Fun with Fitness!!

[Teddy Lancaster <Teddy@runningbear.com>]

What do you think of riders who constantly complain about having
to meet a "60" pulse.  "My horse can't do that, he never does,
yet wins lots of rides."

Funny, they just don't get it.  They are riding their horse
beyond the present fitness level.  Either to stressed out from
too much overall work and not enough recovery, or simply not yet
fit enough to do the job.

AND, this business of dousing the horse with water to make his
pulse come down!!!  Unless it ia 90 degrees and 90% humidity,
this, IMO, is counter-productive.  From my experience, the FIT
horses recover quickly WITHOUT water.

Say, how about a new "T-shirt":

YOU KNOW YOUR HORSE IS FIT WHEN:

1. His pulse is 60 in 2 minutes at a vet check and goes down to
40 in 10 minutes......

Keep on adding, let's have some fun with education!!!

Teddy



CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 12/24/98 3:47:17 AM Pacific Standard Time, fmechelh@c-s-
> k.de writes:
> 
> << When I do a workout on the trail what I call strenous (you may not agree
> that is
>  real stressfull from your race experience?), i.e. 7 minutes with HR 160-190,
> and
>  then slow down to walk, the HR drop very constantly - at first very quickly,
> then
>  slower.
>  I don't see any plateau, neither with Natja nor Ligeira. Even if I record the
> beat
>  every 5 seconds and make a graphic printout afterwards. >>
> 
> Hi, Frank--
> 
> I think what you are seeing is pretty typical in aerobic athletes that are not
> overstressed.  Can't remember the details, but seem to also remember something
> like that in some work done years ago by Dr. Jim Coffman--not being an
> academic, though, I don't know that I could lay hands on the actual papers...
> The "plateau" that I typically see is more of a recovery end stage--which is
> why it concerns me when horses "hang" at a number like 68 or 64.  Have already
> posted my comments about what someone had observed as "training" horses to
> recover to 64--we found horses hanging at that number, too, until we dropped
> criteria to 60, whereupon we found that riders rode a notch less hard, brought
> horses to us in better shape, and the horses merely passed the number 60 on
> their way down to lower numbers.  Those that hit 60 and plateau--or go back up
> to 64--I have found tend to slow up on the next legs of the ride (unless it is
> the last vet check where we see it, whereupon we see poor recoveries at BC in
> many cases), so I DO think it is significant.
> 
> Another interesting observation that has stuck with me--several years ago,
> Kerry Ridgway vetted a ride in Australia and wrote an article observing that
> the Australian horses fairly consistently continued to recover on into the
> 40's after meeting criteria, whereas ours did not.  I am happy to report that
> ours DO, given different ride strategies and asked for lower overall
> recoveries.  Our mistake here, IMO, was making criteria too high, and having
> riders ride right to the edge to meet those high criteria.
> 
> Heidi Smith, DVM