Consider the shark. The shark swims continually. Other than a
nurse shark, the sharks must swim in order to breath. So the
shark just hangs out, swimming slowly for hours at a time.
Then along comes lunch. For a very short time, the shark
swims very fast, catches lunch, and then settles back to the
slow swim.
Now consider "lunch". It swims around very fast, darting to and
fro, and trying to not become lunch.
If you happen to eat shark (very tasty btw), you'll see that shark
meat has a lot of dark meat to it. As opposed to other fish which
is mostly light or white meat.
(Alright folks, here's where I always screw up, so some one check
this:-) Do I have slow and fast twitch correct?)
[Note that while I say fast twitch muscles, it is really a part of
the muscle fiber that responds, not, for example, the complete hamstring
muscle that is all one or the other type of fast/slow twitch.]
The slow continual motion develops the slow twitch muscles.
Those muscles don't need to move quickly. But they do need to
continue to move for many hours at a time.
The fast twitch muscle need to have short and fast bursts of speed.
They are not used continually. Most of the time, they aren't
used at all.
A horse is sort of like a shark. The horse walks along munching
on grass for 18 hours a day. Along comes the cougar and the
horse runs for safety. Maybe a few minutes of flat out running.
Then the horse goes back to grazing. The horse has developed
a greater percentage of slow twitch muscle.
If you take a variety of horse breeds, you'll find that some have
more slow twitch muscles than other breeds. Why do you find mostly
Arabs and Arab crosses in endurance? Because they have, at the start, a
greater percentage of the slow twitch muscles. Why can you not beat a
QH at the quarter mile? Because they have a higher percentage of
fast twitch muscles. Individuals in each breed with vary, as always.
(And yes, there are many other factors as well that make an endurance
horse or a race horse.)
With training you can increase the percentage of slow twitch muscle, or
increase the percentage of fast twitch muscle. For the race horse, you
want to increase the fast twitch muscles. For the endurance horse
you want to increase the slow twitch muscles. You increase the
muscle type by doing what makes sense - for speed, train at speed:
for endurance, train at LSD. You can't completely change a horse,
and who would want to, but you can give it a little extra burst
with proper training.
-- Wendy\|/ /\ -O- /**\ /|\ /****\ /\ / \ /**\ Here there be dragons / /\ / \ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\/\/\ /\ / / \ / \ / \/\/ \/ \ /\/ \/\ /\ /\/ / / \/ \ / / \/ /\ \ / \ \ / \/ / / \/ \/ \ / \ \ / / \/ \/\ \ / \ / / \ __/__/_______/___/__\___\__________________________________________________
Wendy Milner HPDesk: wendy_milner@hp4000 Hewlett-Packard Company e-mail: wendy@fc.hp.com Mail Stop A2 Telnet: 229-2182 3404 E. Harmony Rd. AT&T: (970) 229-2182 Fort Collins, CO, 80525 FAX: (970) 229-4292