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[RC] School the Mind; Condition the Legs (was: HRM's and Increasing Intensity) - k s swigartMike 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. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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