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[RC] School the Mind; Condition the Legs (was: HRM's and Increasing Intensity) - k s swigart

Mike Sofen said:

Heart rate - based on every source I've discussed
this with - is the primary and fundamental yardstick for assessing
condition
and performance in mammals.  Respiration is a secondary and often
contradictory indicator.  Intensity training requires pushing the
heart rate
up into specific zones for specific periods of time and then watching
the
recovery times.  Can you do this without an HRM?  Perhaps.

Perhaps the difference of opinion that we are seeing here is a
difference in our definitions of intensity training.  When I refer to
intensity training, _I_ am talking about increasing the stresses on the
musculoskeletal system. I find the cardiovascular system to be totally
irrelevant, since if you are doing enough to stress but not doing too
much to overstress the musculskeletal system, you are doing more than
enough to build a completely adequate cardiovascular system.  I don't go
out and gallop up hills to build the heart and lungs; I go out and
gallop up hills to build muscle, bone, tendons, ligaments, etc.  The
fact that this also builds the heart and lungs is a "happy accident."
:):):)

Seriously, in my experience, if your have done enough conditioning to
adequately prepare the musculoskeletal system for the stresses it will
be subject to during the course of an endurance ride, you have done more
than enough conditioning to adequately prepare the cardiovascular system
for same.

If you run your horse beyond his cardiovascular conditioning, you have
run your horse WAAAAAAY beyond the its musculoskeletal fitness.  And
this whole discussion got started because of Jim Holland's discussion
about his non-completion in his first 100 miler; and it is my
understanding (though he doesn't specifically say it in his post) that
the reason he didn't finish wasn't because his horse had cardiovascular
problems, but because (and here I am guessing, but the "I didn't bring a
rump rug makes me suspect it) that the horse got muscle cramps in its
hind end for being asked to work its MUSCLES beyond their level of
conditioning.

If you want to build the butt muscles to handle sustained exercise at
speed through sand, heart rate is virtually irrelevant...but if you DO
the appropriate conditioning of the butt muscles to be able to handle
sustaned exercise at speed through sand, then I guarantee you, you will
have built more than enough cardiovascular conditioning in the process,
but if you were to do this type of intensity training with an endurance
horse that already had a "cardiovascular base" on it by working it to
its HR max/recovery that you will rip your horse's suspensory aparatus
to shreds.

We already know that most endurance horses that don't complete rides it
is because they are not musculoskeletally fit rather than not
cardiovascularly fit....because most horses are pulled for lameness,
despite the fact that most of them "recovered" to the P&R criteria just
fine.

I don't use a HRM in my training (except, as I said for its
entertainment value), because I don't want to fool myself into thinking
I can run the legs off of my horses just because their hearts and lungs
can handle the stress just fine :).

Mike asks:

How do you personally tell when a horse has shifted from aerobic
to anaerobic mode, heck, how do you even find that point?  How do you
tell
when your horse has dropped from a max heart rate (like 200) to a
recovery
heart rate (like 105)?

Well, mostly I can tell that my horse is "starting to go anaerobic"
(BTW:  there is no hard line shift from all one to all the other) if he
kinda starts breathing harder for the same amount of effort; however,
this is just one of many indications that the horse is starting to get
oxygen starved.  One of the other excellent indicators is by how the
horse carries its head and neck.

And I can also tell you that when my horse's HR is up over 200 (they
have max heart rates varying from 220 to 250, I know this because I have
entertained myself with a HRM :)) _I_ can feel it through the saddle.
And the horse has dropped to a "recovery" rate when I can no longer feel
it through the saddle :).

And believe it or not, I consider this to be more meaningful than a
number out of a HRM, because feeling it through the saddle tells you
much more than just heart RATE, it also gives you a clue into stroke
volume; you can feel it through the saddle not because the heart is
beating so FAST, but because it is beating so HARD.  So, even if the
rate has dropped to _______ (fill in the blank, say 105); if you can
still feel it through the saddle, your horse has not fully recovered
cardiovascularly, because the heart is still pumping lots more blood.
Don't be fooled into thinking that just because the HRM monitor says
that your horse has reached a predefined "recovery" rate, that your
horse has recovered....especially if what you feel through the saddle is
erratic (which a HRM also won't tell you).

Really, you need to entertain yourself with a HRM for a long time before
the data coming out of it becomes sufficiently meaningful to start
making decisions based on it. Especially since the numbers vary from
horse to horse...and because it is only one of a million things that you
need to pay attention to.

kat
Orange County, Calif.



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