The Father Of Soft Training?

Here's the man again, folks, straight off his website still identical to what it was last year when I posted this photo.

Lukas will have to bear the brunt of me using him as a poster boy for soft training. I've documented this rather clearly in the blog, see December and January of 2006 and 2007, and so I'm unapologitic because this IS a soft trainer, and he does injure a lot of horses (see January 26-28, 2007), even though at about the same rate as his compadres.

Lukas stands out of course because of the sheer size of his old operation, and also the success he's had with major races. But, what I notice about this trainer, who I consider a good guy instead of a villain, is the break from the training of the old timers that Lukas took with his huge operation.

In terms of an influential stable that people watched, there's nothing clearer to me that between Lukas coming on in the late '70s and early '80s, and what was happening earlier, there was simply zero resemblance in terms of training horses.

Let's note a few things. I believe a transition to softer training was taking place before Lukas for any of a number of reasons. I've yet to do a study, but, were the major trainers of that time--Laz Barrera, Leroy Jolley, whoever it was the trained Seattle Slew and Laurin with Secretariat. These fellows I believe were training far harder that what we see today, but they were were hardly breezing every three days like Preston Burch and Max Hirsch. Racing in general--and again, I'm guessing, had already moved away from the really hard training by the late 60s and early 70s.

If I wanted to write a book I could find lot's of reasons for that, but, I'll just speculate that it was for reasons of lack of riders, shorter races, lack of money, lack of help, and maybe also a lack of any motivated capable trainers to make hard training work, since that method takes extreme care. It's just easier in a lot of ways to lighten the load a little.

Then along comes Woody Stephens. You are unable to know what Stephens did by reading his book except you can guess. Stephens was a noted, touted trainer who wrote a whole book without hardly mentioning his training methods, which gives you some idea of the priority he put on that. I think Stephens lightened up things considerably on the East coast and that he probably had a lot of imitators. We know for sure he'd race a horse he couldn't train due to the weather, in the case of Devil's bag.

So, was it Stephens that ushered in the soft training or Lukas. My guess is that Lukas took soft training to new levels. In Lukas we suddenly have horses on track actually restricted to just a mile to mile and a half slow gallops, barely loping along, and hardly ever breezing more than 5f. I think that would be a sharp break from what W. Stephens probably did. And so, I'm going to call Stephens a transition figure along with a lot of those '70s trainers, and declare that for the really soft conventional stuff that was around starting in early 1980 all the way to the present, it was Lukas that is responsible for it in the big way

One more point in this regard. There have of course always been soft trainers. Burch in his book obliquely refers to soft trainers. Jay Hovdey's book on Whittingham notes Charles leaving a soft training stable in the 1930s. Staaden on T. J. Smith (Australia) compares T.Js. hard methods to the soft training of so many around him. Soft training is thus nothing new, but, I believe that Lukas institutionalized it of late, and gave all those that want to avoid hard training the example.

Our training: as a preface to fast work Monday, today on Sunday in bad weather I got a riderless pasture romp. Y got a good work. Art was lazy. For tack work, its looking like my breaking point in terms of motivation is the 25 degrees this morning with 10 mph winds. Just unable to move myself onto their backs in this weather.

Definitions For Understanding

I'm posting now how what we do on the racetrack causes injuries. What injuries? All of them, of course, all sorts, knees, shins, splints, fractures, bows, suspensory, sesamoiditis, chips, stifles, gluteals ala GM, bleeding...any injury. Look at your horse the wrong way and you might cause one.

And, I'm posting currently about "conventional" training and how conventional training causes these injuries as part of the broader explanation why in the RR stable we train other than conventionally.

I've discussed and defined conventional training at various points in the blog, but I'd like to sharpen the definitions a bit. Let's first note that this is other than a discussion of how Preston Burch, Max Hirsch, S.J. Fitzimmons, Tom Smith (Seabiscuit), C. Whittingham, Bill O'Gorman (England), or T.J. Smith (Australia) cause injuries. There are very few who train like this group, and all of the listed are other than conventional trainers. The blog will deal with this group at a later point.

By implication the term "conventional training" implies training done by the large majority, and I'm speaking of training in the USA now instead of old timey or from abroad. Last post I listed what Lukas as a conventional trainer was doing in the late 1980s and stated my belief that this stuff was conventional training taken as far as it can go. In such a group we'd include (from what I an tell) Pletcher, Asmussen, McGaughy, McGlaughlin, Jerkins, and until recently Carl Nafzger and all their lesser imitators since they all represent versions of Lukas training.

In addition to Lukas style training it's necessary to refer to one more style of training, and I'd like to refer to this sort as "non-training" or "zero training" instead of Lukas lite. These are the trainers who send their horses to the track once or twice a week, for whatever reason--lack of riders, lack of money, or just inherent laziness or stupidity, or whatever reason--and expect them to perform in the afternoon.

Non-training or zero training, though it is ubiquitous to every track in the country, or has been (things are changing), is really other than training at all. These folks just send their horses out to race, and will injure them this race or soon merely because of lack of track work. It thus matters little as to what this group does with horses on the rare occasions they get to the track in terms of injury causation because of the insufficient track work. This would really be covered by the "how often" to the track portion of my prior posts.

So, again, what do I mean by "conventional training" or trainers? I'm referring to the Lukas style of training, conscientious, careful trainers however misguided in terms of exercise physiology. I will refer to Lukas training as "soft" training because in comparison to the likes off Burch, O'Gorman or T.J. Smith, though Lukas sends his horses to the track very frequently, after Lukas horses get on track the amount of work they do in terms of volume, speed, and frequency of speed is far less than Burch et.al.

So, comparatively, Lukas training is "soft" training, and next post I'll discuss my views on how we got from Burch to Lukas.

Our training: After several days of at least something through terrible weather it was time to take a day off, for both trainer and horses on this Saturday.

