Speed And Fracture Resistance

Nothing about equine exercise matters except there be sufficient fracture resistance that will stand up to a race. We train cannon bones if we want to keep our horse racing.

The studies show the remodeling effects of exercise, but that's as far as they really go. I have yet to read anything that there may be bare minimums that the training has to achieve in terms of speed, distance, frequency or combos of these three training variables.

I'll take speed first as our ever vigilant trainer, lacking scientific studies, sends out our Derby prospect. How fast, Mr (or Ms.) trainer do we breeze to get past that point of fatal weakness in the bone structure? Or can we say for sure that we even need to worry about breezing speed provided our distance and frequency is up to snuff?

My belief is that regardless how far or how often our horse breezes, for injury prevention we MUST achieve a certain minimum speed or otherwise we have a horse at risk. I think we can make that judgment and will dissect it next post.

Training: as we go into our 77th straight day without dry ground here in KC, though afternoon temps finally reached 23 degrees up 10 degrees from yesterday, ground conditions are now so truly horrendous, that today I just avoided things. My horses considering are in decent condition, and I'll start 'em up in the morning, though I'm unsure presently what we can possibly do on this solidly frozen bumpy (with ice) ground.