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.