Lukas Training: The Conventional Model

Interestingly, it was one year ago exactly, December 28, 2006 that I posted what Lukas does in his training of Steinlen, based on Ross Staaden's book. That post I identified what Lukas does, and now I'm ready to start criticizing it. Took me a year to get there on the blog, and I'll confide I've been chomping at the bit.

But first, to review from last year's post:

Lukas's horses, including Steinlen in those days, see the track 17-22 days a month, there are breezes or races generally every 8 or 9 days. I've said, in terms of frequency on the track, this is quite ambitious. It's what they do once they get there where I have my issues.

Slow gallop days consist of a mile to a 1.5 mile gallop generally in :18s. :18 sec per furlong is about the slowest open gallop you can get a horse to do. Any slower than that you start to get into cantering and loping, though even at :20/f rate guess you could still call it an excruciatingly slow gallop. Lukas emphasizes that his breezes will be slower than :12/f. Exactly how fast Lukas tends to breeze is omitted from Staaden's book, but from my handicapping days a :49 or :50 or a 1:02 probably represent typical Lukas works.

So, in evaluating "how far and how fast" and injury prevention, I propose to look at Lukas training as a model. Will what Lukas does provide enough fitness and structure to our animal to keep the horse healthy during racing would be the question. If you've read my other posts on Lukas's injury rate, you already know the answer.

Training: Our weather forecasters are at it again. Sometimes I wonder why they even bother. Three weeks ago, according to Accuweather we'd now have been into a week of 50s temps and dry. What do we have in fact? For overnight they predicted 4 inches of surprise snow, which had turned into about an inch this morning (they're driving me and the road crews nuts). Around here our last "dry" day for the race track was now more than a month ago. We've had precipitation event after event. Its supposed to warm up soon, but, that huge, huge very cold air mass over Siberia has me worried, and I see the possibility that our bad weather to date may be merely a warm up. I sincerely hope I'm wrong. This morning Art breezed riderless in the Astride paddock with Groovin' Wind. I'd have liked more speed and effort as both horses kept fighting with each other instead of running. There was little I could do about it in the deep snow. Y then ran lightly with Aylward. About what I wanted there. Planning on resuming tack work tomorrow, snow be damned.

"Here's An Easy Way..." (To Injure)

At left Tom Ivers, the original equine exercise physiologist. Ivers died of lymphoma at age 61 recently, and may well rest in one of those "unvisited tombs" as far as the industry is concerned. But, I'll remember him when I think of race horse injuries. I'd say that I think of Ivers almost every day as I go out to train. Whatever you want to say about his work, the cumulative effect of it on me has to do with injuring horses, or avoiding injuries. For me, from reading all those Ivers books, letters, and tapes, there's left upstairs that residual lattice work that tends to activate when I'm considering something that on deeper thought is really stupid, and I can hear or see Ivers in his brilliant manner reminding "if you want to injure this animal, here's an easy way".

There are so many easy ways. That's the point of course, and for "certain knowledge of that truth" you only need sit and watch the morning workouts, any track, any day. It's been a while since I've considered all this, but, I want to be specific instead of just catcalling various observed stupidities. Some of the stuff that we see done on track over and over is just guaranteed to injure horses. You see it happen, and subconsciously you wish the horse well in it's next life, and curse the mindless stupidity that brought it about. I'll start to try to lay it out, next post.

Training: last post I forgot that I did train Monday morning Dec. 24. We got a very nice and fast pasture romp that day. Then, off 12/25 and 26. This morning in perfect snow conditions the horses were very up and we got the longest, if not the fastest, pasture romp ever as the horses with minimal prompting circled the whole pasture not once but twice without stopping, a distance of almost two miles. And then just a little more. Nice slower work before tomorrow's planned speed work in the Astride paddock. Due to emergency at work, had to pass on tack work today.

How Fast And How Far?

Got this as my Xmas gift, and I'm already enough along to note horses racing 30-40 times per year, both Seabiscuit and War Admiral working race distance in the mornings (hello Todd Pletcher), and a whole gamut of training, tougher by multiples than anything seen since (surely) 1980.

I always ask the question, what the heck happened? How'd we get from breezing race distance and racing every 3-5 days in that time to the once per month breezing or racing we've seen in the recent past. How do we get from Seabiscuit and Trainer Tom Smith to Wayne ("I don't work horses) Lukas? Somewere on the way they blew a fuse, and I've guessed (though it's unknown) that it began toward the present with Woody Stephens.

But, this assumes that these old time trainers headed by such as Sunny Jim Fitzimmons, Max Hirsch, Preston Burch, and in Sea Biscuit, Tom Smith, kept their horses healthy. Instead, I suspect they hurt just as many horses as the trainers do today. Just took 'em longer due to the solid training foundation. You may guess that our venerable old time trainers were just as inconsistent, illogical and generally lazy as the typical erratic American, and that thus there would have been just as many injury causing training errors in that day as now.

Still, in terms of what the old time trainers did on the racing track, it's an interesting study, particularly in regard the whys and wherefores as to how training changed, and apparently changed fairly abruptly.

I'm now in the part of my blogging where we'll get to the heart of the matter. When we get to the track, in terms of injury prevention, does it matter whether we gallop 1 mile or two(per K. McGlaughlin why gallop 2 when one will do), do the gallop in :15s or :18s. Will our horse stay sounder if we breeze them 5f in 1:00 or a mile and a quarter in 2:05? I'll try to look at this in the coming posts.

Training: All excited getting out of bed today. I was out of town last two days and expecting a suitable surface after two days of good weather. But, completely otherwise, total mess. This morning we had standing water over frozen choppy ground, and then more rain and snow throughout the day. Can we beat mother nature is a question I'm cogitating on at the moment. Third straight off day, and hopefully I'll have it together regardless of weather by tomorrow. We'll see.

