Ridecamp: Re: [RC] leasing and how many days a week do you ride for a 25?

I agree with Heidi.  I know human and equine physiology are different, but
on several occasions I myself have over-worked my body by working out twice
in one day or in some cases, hard workouts two days in a row.  This does me
no good, sometimes make me vomit (no fun), and causes me undue stress.  This
is why I also believe the body needs at least 24 hours to rest and heal and
build after a workout.  If I'm remembering right from my own physiology
classes the body does some serious work in the 24 hours following physical
stress.

C.
----- Original Message -----
From: <heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lif@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 2:48 PM
Subject: Re: [RC] leasing and how many days a week do you ride for a 25?


> > Quoted from heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx's message:
> >>You should ride every other day at most, and a 3-day-a-week program
> >>works  well for most horses, with two shorter rides followed by one
> >>rest day and  a longer ride followed by two rest days
> >
> > Actually, it's important to put some back-to-back days in as well.
> > Tack  problems and other problems that won't show up on conditioning
> > rides - but  *do* on endurance rides - will often make themselves
> > obvious by riding two  or three days in a row.  Additionally, I think
> > you get more conditioning  value out of back-to-back rides.  Consider
> > how many people report that  their horses actually improve in condition
> > over the course of a multi-day  ride.  If that's the case, *careful*
> > back-to-back conditioning training  will do the same.  Of course I'm
> > not talking 7/week - you would have to  schedule rest days just as
> > carefully as work days.
>
> You can actually create problems by conditioning back-to-back that you
> would never encounter by giving the horse adequate rest between rides.
> Tissue recovery times are in the neighborhood of 48-72 hours, and small
> increments of damage can become cumulative when there is insufficient rest
> between exercise sessions.  It takes a very astute horseman to catch
> subclinical damage before it becomes more serious--and even the most
> astute can be fooled sometimes.  I wouldn't suggest doing back-to-back
> rides until a horse is already fairly fit, unless it is a matter of doing
> very subminimal work (polishing arena skills, etc.) on in-between days.
> BTW, multi-day horses seem to go one of two directions--they either go and
> go and go, and look like they could keep right on going at the end of 5
> days, or they start to look a bit shaggy around day 3.  For the former
> horses, 50 miles is submaximal exercise--for the latter, they are pushing
> themselves to do 50, and by the 3rd day, the subclinical damage starts to
> become clinical.
> Heidi
>
>
>
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