Evaluating Warmup: Signaling

Serious human athletes I believe would agree that the warm up process really is a signaling process with analogy similar to a computer booting up, the nervous system alerts every cell in the body that something is up. As the warm up increases its intensity, cells, whatever their function, prepare themselves for performance--muscle cells tighten and contract, bone material girds itself for motion and concussion, bonds in tendons and ligaments engage, cells that line the blood vessels expand and dilate, and energy processes in the mitochondria of cells all over the body "engage".

For the human athlete the point at which warm up ends and we're ready for maximum performance is a bit of a subjective thing as we visualize the athlete announcing to themselves "I'm ready".

How is this state of "readiness" determined? Thinking about it in terms of running events I'm convinced that for performance the key factor is the last one that really seems to engage, which is the cardiovascular system and in particular the heart. Non-athletes can ferret this out for themselves if you imagine yourself from a position of rest going out and doing a 40 yard sprint. You will be seriously out of breath toward the end, your heart racing and you may even feel some light headedness, and this regardless of your conditioning. The cardiovascular system has yet to do its thing in terms of maximum performance.

Do a second sprint after the first and things will get easier, and probably by the third you'll be churning along with far less effort and distress than in the first sprint and even the second.

For our horses also there is a signaling of readiness. Its difficult to perceive this from the ground, but, if you're on the horse it goes something like this: Commencing the canter and gallop you can feel that the horse is without any desire to sprint a way. They always start slow as if they know they need to do more work before sprinting. At some point in the gallop the horse will start to speed up as its systems engage. This speed up I generally find comes at about 3f of galloping or after about 45 seconds into the work.

Then there comes a point where the energetic horse is willing to take off, and increase speed. However, the initial acceleration goes only to a certain point. Instead of being full speed it tends to be two minute lick speed. This "willingness" generally occurs at about a minute, minute fifteen seconds into the gallop, and again, you can feel it on board.

If the rider desires speed prior to the minute of galloping they can certainly get it by speeding the horse up, BUT this pre-fully warmed up-gallop will be unsteady and you'll quickly note the horse going into oxygen debt as the energy used exceeds cell energy production due to lack of efficient engagement.

In the warm up how far and how fast and at what intervals do we need to take the horse to achieve its best performance? That is the question.

Training:
Groovin'Wind did another steady 1 1/4 mile gallop in :17s last night as prep for tonights farm breezing. Noted this morning Wind is getting a little ribby. You expect this as work proceeds, but the pasture going dormant probably contributes. The horse gets fed thrice daily with designed supplementation. With the weight of our rider we welcome a bit of weight loss in the horse. Given the work load to date, however, Wind is losing weight earlier than expected, and this is something else to watch.
Art:
8/19/07 Sunday Day 2 Burch: 5 min under tack
8/20/07: Mon: Day 3 Burch: 5 x 2f riderless at 90% speed with some all out stuff.
8/21/07 Tues: Day 2 Burch (we skipped day 1 because the Mon. work was in the morning) 2 miles steady riderless gallop after 1/2 mile warm up at about :18. 7 min walk under tack. Very windy. Horse trying to buck. Nob was careful.