December 2007

"I might entreat the fleeting minute. Oh tarry yet, though art so fair!
My path on earth, the trace I leave within it, eons alone cannot impair."
(from Faust's last speech.)

A few photos to remember this month of December 20007.

The barn:
The driveway:
The moment of truth...it works!
Setting up the bios...

More December 2007

Whoa there sister! From our Xmas gathering. Why did she have to be the little one?
Heeeere's Bud!
December 26. They have spotted their faithful servant. We took the day off. Total mess, weatherwise.

Christmas 2007

Merry Christmas to All!!!

RR

Training

I'm all over the place the last few days, and maybe a little blogger fatigue. So I let it go, maybe avoid the old saw of the man with nothing to say insisting on proving it. But, we've been at it in the training, and weather as the story. I left the camera in the office. It's hard enough to battle the climate and take snapshots of yourself doing it.

But, here goes:

Friday (b.s. before snow) the running paddock was finally barely dry enough to allow some riderless work in deep mud. There's a fine line between mud the horses can run in and too much. Friday was just this side of "can do" in terms of mud and both youngsters went around there riderless as fast as the conditions would allow, Y to his present state of conditioning, and then Y was removed. Then Art with Wind did some more, 3f at a time about 4 times as fast as conditions allowed. It was decent and a good w/o. Then some saddlework with both.

Sat. we're looking down the barrell of 7 inches of snow, but, our fearless forecasters missed it completely once again, and we wound up with only 1.5 inches, just perfect for running. We took Sat. off but Sun. morning both youngsters were put in the large Astride paddock that is actually a field with a 150 Yd. straighaway, and they had another quick riderless w/o in the snow with in about 25 degrees. We finished with some riding in the snow for Art, and tack work for Y. Voila, Y measures 15.2.5" up from 15' 1" when he was bought in late Oct.

I'll continue with injuries and training after Xmas.

Horses R. Trouble

Brief break for lighter stuff while RR considers weighty questions "how far and fast" when our conventional trainers finally get 'em to the track. The blog is onto the crucial stuff now on training and injury prevention in the coming posts.

John Not Of The Swift's blog today looks back at 2007 posts, and has inspired me to post this one here for future reference when we're standing in the winners circle, KY Derby perhaps, with the still unnamed Y. I was considering this last evening after training, that d_mm, horses are trouble.

Here was the scene of our paddock track yesterday morning, and, yes, that's ice in those cups. By yesterday afternoon in 45 degree temps, though I failed to photograph, this same area was a complete molten deep muddy mess when I arrived for training.

Yesterday's training in the mud documented for posterity:

1. as usual put some feed in the buckets to get 'em to walk in from the pastures.
2. RR through the mud to close both paddock gates.
4. Knock on neighbor door to rouse #1 assistant--age 16., yes, he's available. "Right now" he asks. Yes Chaz. Right now.
5. I walk 1/3 mile of fence, deep crusty snow, of Astride paddock. Is all fence standing after ice storm. Yes is. We're good to go riderless in deep grass (inoperable tractor) and crunchy snow.
6. 1/3 mile run back to the paddocks with Chas. The horses have escaped. They're 1/3 of mile down the way.
7. Run out to halter the two youngsters..
8. Lead 'em both through deep mud back to the gate, tennis shoes and socks soaked to the bone now.
9. We lead Art and Y to Astride Paddock. Whoops. They refuse to step over fallen limbs from ice storm. We finally manuer ourselves through the limbs that cover Chas's yard and arrive at Astride without incident--first time there for Y.
19. Chaz plants himself where he can chase 'em back to me, and I'm running full speed back and forth over deep grass and crunchy snow chasing Art and Y, who do get in a good fast riderless w/o. Nice fast twitch work, and I'm glad of the last two days pasture romps in bad weather that allowed this today.
12. Chas back in his house now doing whatever he does. I catch 'em, finally, halter , back through the branches to the paddock through the mud, release from the halters, and we're done. Pitch black at 5:40 p.m. Nob the rider, in these conditions, on strike.

Then there's this:
Everything plugged in and we're about ready for the moment of truth when I turn on the power switch and see if will actually boot. Enlarge you'll see the two 150G Raptor hard drives at lower right in a Silverstone TJ07 case. Floppy drive was plugged in next, keyboard, mouse, and monitor attached, and we're about to put the old Windows XP in the CD, download Vista later. I'll be unsurprised if the thing just blows up, but, on the off chance it works, RR will be blogging from a faster machine. I'll tidy up those cables if the thing actually boots.

How Often: Finale

Without noting again all the negatives, I'll reiterate my opinion that Wayne ("I never work horses") Lukas takes soft conventional training about as far as it will go. We see an uncensored version of Lukas at work in the opening scenes of Mandella's "On The Muscle" on track at Hollywood Park with a grim faced Lukas (he ain't smiling) and his son on ponies leading a couple to their gallops. Believe I accurately interpreted Lukas's training charts to indicate 17-22 times a month on track for each horse in the Lukas stable from Ross Staaden's book, and per my last post, that's a lot of work for a 25 horse stable.

So, I'm unable to fault Lukas or any of his copycats with frequency of track work in terms of injury prevention. We see with Lukas that fierce determination combined with an unlimited bank account can get 'em to the track with a large stable. Simultaneously, as the prior posts noted, for any of a number of reasons, numerous conventional style soft trainers try to get by with far less than Lukas, and this sort of work with race horses is Exhibit A for the injury problems that plague the sport. It's pitiful really what most of these so called trainers did with their horses before about 2002. Better lately, somewhat, but I'm supposing that until such time as owners start keeping an eagle eye on those trainers to whom they're paying $30-100/day, things will remain as they are and we'll continue to rotate shedrows due to injuries about every 18 months.

