Preston Burch

I'll write a lot more about this noted trainer at a later time. Since we are doing Preston Burch type training, for this blog to make any sense, it's necessary to describe what Burch recommends. It all comes from his book which can be found at Amazon.

Since Burch was a trainer for a lifetime, in his book basically he describes how he carries out the day to day operation of his stable. The actual training is found in exercise descriptions for several horses including 1951 Preakness winner Bold. Bold's entire training regimine is copied in the book.

As far as I'm able to tell, there's really but one principle to Burch training. Every horse from very young age breezes or races every three days. That's it. The distance and speeds vary according to trainer's judgment and what race is being prepared for. From what is described, Burch appears to favor speed in the breezes as opposed to slow breezes. On the off days Burch writes you rest, walk, trot or gallop as the trainer sees fit. The horses described peform this program month upon month seemingly stopped only by injury and winter layoffs..

I'm less disciplined than Burch, but, I'm working on it. The intent is to do speed work every three days. But, this is an extremely rigorous program. I've done it at times for months at a time, and I'll write more about this experience at a later date. But, Y is the first of my yearlings in this, and so we're walking into unknown territory here, excepting what i read in Burch. Heaven only knows with today's predominately soft training, the present day trainers would poo poo this. I hope they continue to do so, by the way.

Thurs. 12/14/06: today is Day 2 after the last speedwork on Tuesday. Yesterday was very easy light stuff. Today the 30 lbs Astride was placed on Y, and he was let loose in the saddling area. He immediately bucked and played his way out to the pasture were he was driven back and forth over the same 1.5 furling course for precisely 8 min. 45 sec. Eyeballing the work, that amount of time seemed just right. The speed was slow gallop speed. I ran out of horse feed and last 24 hours Y only was fed alfalfa pellets and pasture. I thus expected (and wanted) less energy so that he would gallop slowly, as we plan speedwork tomorrow. Slow gallops in this manner are fairly easy to control. There was generally a 10-20 second rest between the back and forths as the trainer caught up and the chase commenced. I was very pleased to get today exactly what was planned. It only rarely works out way,