Warming Up For Injury Prevention

As I get my two twelve year olds, and knocking on wood here, closer to racing, I start training bone cells. All I do as the stress, speed and distance increase involves keeping the horse running, which for equines strictly means avoiding injury. Even in my handicapping days at Ak-Sar-Ben before I ever owed a horse it was starting to dawn on me that those trainers that could keep 'em running would win. Why even Mary The Twit possessed of one of the longest loosing streaks in history eventually won a race and I cashed a nice ticket.

The best conditioning for racing is to run a race, and those horses with decent husbandry tend eventually to improve and win if, and it's a huge if, they can keep on doing it.

I spent a good deal of the summer posting about my little studies on bone warm up, and now I'm into looking at just what specifically in terms of a warm up schematic is going to do the trick.

Start this out by noting, if you care to read the posts, that there's almost zero doubt that warm up affects fracture resistance and by the same token increases the ability soft tissue--ligaments and tendons--to hold together under stress.

What exactly we need to do pre-race or pre-breeze to max out fracture resistance? I'm positive the question has yet to be studied. Somebody in one of the vet schools will wake up one day and give us some data, but, so far, zilch.

So, we have to guess at what we need to do. Open it by noting the impossibility that cantering beside a pony along with a little trot-walk for ten minutes is going to do much in terms of preparing the bone connective tissue both live and mineral for concussion. I've figured with a fair degree of confidence that bone tissue in the warm up react to the stress applied. The horse shuffling along in a canter is better than walking them to the gate but a far cry from what can be done.

In the past few posts I've forwarded a formula for max performance. And so, would this formula also provide ultimate fracture resistance? I'm in full guessing mode here and the best evidence I have still is my own hand clapping experiment that I posted on in June or July.

Clap your hands together hard and feel the effect on your wrist. You can perform this in various combos and see for yourself that there is a girding effect by warming up. What I noted however from the experiment was that a time delay was necessary for full warm up. I noted if I clapped for a minute or two then waited five minutes that is when my wrist felt the least impact from subsequent claps.

I can only surmise that probably even with my max performance warm up there needs to be a little delay in terms of time elapsed before the bones become fully prepared. Unknown exactly why, but, you'd suppose that brittle mineralized bone cells in their "shaking up" and other fracture resisting processes--the sacrificial bonds, etc., take longer than enervated muscle cells to get ready. But, once the process has been set in motion by the hand clapping experiment it seems to last for a while!

Indeed when i'm out on a horse performing my max performance warm up and then go right into the breeze I'm still worrying and considering whether the bones are really ready.

Luckily, the time to post in a race gives us this delay period. But, what about breezing, and how many horses are injured by insufficient delay between onset of work and max speed? Unknown of course.

Now that I'm considering it, next breeze I'll increase the time between the fastest warm heat and beginning of breeze. Makes sense to me! Maybe to get max fracture resistance we have to expend a little more energy than we want in terms of max performance? Hmmm.

I'm considering this as I type. Here's my conclusions. Actually doing my max performance warm up 2.5f + 1 + 1.5f with trot-walk between takes a good long while. Almost too long to perform it pre-race as the outrider will do their round up before completion. It probably lasts a good 5-7 minutes to get it done. I'm thinking that's enough time.

Training:
Groovin' Wind: Breezed a mile Saturday at Eureka in 1:45. Riderless two miles quick Monday then some shin heat due to the training error posted previously.
Tues night off and mild colic. The horse missed a couple of meals and looks like an old wagon horse today. Gave another day off. Hopefully a good feeding will revive the old boy and we'll commence tomorrow and to Eureka Saturday. Aylward, just the opposite had a very nice farm breeze tonight.
Art: almost dark again. Galloped 2.5 miles riderless with some fast spurts.