are dealing with speed horses. Actually endurance can be equated to racing 2 hours or 2 minutes. I'm revisiting my conclusion beginning with the notion of having the "endurance" to race full tilt boogie, balls to the wall, optimal output for the mile. Maybe that's endurance. Soon we plan to open the "Pennsylvania Process" thread. It will spring-board from the Maine Project and feature 3 horses: Allentown, Our Black Jellybean and King's Cavalier. The process will encompass heart rate monitoring, lactate analyzing and other possibilities. The tools will be a training track, treadmill, resistance cart, heart monitor, lactate analyzer and a computer. Stay tuned. Thank You. Joe | ||
| Adam Member Username: Adam Post Number: 14 Registered: 01-2011 |
AS far as the warm up, what if you could test a horse to figure out specifically what type of warm up was best, and what would get appropriate energy systems kicked in. For optimal performance you need to get an athlete into an oxygen dependent state. The first two minutes of exercise are oxygen independent, hence lactate spikes if you test someone after 30seconds, no matter what the exercise intensity. I was pondering, and I hope that Jeurg jumps in here to correct me, but if we could run a horse for 1-2min before a race to kick in the oxygen dependent system so that when they start they are already metabolizing lactate at max levels, and then can fuel the slow to fatigue (type I) muscle fibres during the length of a race. The problem arises when a horse doesnt haven enough long slow distance training to be able to last long enough for this to work. I am proposing a warm up that would take a lot out of a horse that had only been trained for 2miles of less. Long slow distance will make this possible. I hope I explained this appropriatedly. Thoughts? Criticisms? The last time I prposed this to a thoroughbred trainer, they asked if i was trying to kill the horse. |