Back On Topic And A Short Review

I began my posts on "Warm Up" on April 22 and then got side tracked by the Derby, the weather and also my reading of Woody Stephens Autobiography "Guess I'm Lucky" and Jay Hovdey's "Whittingham." Since this is a blog I feel a constitutional right to get distracted from the topic at hand, but, that's all done now, and I'd like to conduct a short review of what I'm trying to do, and then get on with it. Of course, the Preakness is coming up, and I do have some thoughts on what looks to be a real nice race!

I started this blog with a view to training my new yearling for the Derby. That's other than to say that we'll actually make it to the Derby, the odds being what they are. However, I see zero reasons to train a horse for anything else than the very best. And so, there's two questions for us with our new now two year old horse named Amart: 1. can we muster the considerable effort that it takes to get a horse in the staring gate, and 2. how do we train this horse.

Number 1 above as to my energy and carrying things on is a work in progress that I'll comment on from time to time. Anybody that has ever trained a race horse will understand where I'm going there.

On Number 2, the training, I'm looking and still learning to conduct the best training program I can put together. I stated early on that I was trying to duplicate the training of Preston Burch as expressed in his book, and then I set out to explain why that training instead of so many other possibilities. And, of course, with my recent reading of Whittingham, we have yet another and very effective training program to consider.

I began posting on why we're doing Burch by first discarding other available programs. The first program looked at was traditional conventional training: defined, described, and pros and cons. I concluded that this style of training is uncompetitive and injures horses. I'm presently describing exactly how conventional training injures horses, and I've reached the point of describing the "warm up" which I will continue with from April 22 next post.

How is our training of Art going? The present status might fairly be described as the "it's one thing or the other syndrom". Mostly it's been the weather, but Art, unlike my older horses, has also been plagued over the last two months with hoof problems. I could dwell on the weather situation, which was unusually horrible this year, but, my tendency is just to go on.

We trained as much as we could through the problems, and, the horse while far short of where he might have been, has made some progress in general strengthening and conditioning. There is now a base to build on, and, I believe, (knocking on wood) that we'll be making fast progress from here.

So, next post it's back to warming up and how conventional training, specifically, injures horses.

Today's training:
5/12/07 Sat. Day 2 Burch: riderless gallop slow in the paddock and 7-8 walking under tack.
5/13/07 Sun. Day 3 Burch: 7-8 min riderless work in paddock with older horse--mostly play, but several short 3/4 speed bursts. Avoided pressing horse today. 10 min walk under tack.
5/14/07 Mon. Day 1 Burch: The speed work yesterday was light, and so, it was decided to do some serious slower galloping today given the state of training. This is the first day since the recent layoff that I've done serious work instead of just play. The horse in the company of an oldster was driven around the paddock in 2f heats as follows: 8 x 2f at continuous riderless gallop at about 2:10/mile speed. But, speed was maintained all the way through each gallop instead of playing around as in prior days. Horse looked a little weak doing this. then, 10 min. walk under tack. Horse is doing a nice job with his tack work.