Training: The beginning of the thaw today, but, all I could do this morning was one of those better than nothing pasture romps. Hopefully the crusty, bumpy ground will have softened tomorrow and we can commence serious work. I'm seeing mud in my near future.

Lack of Track Work: The Reasons

The snow highlights our track.
This morning we could only trot over frozen bumpy ground.
After training:
Even before owning my first horse, I gradually understood in my handicapping that trainers were soft with their horses. Later, being on the back stretch confirmed the prior suspicion every day. The late '80s, early '90s (when I began) nadired, bottomed out, in terms of training horses, and believe a study of training history would bear that out. In those days, frankly I was just amazed at what I was seeing which was frauds masquerading as trainers injuring horse after horse. Whole shedrows were wiped out in matters of months.

Things have gotten better. Many of the nee'r do wells attracted to the game in our area in those days are gone, and the specter of real competition has forced change.

But, question remains, why do they gallop so infrequently, and it's more complex than meets the eye:

1. Riders:
a. Rider scarcity: you understand the problem if you've been on the backstretch. I can count on one hand the number of exercise riders other than jocks galloping at the Woodlands this year. Exercise riding is a dying profession, and if you've a 10 or 20 horse shedrow finding a rider is a giant and continuing problem.
b. Rider fatigue: I learned this the hard way. Riding horses requires such concentration and effort that after you've been on three you've about had enough. Jocks having 6 or 7 to ride in the afternoon rarely get on more than 3 or 4 in the morning, though some do more.
c. Rider undependability: I learned riding after tiring of waiting for riders to show up. Even at 6"1+" and 190lbs, this every day waiting 30 minutes to an hour for the rider, if they showed at all, caused me to decide to lose a fourth of my body weight and learn the craft. Consider riders failing to show in a 20 horse shedrow.
4. Lack of money: Most trainers get paid enough to do some galloping. But, consider the large shedrow where half your owners pay half their day rates and most owners owe you money. It's very expensive every day to gallop a large shedrow, and near impossible financially for many trainers.
5. Pocketing riding money: bigger factor than most owners understand.
6. Laziness: galloping one horse, big effort--plan the feeding time, tack up, pace back and forth till rider shows, observe the gallop, untack, cool out, back to the stall, times 10 or 20. You get worn out.
7. Stupidity: most trainers that survive are sharp cookies. Most...
8. Lack of intuitiveness about athletics: these guys and gals all know how to throw feed. Very few have been athletes or give a darn about exercise physiology, and of those that are into it maybe 25% have any real natural ability.

So, there you have it in terms of galloping frequency. How they're hurting horses once the get to the track is next.

Conventional Trainers: Frequency of Track Work

So, I'm Mr. or Mrs. Conventional Trainer. How often do I send 'em to the track? I've observed on the blog that training has changed of late, horses these days see the track more days than I used to observe in the '80s and '90s. But, were I an owner for most of these trainers that I'm watching, even in 2007, I'd be very concerned, and maybe would also the old gentleman in the photo.

This year's Woodland's meet as an example, and I'll be supra generous in the estimates: 1000 stalls, this year for the first time there were a lot of empty stalls through the meet, a sign of the times in horse racing. I'd estimate there were probably 900 horses on the backstretch this year. I was out on the track with Groovin' Wind every third day. I'd estimate while I was on track there were 15 other horses on track with me. Let's say the riders work hard and they gallop three an hour. That's 45 horses galloped every hour through four hours of training. Let's round it off to 200 horses galloping per day, and remember I'm being extremely generous in my estimates. Thus slightly more the 1/5 of the horses on track gallop in a given day.

Think of that! If the above is correct the conventional trainers at the Woodlands are galloping their horses one day out of five. Let's say the estimate is a little off and the actual figure is one day out of four, these trainers are galloping their horses 8 days a month. Let's estimate 2 races a month for the average horse, then they're seeing the track 10 times a month, or 5 days less than the minimum track work I estimated as necessary to avoid injury last post.

That's probably about it--one reason almost every horse gets hurt eventually is that they fail to get even the minimum amount of galloping necessary to avoid injury. Now of course, some of these trainers are galloping their horses more than 8 times a month. But, all that means is that others (based on the Woodland's stats) are galloping their horses less.

A good example would be the trainer I shared a shedrow with (I'll decline to name him again, a noted long time Nebraska trainer) just this past Woodland's meet. He had six horses in his shedrow. On any given day he'd send maybe 2 of them to the track. It probably averaged out 1.5 a day. Further note that this fellow and his wife loaded them up one week before the end of the meet and trailered them back to Nebraska, everyone of them injured.

This is conventional training here in the Midwest in terms of galloping frequency. What, whoa, you say, why do these trainers gallop so infrequently, next post.

Training: the forecasters way overestimated the snow. We got a dusting overnight, and just enough to soften the ground and enable a pretty good pasture romp with the two youngsters this morning. Its noon right now and 20 degrees. I just fail to last more than an hour in this stuff. Everything goes numb. But, we got some fast twitch work in this morning, dumped the spleens. Pretty good for the first exercise in a week. It will be more difficult tomorrow as they'll be less "up" for just taking off. But, warmer weather on the way.

How Often: The Dividing Line

If you watch the majority of our trainers in action you quickly understand THE huge concern of the racehorse owner is or ought to be the "frequency" of on track galloping. How infrequently most racing horses gallop and the reasons, I'll get into next post. For this one let's attempt to identify the dividing line between just enough track work and too little in terms of injury causation.

Preston Burch does 10 breezes(or races) a month (a huge number relatively speaking), and leaves it to the trainer to decide what's appropriate the other 20 days. D.W. Lukas in race prep goes 22 days, and while racing 17. I've identified Lukas's work as the model and epitome of the conventional type trainer.

The only available study, the Maryland Shin Study seems to suggest track work at least every three days as a bare minimum, and that would be Burch's 10 times a month at speed, but otherwise there are no studies and so we're left here with extrapolation and intuition.

