Burch Training/Preliminary Results
As it's been in Missouri for quite a few years, the story of our training attempts revolves around weather, which has been so bad the last two winters we lost large chunks of the year.
2014, cold and frozen as it was, actually goes down as better than 2013 for the reason we've been able to do riderless fast work at least every three days since 2/25 unlike 2013 where we had two feet of snow into late March. Today's workout will make 60 days of consistent riderless speed work, and with experienced racers we might be 45 days of tack work from a race although we'd have to consider bone soundness.
As it is--with spring/summer finally upon us--the goal now will be to transition riderless work to fast tack work. The aim will be to reduce the riderless speed work in terms of volume and substitute tack work instead until we're all into the tack work.
Before embarking on this, a few conclusions from the riderless work, which I find interesting as confirmations of similar work done in prior years:
1. Appearance of the horses after two months of speed work:
My experience--in Burch style work, which is only 10 days a month of galloping--horses are less muscular looking than in with more regular galloping. I'll post some photos next few days. They look conditioned enough without having muscles bulging out of the ears as they might with more daily style gallops.
2. Burch style every three day schematic produces an enthusiastic/into it type horse--see vid of our last workout at bottom of last post. That was Heat #5 of the day, and the horses were still tearing around there.
3. Another benefit of the Burch style---they get "speed" on their minds. We moved that last work from the paddock into the 18 acre field (to get more distance out of the workout), and wondered whether they'd lope along or gallop fast. The result was that even the warm up was fast, and every one of the heat went in mostly :14s or faster. We've done zero slow gallops in 2014 and I'd wondered if my horses even know how to gallop slowly anymore. Conclude they probably do not, and for racing this seems a good thing.
2014, cold and frozen as it was, actually goes down as better than 2013 for the reason we've been able to do riderless fast work at least every three days since 2/25 unlike 2013 where we had two feet of snow into late March. Today's workout will make 60 days of consistent riderless speed work, and with experienced racers we might be 45 days of tack work from a race although we'd have to consider bone soundness.
As it is--with spring/summer finally upon us--the goal now will be to transition riderless work to fast tack work. The aim will be to reduce the riderless speed work in terms of volume and substitute tack work instead until we're all into the tack work.
Before embarking on this, a few conclusions from the riderless work, which I find interesting as confirmations of similar work done in prior years:
1. Appearance of the horses after two months of speed work:
My experience--in Burch style work, which is only 10 days a month of galloping--horses are less muscular looking than in with more regular galloping. I'll post some photos next few days. They look conditioned enough without having muscles bulging out of the ears as they might with more daily style gallops.
2. Burch style every three day schematic produces an enthusiastic/into it type horse--see vid of our last workout at bottom of last post. That was Heat #5 of the day, and the horses were still tearing around there.
3. Another benefit of the Burch style---they get "speed" on their minds. We moved that last work from the paddock into the 18 acre field (to get more distance out of the workout), and wondered whether they'd lope along or gallop fast. The result was that even the warm up was fast, and every one of the heat went in mostly :14s or faster. We've done zero slow gallops in 2014 and I'd wondered if my horses even know how to gallop slowly anymore. Conclude they probably do not, and for racing this seems a good thing.
posted by rather rapid at
10:28 AM
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