Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

"...The more important thing to look at is
how the baseline, unconditioned HR decreases with conditioning.
  In humans, the recovery time to resting HR is a function of 
conditioning..."

This post made a lot of sense to me in relation to my experiences with the 
conditioning of horses.  My experience directly relates to competing in 
CTR*.  In CTR the pulse is taken a standardized time after a relatively 
standardized exercise.  The goal is to have a pulse no higher than the value 
that results in no points deducted.  The rules I competed under used 36 BPM 
as the magic number.  Other organizations use other numbers, and the current 
post should not be construed as an opening to a discussion of the 
reasonableness of CTR rules.

Those who were purchasing an adult horse to "win" CTR, would (along with all 
of the usual things for a distance athlete) look for horses who, in an 
unconditioned state, had as low a RHR as possible.

The horses I purchased for distance riding (I did CTR on them for a couple 
of seasons, then Endurance) had 40 to 44 RHR's.  About average for an adult 
horse, I was told by my vet.  I found that their pulse at checks (10 minutes 
+/- from entry) would decrease with increasing condition and that after a 
year when I started some interval training would drop another 4 to 8 bpm. 
My score sheets show these horses with a 40-48 pulse on checks where the 
first few rides they were 44-52. bpm.

This would indicate to me that the true RHR (asleep and rested) was changed 
minimally, but the recovery to near this got faster with conditioning.

When I moved from CTR to Endurance, these horses would drop to 60 as soon as 
I got them cool.  I have won races by deliberately enticing my competition 
to go into checks hot, knowing that a bucket or so of water would get my 
horse down before theirs.

Ed
*This post relates to UMECRA rules for CTR, which they call "competitive 
riding".  The complete rules are found on:
www.umecra.com
Ed & Wendy Hauser
2994 Mittower Road
Victor, MT 59875

(406) 642-9640

ranch(at)sisuwest(dot)us 


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