In considering whether it's 10 gallops a month, 15 or 20 that we need, let's again note we're speaking here of injury prevention instead of performance and in terms of injuries we have both hard and soft tissue and tissues in between to consider. In fact the training parameters for muscle, tendon and ligament injuries differ sharply from bones. I've already noted that the soft tissue stuff detrains much more rapidly than the bone structure.

I'd conclude that the 10 days a month of Burch and the Maryland Shin Study would be an absolute minimum. That is the dividing line as far as I'm concerned. Any trainer sending a horse to the track less than 10 days a month is going to injure the horse, probably in short order. And, please note, since less than 10 days a month will produce a quick injury it's likely to be a soft tissue injury such as a bowed tendon, pulled suspensary, or a Green Monkey gluteal pull.

Additionally, I'd say that 10 days a month unless it's done with Burch style training is insufficient for long term bone remodeling and racing soundness, and so we have the phenomena of horses receiving decent race preps (I've noted that most conventional trainers do accomplish that), but than the horse is drastically backed off the galloping once racing begins which results over time, say a period of six months, in bones gradually degrading until there is a fracture, or the more frequent and sooner injury which would be a chip. The RR conclusion is that you will fail to get away with 10 days a month slow galloping, cantering, loping with the occasional breeze over the long haul. Bodily structures of the horse simply require more exercise than 10 days a month.

So, where is the dividing line for the conventional trainer. I think Lukas with what he does on track probably is very near the bare minimum of 17 days per month for the racing horse, and you might even lower that to 15 days. Can you keep the horse sound in conventional training with just 15 days monthly galloping? My answer: probably. 14 days I'd start to worry.

Training: 23 degrees overnight and the ground this morning was chunky ice over solid bumpy ground. No way with 3 inches of snow coming in tonight. RR getting antsy.

How Much Track Work For Injury Prevention

Has the question been answered in any quantifiable sort of way? I pose the question whether there exists a cause and effect relationship between the number of times the horse is sent to the track and all the typical hard and soft tissue injuries?

You'll find precious little on this at Google, but, there is one study I'm recalling which would be the Maryland Shin Study of quite a few years back that recommended after considerable research that young horses see some speed work on track at least every three or four days. This concludes of course both amount of track time and quality of track time since needless to point out there are numerous injury causing variables.

But let us try to isolate this one. Is there a point at which we might definitely predict injury due to the number of days a week or month the horse sees the track?

It would seem so. But we'd have to start on the opposite end of the spectrum from D.W. Lukas's 22 days/month and consider those conventional trainers who send their horses to gallop one or two days a week, and spend an hour a day on the walker. I am without any doubt whatsoever, unnecessary to see any studies, that you're unable to keep your horse healthy at that level of track time regardless of the quality of those sporadic gallops, and if you have a trainer engaging in this sort of nonsense that you'd best be planning your horse's next career because it'll start sooner instead of later.

Can we indeed hone down and identify the exact point in terms of number of days per week on track that we'd start to get in trouble, next post.

Training: The bad weather around here began about three weeks ago when we suddenly morphed from 75 degree days in mid-November to 30s and 40s with a fair amount of rain. And then this week the ice storms. But, there's been a difference so far from the weather disaster of a year ago that covered about five months. Less water, it's much warmer, and, much to warm the RR heart, temperatures in the 50s shortly ahead. Since July 1 I'm unable to complain too much about the weather despite this weeks storms, and I write that knocking on wood as we're just starting into the winter. We'll start again Friday six days after last serious work. With a little weather luck, the plan would be to hit Eureka with the youngsters by late January, although I realize that is very optimistic on several counts.

The Proper Dose

Mephistopheles and his Devils, now in a battle with the Angels for Faust's soul. The Angels are strewing rose petals on the Devils (German sense of humor) and the whole squadron of Devils is blowing at the roses. Mephistopheles in command:

"Not so wildly now, shut your snouts and noses.
There, you have blown to strongly for the roses.
The proper dose they never seem to learn."

The proper dose? How often do we send the horses to the track? May we surmise, in terms of injury rate in thoroughbred racing. our good trainers as the Devils portrayed in Faust are still searching for the "proper dose".

In my posts around December 28, 2006 I took a look at the training logs of. D.W. Lukas from the late 1980s as portrayed in Ross Staaden's book. And later in a post I'm unable to locate I surmised based on available evidence that Lukas was sending his horses to the track somewhere between 17 and 22 days per month depending on whether the horse was racing or in race prep.

This amount off track time is fairly impressive(there have to be some rest days in there). In contrast Ivers recommends about 22 track days/month; Preston Burch 10-15.

Note however that these trainers (if you read the books) in terms of quantity of track work are gaging performance instead of injury prevention. What's the dose to prevent injuries, next post.

Training: A few photos from this morning. A coat of ice on trees and ground. I'll review our training this week tomorrow.

Summing Up Detraining

Under ideal circumstances let's say we have our athlete in top form. Rigorous carefully planned training over many months has increased the volume, number and strength of muscle cells, muscle fascia hard and tight. Bone remodeling has produced true fracture resistance. The cardiovascular effects of our work, measurable: heart rate and blood pressure down, plasma volume up, max Vo2 (heart lung O2 to energy conversion) optimal, and the nervous system working efficiently. Energy producing mechanisms, ATP, aerobic and anaerobic have evolved to elite athlete status as has the horse's ability to treat muscle paralyzing lactic acid.

And then, for whatever reason, we stop. Forced layoff, planned layoff, injury, or my favorite one, trainer ignorance, we back off or cease training altogether.

The above recitation of what happens in the conditioning process is more my memory than any scientific account. Hopefully the reader will get the point. When we send the horse to the track, stuff happens physiologically to prepare the horse for the event. Conversely when we back off we go the other way.

