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>OK OK I know I should know this but everyone mentions LSD and thats just fine
>and dandy but how much walk and how much trot are you talking??? Well, I have
>started doing my LSD and have decided to do it in 3 min trot intentervals (
>can't do more, to many hills ) For example trot three minutes, walk three
>minutes and I will do that for 5-6 miles. Does this sound lke a good plan for
>building a good base for a horse?? Please pardon my ignorence!!!! I would
>greatly appreciate it if any of you could help me with this!!!!! Please reply
>to :
There are a lot of different factors in figuring out what LSD is for you,
and how to incorporate intervals.
First, LSD starts out slow - lots of walking. Then as the horse becomes
better conditioned, you'll increase the speed a bit. As the horse becomes
in yet better condition, you'll increase the speed even more.
So, take your horse out for a couple of hours and determine if
1> can he maintain a good walking pace the entire time?
2> if so, can he maintain a walk/trot pace?
3> if so, can he maintain a trot pace?
Once you have determined his base rate, then you'll figure out what
to do to increase his conditioning. So, say you are at a walk trot
pace. You can trot for 5 minutes, and then need to walk a bit say
2 minutes, then the horse is ready to trot for another 5 minutes.
You could repeat this indefinately. If you are out for 2 hours,
try extending your time to 2.5 hours. When you can do 2.5 hours
at the same pace, try increasing the pace. You'll stay with 2.5 hours,
and now push to 6 or 7 minutes of trotting, with a short break of walking.
Then, extend your ride to 3 hours at the same pace. Do this for many
rides (4-8 rides) before pushing the speed up a bit more.
With hills, you have a bit more of a problem. You have to take the
terrain into consideration. Go out and do a 2 hour ride. Figure out
how much was trotting and how much was walking. Next time out, try
more trotting. For example, when I take Drake out, I'll trot up
every hill, and walk down hill. At the start of the season, we do
lots of walking up hills, and gradually increase the trotting. Mid
season, we are cantering up hills as well. But I still walk down
the hills. My hills are steep, so I like to save his legs.
Long refers to both time and distance. I've given you an example
of 2 hours to start out and increase it to at least 3 hours. My
start of the season ride is about 8 miles. I get to a 12 to 15 mile
ride each week after a month or so (depends on the snow:-). I'll do
this ride in about 3 hours. So my miles per hour is about 4 to 5.
But I'm riding mountains. If I were riding the flat, I'd be doing
10 MPH.
When people speak of intervals, they are generally refering to interval
training. In interval training, you push the horse to a high level
of work for a short time, let the horse partially recover, and then
push the horse again. You repeate the cycle perhaps 6 times, and then
quit for the day. When I was doing regular interval training, I was
working on the flat, I'd trot for 10 minutes as a warm up, then
do canter intervals (3 minutes of canter, 3 minutes of trot, repeat
4 times), 10 minutes of trot, and 10 minutes of walk. Now that I
have a heart rate monitor, I can work the horse to the same level
as measured by a heart rate monitor, bringing the heart rate up to
a certain level, keep it there for a few minutes, then walk till
the heart rate has recovered to a certain point, and repeat the
stress level again.
Since you are just starting out, you should work mostly on the LSD.
When you have this base, you can add in the intervals. LSD builds
all parts the horse's condition - bones, ligaments, tendons, muscles,
cardio-vascular, sweating, etc. Once you have this base, then you
can do the intervals which focus on the cardio-vascular condition
more than anything else. The first part takes years to develop,
the second part takes months.
-- 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) 229-2038
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