Minimum Work For Fracture Resistance

In my February 2 post I made the bold statement that you're unable to train a horse in the manner of Neil Drysdale and keep the horse healthy. Since I am without any direct knowledge as to Drysdale's exercise prescriptions, this statement is meant in another way than as a comment on Drysdale training. Let's take Drysdale's name out of it and simplify it indicating the following sort of training:

long 2 mile gallops in :17-:18/f
occasional two minute gallops
every 9 or 10 day mile breezes in 1:46 at a steady :13.25/f

Assume on the above that the horse sees the track as many times as a Lukas horse, which would be average 18 times per month.

In terms of volume this is far more work than what I call "conventional" training. There's a lot to like here along with several gigantic caveats.

But first, how do we analyze this sort of training program in terms of injury prevention? We're concerned with:

1. soft tissue injuries, bowed tendons, suspensories and the like.
2. fractures and chips.

I'm unconcerned so much with soft tissue injuries simply because they primarily are caused by carelessness and stupidity. I'll elaborate on that at some point, but for now, suffice to say you can conduct your training so that you're extremely unlikely to get a bow or a suspensory. Just never happens provided you give certain minimum work and observe a few necessary guidelines.

Fracture and chips are far more problematic. I will assume that for true fracture resistance racing speeds and race galloping will require a certain minimum level of bone remodeling. This means that the metabolically active bone tissue, mineralized and unmineralized, has produced sufficient density and tensile strength in terms of collagen fibrils, bone glue, sacrificial bonds, and mineralized bone lattice that the bone can resist fracture under the various compressive and torsional forces to which it is subject at race speed.

We already know that athletes have denser and heavier bone than non-athletes. I only need to pick up the front legs of my 13 year old Groovin' Wind who has trained at speed seemingly forever and simply marvel at the thicker, stronger leg structure compared to my youngsters. Translate: the youngsters have a ways to go before they achieve the leg bone fracture resistance of Groovin' Wind. The question would be, how far do we have to go and at what point do we have enough.

Studies? Zip of course, and trainers can thus only do guess work in deciding when enough work is enough work, and the leg bones may withstand fracture at speed.

I'll continue with this next post.

Training:
2/4/08 Art was walked under tack. It was to be trot, but the tack work has been inconsistent to the point the horse is difficult to control. I have an old rider. We're being careful. Rod also did some tack work with the lung and long lines, and bellying. That was the exercise for the day.
2/5/08 Everytime we get our hopes up weatherwise, this: 1.5 inches of rain followed by 4 inches of snow. It was to be an off day anyway: off.
2/6/08 I drove back to the farm intending to run 'em in the snow in the Astride paddock, but the snow was too deep. Off.