Before Continuing

A couple of posts ago someone made a comment how easy it is to pick on this or that trainer, and I'd like to make some response. The blog has previously documented the horrendous injury rates in conventional training barns (see summary of these posts below) concentrating particularly on the barns of Lukas and Mandella. There is without any doubt a serious injury problem that has evicted in my short time tens of thousands of owners from the sport. The blog is now, finally, at the point were I'm identifying the whys and wherefores.

This is other than to "pick" on anybody or cast blame, easy as that might be, because the aim here is to identify training that will keep horses running. Every trainer out there knows, things are far more complex than just identifying a few injury stats and making some suppositions. This is a very tough game.

And, regardless of what the injury stats are, or success or lack of success here and there, there will always be trainers, as there are coaches in human athletics, who go about their merry destructive ways and just fail to get it. This is the nature of athletics, and at some point down the road I'll do a series on what makes a person a good or bad coach.

For the present the goal of the blog, which has already identified the injury problem, is now to get to the root of it.

Here are some prior posts on this blog identifying injury rates with Lukas and Mandella:
Across the board, what's the injury rate: 2/4/07
Lukas: 1/27, 1/28 and 1/31/07.
Mandella: 1/24/07 and in particular 2/1/07.
Generally: 2/21, 2/22/ and 2/25/07

Our training:
2/3/07 Riderless with Art carrying 30 lbs Astride the horses galloped back and forth on wet pasture at decent clips for about 20 minutes with plenty of rest between as RR is running back and forth to catch them.
2/4/07: Rod (2 yr. old) will do some simple lung work. Art will trot under tack for about 10 minutes with rest between. First under tack trot since i'm unable to recall when due to the weather.