And so, considering all this, we answer the question--how often do we send our horse to the track? I'll leave this for the next posts.

Training: Pictures tomorrow coming tomorrow with the new flashcard, hopefully, as all of KCMO currently paralyzed by a few raindrops. On the bright side, warmer than predicted, it's in the lower 30s as opposed to lower 20s. Steady rain last few hours, we'll see how it all shakes out in terms of training. They're both off today, but a little jumpy listening to tree branches snap.

More Weather Complaints

One inch of ice is supposed to fall on us in the next 24 hours. I'm in my office downtown and I'll go outside in the next 30 minutes and see what it's doing. Accuweather says steady rain for next 36 hours. Last night on Channel 5 TV Meteorologist Katy Horner said "every model" points to massive ice storm. Our salvation as to the ice might be that it got a little warmer than everybody expected overnight. Might just be rain.

Nevertheless it'll be a mess. Shades of last year, and RR musing again whether it's possible to train horses here in KCMO. Been three weeks since the ground at farm is trainable with three more problematic weeks ahead. Just as you're starting to get there, boom.

I drove to the farm earlier to train. Exercise in futility. As I tried to herd 'em in they ran off, and i'm unable to motor fast enough in the crusty snow to catch 'em. Never did find the horses before dark and basically wasted the trip. Trying to think positive here. Maybe most of this storm will fall apart before it gets here.

Awareness Of Detraining

KCMO this morning at left.

My horses last exercised significantly two days ago when they performed a nearly full speed riderless breeze. The ground is now frozen, and we face several days of very little, exercise wise. Forced off time, how does it affect my thought process in terms of detraining?

Off time from training has two categories. 1. Planned off time which we call "rest", and 2. Those times when for one reason or other we're unable to train, generally due to weather. Unknown how other trainers view forced off time. For myself when my horses are unable to work, I tend to fret and get upset. Why? Because I know I'm losing what I've worked so hard to produce, commencing almost immediately.

For me, mentally, I'm always gaging detraining and deconditioning. It's such a BFD in terms of putting together any sort of logical injury prevention training program. After the off time you will start up again, and you both know and see with your eyes what you've lost over the off period.

What have you lost when you're off? In my own experience, it takes two days training for every one day of training you've lost to get back to where you were before the off time began. Why? Here's an example. If the horse is off one week, it will then take one full week to get the horse back to where it was when the off time began. It will then take another full week to get to where you would have been had the week of off time never occurred.

Next post I'll go a little deeper into my concerns over forced off time, and the physiological basis of the concern.

Training

My question this morning was the same as Mandella where he begins his DVD in the dark at 5:30 a.m. wondering"What is the rest of the world doing on a day like this?" Eighteen degree weather, snow, a little sleet, ground frozen solid. I'd brainstormed what we're up against next two weeks forecast-wise and decided that we'll get on the horse irregardless. And so, first thing out of the house we round up the very cold tack and the horse, mount up, and off to the pasture we go. Art is a little out of control without the riderless preliminaries and last having been ridden two days ago and the snowy pasture. I was thus satisfied with 15 min. of walking, and we'll assume he'll be under control to trot tomorrow. Y has been working steadily and will get a few days off in this cold. Maybe he'll grow!

The "Not So Nice" Forecast

They keep changing this (darn) forecast. I'm just glad I moved to Northern Canada. Jeez! Next 40 degree day is December 20 and freezing rain next five days in a row. This is what I meant by the word "Bust" on the blog title.

Most of my training career I'd train through anything. When I think back at some of the stuff I did in weather...let's say that we never missed training days. Just never happened. Rain, shine, blizzard, 15 degrees below for two weeks in the late '80s, we were out there.

That was then. As Goethe wrote (of Faust) "...through might and main I stormed through my life, at first powerful and great, but now at pace more prudent and sedate." RR is in the prudent and sedate stage, I'm afraid to say. I have my limits now with the weather.

How did I get to this miserable state of being with the horses where I actually skip days due to bad weather? Part of it is just 20 years of wear. But also, at some point in the training, it sank in that training into a 30 mph 20 degree day wind was failing to move us ahead in an appreciable way. A mighty effort with very little return, it seemed.

So, these days, I tend to give in. Did it yesterday. We'll see whether 1. the weather next week proves as bad as forecast, and 2. how I react to it. Would like to write something good about this next week.

Detraining and Bones

Nice race last night in the Delta Jackpot as RR considers his own two year old that still pasture trots under tack at this point. Lots of fast horses in last night's race, and if anything was missing that I saw in this bunch it's strong galloping or strength supporting the natural speed. Those horses looked fast going around there, but weak, and so my reaction that it's possible to compete with this bunch, and how nice is it to have a million dollar race in early December the main competitors are on layoff. Hmmm...
Muscle cells detrain rapidly, but, what about bones and bone structure? Specifically we're talking about the mineral laticework in the cannon bones and also the fetlock-sesamoid, and knee complexes in terms of bone glue strength and overall fracture resistance.

Assuming of course, that our venerable conventional trainer already has conditioned these bone structures to the point of maximum fracture resistance, thereafter the trainer plans a specific layoff period whether it be one or two days, weeks or months. At what point does the bone commence demineralization and the other markers of reduced fracture resistance?

I've seen but one study indicating significant demineralization after a 6 month layoff. That's enough to indicate the "lose-it or use it" phenomenon applies to bone structure also! Believe we can extrapolate though, that it takes quite a bit more time for bones to commence the deconditioning than muscles cells. How long? Just my own wild speculation based on 20 years experience with limited number of experimental rats, I'd guess some demineralization commences after a couple of weeks layoff, and that after a four week layoff the process accelerates quickly to the point you finally have the same bone structure as the untrained horse.

