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[RC] 100, Part 2 - Ridecamp GuestPlease Reply to: ti Tivers@xxxxxxx or ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ========================================== At the 4 miles per day milestone, the concept of Periodization comes into partial play. Periodizations simply means had days, easy days, had weeks, easy weeks, hard months, easy months, etc. Arranged in such a way as to maximize the acquisition of fitness while maintaining health and well-being. You may find that your horse needs to see 4 miles one day and 2 miles the next, before he sees 4 miles every day. Later, definite attention must be paid to the horse's recovery cycle. Some stressors are more difficult to recover from than others, requirring more recovery days between such exercises. A scale that accurately measures body weight daily is the key to getting your microcycles (weekly work cycles) right. Later, the more sophisticatred monitoring methods may be necessary (probably will be necessary). During exercise, the horse will lose weight. Most of that lost weight will be muscle fuel and water, but some of it is also damaged tissue parts and other chemicals used up or lost during exercise metabolism. As these mostly chemical components replenish during recovery, lost body weight tracks upwards--usually within 48 hours, body weight is back to the weight you started with before th hard exercise. If body weight drops, then drops again in another 24 hours, you know, for certain, that the exercise was too much for the horse's level of fitness--the horse has gone catabolic. Chronic weight loss is an indicator of overtraining/undernutrition. And overtraining is almost always due to inappropriate periodization. During event-specific conditioning, a week might consist of two or three "hard" days and the rest recovery days. A month of event-specific conditioning might consist of a strong week, a hard week, a very hard week and an easy week. "Hard" and "easy" workloads being primarily defined in terms of distance and/or speed. While you can monitor HR, working HR does not define the "hardness" of the work. HR recovery might, in part, but we'll get into that later. You don't steer your workloads with HR--you monitor with HR and steer with distance and speed. The "gymnasium". At 4 miles a day, you have to get very serious about your exercise environment. You can't just go out and play in the woods. You have to set up training courses and these courses have to be specific to the desired training goal for the day. for example, if today is a "speed" day, then you need mostly flat terrain, with excellent footing, with few sharp curves. You'll be sustaining speed over a long distance with cardiovascular training as well--same kind of training surface. On the other hand, recovery days can be taken over varied terrain at slow speeds--trails. Strength and high intensity days will be taken on hills--short for pure strength work, longer for high intensity oxidative work (where you're trying to achieve capillary and mitochondrial density in the working muscles). If you do not have this kind of gymnasium available, you'll have to move if you want to be competitive--or purchase a high speed treadmill. Skills. Again, from the very beginning, the basic skills must be practiced each week--more often than not on the "off" days. This type of exercise is typically low intensity, low impact and may involve dressage, technical terrain, etc. No surprises. It is dumb to begin putting together your athlete and, right in the middle of the beginning, get a case of Racing Rabies and go out and "try him" in a 50. That's introducing a lot of physiologica "surprises" all at once. Attempting to "race the horse into fitness". It's dangerous to do that and if my perceptions are correct, is a very common practice in US endurance. Just as it is in US flat racing. Dumb, dumb, dumb. The horse should never have to face any type of stressor that it has not experience in training over and over and over again. In fact, a race day should be an "easy day" in comparision to the typical training stressors. An equine athlete should never, ever, be competed over dangerous terrain or in dangerous circumstances. Just skip those rides. Or go take a look and scratch out of the race if the environment isn't safe--crew for somebody instead and save your athlete for better circumstances. Start valuing your in-saddle time at $100 per hour in terms of your investment in your equine athlete. Exposing your partially-fit horse to unnecessary metabolic and physical "surprises" is like running your brand new uninsured pickup into a tree to see what will happen. The purchase price of the horse is meaningless when compared to the time and effort you've put into its conditioning. You can throw it all away in an instant. The No Surprises rule extends to the small stuff covered in the Big Picture, too. No sudden dramatic changes in shoeing, feeding, daily workload, or other environmental factors--even the daily, hour by hour routine must stay as static as possible. Consistent day to day exercise is necessary--the horse doesn't need a day off--you do. And if you don't, then don't give the horse a day off (defined as "no undersaddle exercise" in this context). All of this "small stuff" starts to become critical at the 4 miles per day (24 miles per week) milestone. All systems must be "go" before moving on. Just sit there and wait to pull yourself systems together before moving on. The horse, at this point, is probably capable of a back of the pack 25 over decent, gentle terrain--IF YOU MUST. ti =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. 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