Re: heart rate

["Frank Mechelhoff" <fmechelh@c-s-k.de>]

Jerald Thiessen wrote:

> I understand the lenght of time a horse can maintain a speed is the
> difference between aerobic vs. anaerobic work but that does not explain
> the heart rate difference at the same speed doing different gaits.

Hi Jerald,
it's like your car: what would happen if you try to drive v-max in second
gear ? the bpm will go up and the machine will complain heavily about the
stress.
it's the same with the horse. it shift gears to lower the bpm (heart rate).
There is a study of the German Engelhard out there, who proved this with
ponies on a high speed treadmill in the 70's. Lew Hollander quotes this in
his book and had a nice graph with heart rate at one axle and speed on the
other. one result is there is an optimum speed for each gait.

as far as endurance horses are concerned, the aim is 1) try to find this
optimum speed at each gait, and 2) developing the natural gaits to a
broad-band spectrum, so you can use the second or third gear quite equal. a
horse like a cummins-diesel.

regards
->    Frank    <-