But, the far more important issue for our racehorses is the question of "insufficient structure" to begin with, and then illogical training breaks that further weaken already inadequate bone. What I'm referring to in real time is the youngster that is moved to its first race with barely enough bone remodeling to survive the race, and thereafter when our typical conventional trainer backs off because the horse is sore, tired, injured, riders are unavailable or the most usual that the trainer is too plain dam lazy, inconvenienced or pocketing rider money to bother.

As Ivers noted in his studies, what is known about bone remodeling is that every trip to the track is money in the bank, and by extrapolation, if we're keeping our horse in the stall or on the walker instead of under load on the race track, every lost day conversely is a day of bone weakening. Add up enough bone weakening days to inadequate bone, eventually you get failure would be the theory. I'll try to pull all this together in the coming posts.

Our training: Thurs was the off day. Friday 12/7 Art: Another 9f riderless as fast as conditions allowed and this after extensive warm up. There was light snow over a soft surface at about 33 degrees F. Had one horse fall and slide 10 feet, but, they were able to motor reasonably fast. Art this week has had 3 of these 9f riderless workouts. We like what we're seeing from Art. Let's call him at this point as gaining strength. He's got a ways to go but getting there. Each riderless session this week including Friday was followed by short rest and then 10-15 minutes of under track trot in the pasture. Each day Nob reported a few strides of gallop. We were looking for a break-through day where Nob could completely trust the horse out alone in open space in the pasture. This came on Friday as Nob reported the first day were the horse was completely under control. Today under terrible conditions we quit after a two mile riderless pasture romp for all horses.

Y: The youngster has continued to gallop riderless with the oldsters with a little more volume and speed each day. This fellow is the human equivalent of a 9-10 yr. old and so we're being careful. But he's going about 10 minutes riderless now, and starting to show some real strength. We'll go from there. Due to weather we've passed on long line work this week. Earliest this fellow will have a rider on board probably is April or May. Lot's of time yet!

Detraining And Horses

The last post noted "muscle atrophy" in terms of detraining. A little googling and voila, some muscle cells. Left click to enlarge them.

Muscle atrophy refers to the shrinkage and loss of strength that occurs in the muscle cell with detraining, but merely referring to muscle atrophy leaves a lot of ground uncovered. Exactly what is it that happens?

Since RR's last exercise physiology class occurred at University of Missouri-Columbia (yes, those Missouri Tigers) Dan Devine and Al Onofrio(football coaches) circa 1974. What I still recollect from the exercise physiology texts:

In response to exercise muscle cells produce additional filaments and the filaments already in the cell grow both larger and stronger. Conversely, in detraining the filaments lose their size, strength and also when enough time elapses between training sessions, their numbers. The muscle fascia (membranes surrounding the muscle cell) grow tougher or weaker and likely a lot more happens that I've forgotten. Additionally, at some stage in the training process muscle cells multiply and grow more numerous. I'm unable to recall whether on detraining the number of muscle cells decreases. One would guess, probably so over time. Surely by now there are volumes on detraining coming out of the exercise physiology labs.

In horses perhaps we're more concerned with the muscle cells in terms of "performance". But, there's also a training-detraining effect on skeletal structure and specifically at the cellular level of the bone tissue. I'll get into this next post.

Today's training and some photos appear below.

Photos and Training: 12/5/07

Rounding them up 9:30 a.m.
Art, age 2 in the lead, then Y, and Aylward, riderless training. Y had his most strenous w/o to date. Art afterwards went 9F at about :14s.
Little Art has morphed into big Art. 15'3.5 (almost) this morning. Art did 15 min walk-trot under tack. Nob had predicted a breakthrough today. Maybe got 1/2 a breakthrough on a brisk day with gusty wind. A few strides of gallop.
Same horse on 11/1/07:

Detraining

I've noted several times the Kieran McGlaughlin theory of training with regards to the question "how often" do we send our horses to the track, as expressed by the "noted" trainer when he was still an assistant with D.W. Lukas:

"Why gallop 6 days a week when 4 will do...why breeze 6f when 4f is just as good?" or something to that effect. I've forgotten the exact quote.

Only a confirmed couch potato as McGlaughlin would have such a conception of training athletes, but, it's a legitimate question that we should deal with. Why do more than the minimum that you can absolutely get away with, particularly in light of how much trouble it really is for each horse to spend that 10 minutes on the track--and I make that statement having just spent from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. exercising two horses. This included shoeing one hoof, but, still, a lot of time. Why?

To answer the question it helps to draw out a few concepts from human exercise physiology. In this post I'll deal with "detraining" or "deconditioning" as it's sometimes called. I'm unable to say it any better than this from an unknown source:

"Hi Alice,

Why does it take me about six months to get really fit, then only about two weeks for my fitness level to decline? I would have thought it'd take the same amount of time to lose fitness as gain it.

Thanks,
Fitness Freak

Dear Fitness Freak:

Fitness industry professionals call the phenomenon you are describing DETRAINING. Basically, if someone trains aerobically or anaeorbically his/her body produces more enzymes for the muscles to grow an dbe maintained. When he/she stops working out, however, these enzymes break down, leading to muscle atrophy. This can occur as soon as one-and-a half weeks after a person stops training or being physically active. Within two weeks, an individual can lose up to 80 percent of his/her gains.

Detraining can be influenced by fitness level, how long and intensely one has been exercising, and the length of inactivity. Studies conducted on aerobic fitness have shown that fit people who exercised consistently for a year and then stopped exercising for three months lost half of their aerobic fitness during their hiatus. The researchers also found that those who just begun an exercise program, who were exercising for 2 months and then stopped for 2 months, however, lost all of the cardiovascular gains they had previously made.

/s/ Alice"

Next time you hear someone declaring 10 days out from the race, he's fit, that's all he needs, or the tubby trainer of Invasor pontificating why gallop 6 days when 4 will do, consider the concept of Detraining.

