Warming Up: We Get To the Problem

Prior posts dealt with five of the six physiological purposes of the warm up for our fictional chestnut in term of injury causation and getting max performance out of the gate. Now however, we finally get to "the" part of warming up that has the most direct concern on the main topic, which is how training causes injuries.

The purpose of the warm up #6: To increase the force of muscle contraction and to prepare tissue, bone, cartilage, and connective tissue, ligaments and tendons to WITHSTAND impending force.

"Withstand" is the operative term here, for failure to withstand, bear, brace, confront. take it, tolerate it, etc., will bring down our horse. What are we talking about directly? Fractures, catastrophic fractures, bowed tendons, pulled suspensories, knee chips, chips in the fetlock, and in a lesser sense pulled muscles, bruised feet, etc. etc.

The "impending force" being talked about is both the force generated by moving 1000 lbs of horse at 40 mph, and also the 10,000 lbs./square inch of force generated with each stride on and through the cannon bones at speed. Unknown where Tom Ivers came up with the 10,000 lbs/sq. inch. Guess it's been measured previously; the point is, there's a lot of force coming down on the legs of the horse at speed.

The point of #6 above first presumes the horse has received sufficient training that an appropriate warm up "can" pull things together before the start of the race. And, inherent in #6 is that the horse at rest or the horse warmed up inappropriately will be unable to "withstand" and be injured. Hence, there are somethings which we may call warming up which in terms of #6 are anything but.

Since I'm here talking about the heart of the matter in terms of injuries, next posts I'll seguay at bit into the physiology of all this as there are some basics necessary for discussion.

Catching Up On Our Training:
The older horses had another perfect workout Sunday. We still have a couple of weeks to go before we max out what we can accomplish at the farm. The truck radiator is being installed as I type, and presumably it'll be off to Eureka soon.
6/17/07 Sun.: 4x3f riderless gallop at decent pace. Art looked was playing with usual enthusiasm but look uncomfortable on his feet. Sure enough, at the end of the 4th heat a couple of lame steps. RR Rule: always abort at any sign of injury. Thus, heat #5 immediately cancelled. Remnant of the abscess here. We'll see next session. The horse also walked under tack for ten minutes before the heats.
6/18/07 Mon.: Off due to weather. What's nice about Burch training--your one off day is just a rest for the next speed work. Perfect amount of rain just enough to keep things green. We should be ok for tonight.