Thank for clarifying Tom! Now I understand a couple of things much better.
Tom Ivers
wrote:------------------------------------------------------------
However, I can offer some odds and ends of insight, and my comment about
the
above paragraph is that you're skipping an important section of
conditioning.
Let's put it this way--the Law of Progressive Loading says that you
increase
increments of physiological stress a slice at a time. Between LSD and
anaerobic intervals is a large ladder of increments where the animal is
experiencing increased stressors but has not crossed into medium or high
lactate production. For want of a better tag, I call this the
"cardiovascular" stage. The highly anaerobic work, when it comes, is
contained within a relatively short period of final preparation, where
other
work has been tapered back somewhat and where "hard" days are being spaced
more widely apart. In the horse, anaerobic work is a very sharp scalpel of
a
conditioning instrument.
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Yes, I think I understand this part and left out the main part of my
conditioning program for the sake of brevity. However, Bobbie Lieberman
questioned that, and in my next post I clarified that for her.
Tom Ivers
wrote:------------------------------------------------------------
IT does both and more--but the "bursts" I was talking about was not IT.
Interval training is a series of sustained medium to high speed efforts
separated by partial recovery periods. The bursts in competition were to
trigger the firing of Fast Twitch cells, which generally go unused in
moderate-level work. This produces lactic acid fuel which will trickle down
to the ST muscle cells--also covers some ground with "free fuel"--since FT
fuel would not normally be used, just carried around.
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-
AH HAH, This is the part I've been missing all along! This is the flaw in
my competition strategy! Most of us have been preached to over and over to
keep your horse working in its aerobic level in competition. "Don't let
that HRM go above 150 or you'll run out of fuel before you run out of
distance".
I've always wondered how lots of riders could get by with letting their
horses run up a hill in competition, and still have plenty of horse to
finish. (Or beat me--darn it!) I've always rationalized that it was
because they were Featherweights and my horse was carrying 10-20 more
pounds.
Now I see, they are just using that hidden fuel!
On the other hand, I've seen riders (usually Middle and Heavyweights)
charge up long hills and be pulled at the next Vet Check. There must be a
fine line there. I'll have to get more information to work out a strategy
for this.
Tom Ivers wrote:----------------------------------------------------------
Linda, I'm going to need some time to look over your program, so I'll save
your post and do that and get back to everybody with as good an answer as I
can deliver. Remember, I'm not your best coach here--Tina would be better.
But I'll give it a shot.
ti
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Tom, don't spend a lot of time on that scenario before you see the
additions that I wrote to Robbie Lieberman and "RideCamp". (Let me know if
you need those posts and I'll forward them to you). If you don't get to it
I think I've already gotten an abundant amount of insight.
What a provocative concept this is! Now I have something to do this
winter. Revamp my training and competition strategy.
THANKS TOM!
Linda Van Ceylon
lvanceylon@vines.colostate.edu