Training:
Art: Riderless in mud--about 5 x 3f as fast as conditions allowed + 10 min. walk-trot in pasture under tack. The pasture work going slower than expected. This horse has showed such a compliant demeanor that we've had zero trouble to date under tack. First horse Nob has broken and he has yet to hit the ground, knock on wood. But, right now in open pasture the horse suddenly is quite a bit more feisty that we expected, and so we're taking it slow, but, Nob says a big breakthrough will happen next few days.
Y: Only had time to run him riderless in the mud with the oldsters. He was removed after 7 or 8 min. of gentle gallop. Deep mud. Learned my lesson with these yearlings last year, which is take it easy on bad ground.

How Often

The calendar reminds me: How many times have I galloped a horse since August 2005? I get weary as I consider. Let's just say "lots", and that even despite the constant monsoons from 8/05 to June of '07.

Many factors go into putting together a training protocol for any particular horse. But, is anything more important than the decision--how often does the horse go to the track? Once we get there, of course, we can decide what the horse will do in its gallop, but, first we have to decide which of those calendar days will be "on track", and which "off".

Again, in making the decision two factors hold sway: 1. performance 2. injury causation. I'll get to performance eventually, but, right for the moment I'm posting on training and injuries, and so we'll look at injuries or more accurately "injury prevention" in terms of how frequently horses hit the track.

Trainer Leotis Asmussen, and, yes, he's a member of the large Asmussen training-riding clan, just got into his shedrow a new two year old fresh from the Asmussen training center. Fully broke and with eight weeks of galloping at the training center under the horse, Leotis now forms a training protocol for the horse with question 1, how frequently do we gallop the horse on track.
How do we make such a decision in terms of injury prevention:

1. Experience: Leotis is old, Steve Asmussen's great great grand uncle. He's been around, galloped lots of horses. Why do this one any different? Ooops? Forgot. Leotis has permanently crippled every horse he's trained going back to, let's see, 1957. O.K., maybe there were a couple there that made it through, yet... Heck of a nice fellow, but, how much faith can we put into Leotis's injury avoidance experience?

2. Intuition: Athlete's (as opposed to couch potatoes) know intuitively that they need to train fairly frequently to achieve any level of performance, and this is backed up by experience as the athlete goes. Take any budding 14 year old basketball player that you see out on the court every waking moment to appreciate how often you have to "practice" to succeed. Performance athletes understand this "cognitively. Problem with Leotis, he's thrown a lot of horse feed, but, the closest he's gotten to athletics for himself is watching the NFL games on Sunday. Other than his horse sense, Leotis has little intutively to help him make this decision.

3. Copy Cat: Now there's one that make a bit more sense. If grand nephew Stevie Asmussen, suspensions and all, can win the BC Classic with Curlin, how about training our new two year old in exactly the same manner. Do what successful people do. Unnecessary to know the whys and wherefores. But, again, a problem in copying the nephew, just in case you've check out the injury record of Steve Asmussen. Why, it seems, it's almost identical to that of Leotis.

4. Do What Everybody Else Does: Seems safe enough. Avoids a lot of criticism, that's for sure.

5. Exercise Physiology: For Leotis this would be a last restort. But, how about approaching the question from a stand point of exercise science? Hmmm!

Next Post: Detraining and how it affects our decision.

Our Training: Unlike a year ago when the rains came and we had four or five inches of water in the buckets, the rain Saturday left a very tolerable one inch, which we needed. The weather pattern since June has basically gotten back to normal around here, and thus we're making progress: Art: Monday aided by very cold temps and a wind the horses were already playing in the paddock when I got there. I continue the riderless play and we got in some very decent fast gallop for the conditions. Nob passed on the tack work in the wind and mud. Tues again, mud and cold, Art walked in the pasture under tack. Nob said he was difficult due to the brisk wind, but Nob feels Art will be "in control" in the pasture starting tomorrow. Y: Monday was removed from the muddy exercise fairly quickly as I learned my lesson last year re what happens to those young very thin soled hoofs galloping in mud. Off today. No point in doing ground work in deep mud.

How Fast, How Far, How Often

Sadly, what it boils down to for our race horses is that the vast majority see the track so infrequently, and, when they do, so inappropriately, that injury will occur sooner or later regardless of the other peripheral injury causing factors such as shoeing, riding, warming up, track surface, etc.

The basics of what injures race horses in conventional training involves our conventional trainers, ignorant, stupid, lazy, greed in pocketing rider money, and probably twenty other things I'm failing to consider at the moment, screwing up the primary training factors of how far, fast, and often the horse gallops on the track.

Training running athletes, human or equine, in terms of performance involves some combo of:

frequency
distance
speed

With the horses, of course, in addition to deciphering the training for performance, we also consider, additionally, the extreme fragility of the athlete. An example of this latter is that trainer I met at the last Woodland's meet and asked him whether he thought the long pasterns on his two year old would remain sound through training. (Those pasterns) "is why I've been going slow with him" which is something we'd never have to think about with our homo sapien sprinters.

So, we may send our human track athletes through twice a day speed play-fartlek training without big concerns, while with our horses the same conception requires that we consider whether the cannon bones will hold together through what we do.

What I propose next on the blog is to examine specifically the manner in which e.g. D.W. Lukas in his training injures horses due to "errors" in putting together the formula of how fast, far, and often he sends his horses to the track. We know it happens, but how?

Training: This is the best I could do before the battery shot craps on a 32 degree day. Y doing his lunging-long rein thing:

here's a better shot of the young fellow:
Friday: Art 4 x 2f near all out riderless + 10 min trot-walk in the pasture under tack. Y continues his gentle riderless gallop and long line work. Today we're off as even before I rose from the bed I could hear the weather with 25 mph winds and steady light rain. Here's KC on Saturday morning 12/1/07: