Should you Swim Your Racehorses?
Swimming is a great therapeutic tool for injured horses, as well as a nice change of pace for healthy ones undergoing stressful trackwork – but it is not an activity that contributes significantly to an overall conditioning effect – here’s why:
The above chart is taken from a recent swim session where the horse in question was outfitted with an onboard heart rate device (click to enlarge). The red line is the HR in bpm and the x-axis is elapsed time in minutes.
Walking to the pool at the start of the chart; one can see a very relaxed HR of roughly 40bpm. But, at approximately the 3 min mark he finally enters the water – and his HR immediately jumps to 170bpm as excitement and apprehension sets in. At this point the HR is NOT a measure of aerobic exercise intensity, as it is artificially high due to the excitable nature of the thoroughbred. However by minute 5 this effect dissipates and we have an accurate number to discuss.
The blue shaded area of the graph represents a HR range of 140-160bpm, or 60-70% of maximum heart rate. This level of intensity is nearly 100% aerobic in nature, and essential to developing the foundation for later gains in stamina. On the track this horse slow gallops/canters at a 5min/mile pace to reach this same level of intensity.
But in the pool, a large percentage of the bodyweight is supported by the buoyancy of the water; making any effort to swim far less intense than most earth-bound exercise. Sure many muscles are being exercised as one swims; albeit in a non weight bearing environment. As a result, HR hovers around 125bpm, roughly 55% of maximum.
This lines up perfectly with what I find when I swim. As I run I can hit max HR values of 188bpm, but I can swim like a shark is chasing me and still struggle to reach 155bpm – as my 200lbs is greatly reduced by the water. I’m breathing heavily and my shoulders burn; but I’m not doing a ton to help my 800m race times on the track.
Look again as the horse exits the pool at the 11:30 mark, once more the change in activity excites him and his HR spikes to 185bpm for nearly 30sec – if a vet slaps a stethoscope on him now and sees this HR – he’ll proudly proclaim: “185bpm – he really got a lot out of that session!” But he’s wrong as the horse only hit a ‘true’ HR value of 125bpm on average during the whole exercise. (I’ve seen vets WAY smarter than myself make this elementary mistake at top rehab facilities.)
So, is swimming a waste of time? Of course not, but it’s far from an alternative to even the slowest of trackwork in building a foundation of aerobic fitness. Now if yours is coming off an injury or is otherwise unsound, swim away until he’s ready to move forward – just know that the real work begins only when out of the pool.
The ideal use of the pool may be in the afternoons, giving the horse a break from the monotony of the track and allowing him to stretch his limbs in a cool setting.
EDIT: 2 readers alerted me to an Aussie trainer atop the Hong Kong standings named John Size who swims his twice a day, once after morning work, again in the afternoon before a long walk, and even swims on raceday mornings…here’s Mr. Size’s bio:
http://www.hkjc.com/english/racing/trainerprofile.asp?trainercode=SJJ
EDIT2: Magnificent tool in place at the barn of Niall Brennan in Ocala: an aquacizer that only fills up the water to just below the shoulder – allowing for walking/jogging in cold water and achieving heart rates well within the aerobic zone of intensity:
Posted on January 27, 2012, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.
Bill
One of the better papers written on swimming and changes in cardiac dimensions and response to training was written by Dr. Allan Davie for RIRDC (https://rirdc.infoservices.com.au/downloads/08-156) in 2008. It basically had similar findings to what you have discussed here. They didn’t use heart rates for the exact reason you described above, they had to measure heart rates post exercise, but they used post-exercise whole blood lactate concentrations as an indicator of metabolic stress. They found lactate concentrations of 1 to 2.6 mmol/L, indicating that horses allowed to swim at their own rate are not producing a large metabolic stress on their system and certainly not enough stress to stimulate different cardiovascular adaptions than if the horse was given traditional training.
Byron Rogers
Performance Genetics LLC.
Thanks for the info Byron – boy a lactate reading of 1.5 mmol/l is quite low indeed. Heck half of that lactate could even be from stress rather than actual muscular contractions. That is why I favor HR, you can look at the graph and discount artifacts – but you cannot easily do that with a blood sample.
I’m going to read over this tonight. I should be in Ocala in early February, where are you these days?
This study makes another great point: 2 horses can swim and one can produce a negligible amount of lactate at 1 mmol/l, while another produces 2.6 mmol/l, that is a very significant difference.
Likewise I see this on the track. A group of horses do the same ‘easy’ exercise, yet half produce 4 mmol/l of lactate, and the other half under 2. This ‘easy’ workout was not so easy on the first group.
In Lexington. See you at the sales.
Byron
It was most interesting article about swimming I ever read. First of all I met in all articles before about swimming warnings that swimming can create bleeding because of a water pressure to the corpus of the horse. Is it true? if You compare a month of hand walking with a month of swimming after injury is it a different to bring a horse to basic condicion to start a real training? Do You think a water treadmill gives a horse more intensity of work comparing to swimming pool?
Regards
Greg racehorse trainer
Although I haven’t taken heart rate , I think by tying the horses tail and esentailly driving him (in the same place) in the pool , work the horse much more !
IF I give a horse 5 minutes like that without getting him used to it , his lungs and muscles are so tired he has trouble walking coming out of our pool !
Interesting Greg – I love the massaging action of the water in the pool, and I like the idea of taking off SOME bodyweight, but just not as much as swimming does. In Florida this spring I am hoping to quantify some HR values depending upon varying heights of water fill; a unique way of increasing resistance by starting with the water at 2 foot of depth for instance, then adding another 6-12″ when HR improvement starts to stall out…
There has already been a couple of studies on water walkers/treadmill and heart rate
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0396.2011.01179.x/abstract
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2042-3306.2010.00194.x/full
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2042-3306.2010.00229.x/abstract
Byron Rogers
Performance Genetics