Warming Up: Specifics

First warming up post, April 24. Wow! Time is flying. Of course the Triple Crown rightly diverted the blog as did my readings on Whittingham and Woody Stephens, and with our futility in trying to get to the track and the weather also needing some space.

But, now it's back to warming up, and how training and racing cause injuries. I'd finished some posts on racing surface and shoeing and was just getting into the "warm up", posing the question: Does the manner of warming up have any effect on performance and injury prevention? You'd think so, but, to analyze, quantify, and apply on the race track? Is there any method of observation that would tell us that our horse is warmed up to the point of maximum performance and injury prevention?

Nothing like a photo from Churchill of ponies warming up to get us in the mood. Focus on the chestnut in the picture, and let's take him through his warm up start to finish: 4f canter, walk, 2f canter a little faster, 6-8 min. line up and walk to gate, load and out he comes--an above average warm up for an American Track. Take a look at this with the physiological factors listed in my June 5 post in mind:

First factor: "Increase in heart rate and efficiency, speeding up O2 delivery, changing blood viscosity, engagement of NO2 mechanisms to achieve capillary dilation."

Hmmm.

Let's concede, this warm up raises heart rate. Does it raise it enough for maximum performance? I never thought so until the first time I visited myself the starting gate and loaded my own horse at Eureka Downs. Being there right at the scene you immediately notice a surprising amount of activity in the loading process and a level of excitement from horses and handlers that you'd never pick up with binoculars. Horses being spinned, veering, strutting, eyeballs popping, etc., I'd say that the increase in heart rate is the least of our problems here. Tom Ivers noted the equine heart spins up pretty fast!

Without getting into details I'll volunteer that "blood viscosity" and "NO2 production" deal more with human distance events or workouts over time such as weight lifting. But, we want capillary dilation, especially that that might come from multiple heats with some speed. Get very little of that here.

"Increase in temperature"--this refers to all tissue, muscles, ligaments and bones, both to fire up the energy producing process and to increase plasticity so that at point of maximum stress the cells hold together instead of burst. Depends on the weather. 10 minutes of our warm up on a hot day will do it in terms of muscles. Question whether it does much for the bones though.
Colder it gets the more activity is necessary. Horses get hot quickly. It will do, but doubt it's optimal.

Since this is getting long, I'll continue next post.

Today's training: Catching up, as of Tuesday we were able to commence actual galloping. Amart and his latest abscess first allowed us to work Wednesday. A week of strengthening so far has gone like this:
Wed. 6/13/07 4x3f slow riderless gallop. 7 min. walk under tack.
Thurs. 6/14/07 5x3f slow riderless gallop. This is his tack off day. Horse looks weak and runs weak, as we'd expect with the amount of layoff. Still looks slightly ouchy on the abscess, but ok.