Union Rags And Ideal Speed Training

Interesting conformation above on Union Rags. Passing the eye ball test from what I'm seeing on the race track as possibly a special horse. Perfect balance, head, neck and body with legs possibly a shade long. Compare the more perfect Big Brown vids. The horse might grow into the legs and lengthen the back slightly as he ages.

The training is another matter, and avoid comment for the moment on the particular trainer, the infamous, if u've read every word of this blog, killer of Barbaro. And yes, training horses for injury prevention does take more than a smiley personality that assumes/presumes everything is perfect because the smiley is in charge. Would hope to avoid a repeat in year 2012.

Again, I could do without the white socks particularly high into the cannon bone area. Shoeing horses you visibly note the weakness in white hoofs compared to black hoofs that are much more solid. White pigmentation for reasons unkown to me makes the hoof tissue crumbly and for myself I'm unable to escape the notion that if the pigmentation causes weakness in hoof collagen that a similar weakness might permeate the bone collagen. This is further reinforced that through the years through informal personal observation I've noticed very few colored like Union Rags last very long on the race track. Somebody will do a study some day. One white sock I'll take, maybe two if its in the rear and the sock is below the fetlocks.

What particularly strikes me about the conformation of Union Rags are the perfect pastern angle. For injury prevention reasons I might prefer a horse that overall has a little less length to the pasterns, but with this horse the pastern length seem almost dictated by the length of forearm and cannon. I have further noticed that many special horses seem to have the slightly longer the ideal pasterns but also note that there are also some such as Big Brown, a nearly perfect specimen, that lack this problem in that Big Brown had length to his legs also but with a little more perfection in terms of the relationships than you see in the young horse above. It is of course possible the UR will grown into his size as well as lengthen the slightly too short a back as he grows older.

We can understand with a young horse built this way that the conformation by itself makes this horse very injury prone and you'd have to be particularly careful in training this sort of conformation in a youngster.

I wanted to dwell on UR for the reason that almost simultaneously with myself having a little epiphany after all these years on what may serve as a very good speed workout there was a post in Blood Horse on what Matz was doing with Union Rags that was identical to what I had just come up with.

For myself the training question is as follows: What can be done safely every three or four days in terms of speed work that also might be a significant performance enhancer.

Would like to explain that I believe in speed in those workouts, meaning that I believe that the more you can get into sub-twelves instead of doing say :12.5s or thereabout as Todd Plecher does, the more optimally the horse will be able to perform on race day for a number of physiological reasons. And, briefly segue into lesson #3 that I am now learning/relearning in the gym. What separates the elite athletes I am seeing at the YMCA? One thing for sure is that they do more work, and do significantly more work more efficiently in their training than the rest of the crowd. They lift more weight partly because they have the musclo-skeletal make up to do so. They run faster for longer on the treadmills. They might be inherently lazier and less motivated than some of the weekend warriors, but in the final analysis they get on there and they do significantly higher quality of training than everybody else.

The above reaffirms my thinking of breezing as fast as possible as often as possible. It's a speed game and there is significantly different bounding motion for a horse doing 11.5s compared to 12.5s.

When you do speed work there is also the increased risk of injury to consider. While I have proven that you can do 6fs in 1:12s every 4 days for months on end without hurting an appropriately prepared horse I have to note that every one of those workouts is always a nail biter in terms of fearing injury.

And so, through the years I have struggled with what might be the ideal sort of speed workout. Just as I came up with this thought there was Matz doing it with Union Rags. Fairly simple really:

A 1 mile 2m gallop with the last 4f being a breeze. The day UR did it I think he finished in :47 and change for the 4f. When you work up to it with a horse of this ability--I'd more favor a :45 and change.

What I love in regards to the above workout is my conception that this can be done safely every three days. Additionally, over time as the horse increases fitness in terms of injury prevention we can visualize extending this to 5f at the end. 2m gallop finishing with 5f in :58.

Avoid for now a lengthy discussion of pros and cons. For this post I wanted to get this idea out there. More I consider, the more I like.

Big Brown below.