Although athletes from high performance sports have embraced various monitoring technologies for decades, it is only recently that “athlete” monitoring has been adopted by the high-performance horse industry (including eventing, Thoroughbred racing and harness racing). In my last article, I discussed well-established training principles and the similarities between horses and humans in the way in which they adapt to training load. In this article, I’d like to provide 5 examples of how monitoring your horse within a training load-adaptation framework allows you to move from “collecting numbers” to making smarter training decisions.
- Ensure Your Horse is Prepared for the Load You Are About to Apply
Global positioning satellite (GPS) technology allows horse trainers to track every metre that their horse covers in training and competition, so has the potential to be a game-changer for the high-performance horse industry. But the trick is to think of each track session as part of a journey from where the horse has come from, and where the horse is going. For example, is completing “two furlongs at evens” too much or too little for a stayer? The answer will depend on (1) how much training the horse has been able to perform and tolerate (well) prior to that session (i.e. “where has it come from?”), (2) how much galloping distance the horse needs to cover in competition (i.e. “where is it going?”), and (3) how much time the trainer has to safely progress the horse to higher training loads. If this is the first session back in work after an eight-week spell, then 400 metres (i.e. 2 furlongs) at galloping speeds might be too much. Equally, if this is the first time the horse has run that distance in preparation for a Melbourne Cup (i.e. 3,200 metre distance), then it’s likely that it’s not enough! In this respect, quantifying the load your horse has performed relative to the load they have been prepared for, becomes critical. Capturing acute (i.e. short-term) and chronic (i.e. long-term) training loads ensures that as a trainer, you are loading relative to your horses’ capacity (2). This approach provides insight into injury risk (6) – but more recently has been shown to be related to performance (7) and readiness to perform (4).
- Monitor Heart Rate for Signs of (Mal)Adaptation
Sub-maximal exercise tests are commonplace in elite sports and are used as a means of assessing cardiovascular fitness (adaptation) and excessive fatigue (maladaptation). Combined with training load information, these tests can be used to detect overtraining, detraining, and positive adaptation. For example, in humans, lower chronic training loads (representing inconsistent training), and acute spikes in training load were associated with elevated heart rates at the same submaximal workload – indicating that the athlete was in a poorly prepared state. Conversely, building to moderately high chronic loads resulted in lower submaximal heart rates, indicating better readiness to perform (4). Heart rate recovery is commonly used following fast galloping work in Thoroughbred racehorses. If used with sufficient frequency (e.g. once per week), a submaximal test (e.g. walking or trotting at a slow speed for ~4-10 minutes) which incorporates heart rate, at the beginning of the week, could also provide information on fitness and fatigue status, thereby providing insights into the horses’ readiness to receive the planned training load in subsequent sessions (Figure 1).
- Movement Abnormalities Might Be the Straw that Breaks the Camel’s Back!
Just as movement asymmetries are routinely monitored in human athletes, abnormalities in movement are now being measured in horses (1). Wearable technology devices (including tri-axial accelerometers and gyroscopes) can identify the “typical” movements of horses, and through custom-written software algorithms, may be able to automatically detect when those movements deviate outside of a normal bandwidth (Figure 2). It is unclear if these movement asymmetries represent the cause or the result of injury, but most horsemen and women agree, that loading dysfunctional movement is less than ideal, and that minor musculoskeletal complaints can lead to more severe catastrophic musculoskeletal injuries (3). While this technology requires further validation to determine whether it can predict injury, it may be a useful tool to compliment the “trainer’s eye” in detecting subtle changes in movement and gait patterns.
- Lactate Monitoring – Shift the Curve to the Right and You’re on a Winner!
In recent times, the most common question I have received from horse trainers is “what do you think of lactate testing? Is it useful?” The answer is “potentially”! When carbohydrates are broken down for energy under low oxygen conditions, lactate accumulates in the blood. Blood lactate monitoring is typically done in conjunction with incremental exercise testing. The exercise intensity where lactate accumulation exceeds clearance, is referred to as the “lactate threshold” (sometimes also referred to as the “anaerobic threshold”). If lactate concentration continues to rise, pH will fall (resulting in muscle acidity), and fatigue will occur. Understanding the blood lactate threshold of the horse means that trainers can ensure (1) the horse is receiving the correct dose of aerobic and anaerobic training, (2) that when required, training is prescribed relative to their horses’ lactate threshold, and (3) that the horse is adapting positively to specific training blocks. If the blood lactate curve in response to incremental exercise shifts to the left (i.e. at the same speed, the horse has a higher blood lactate concentration), it likely indicates that the horse is deconditioned or maladapting to the training program. Equally, if the blood lactate curve shifts to the right (i.e. blood lactate is lower at the same speeds), it indicates that the horse is adapting positively to the training program – it is able to produce the same (or better) speed at a lower physiological cost!
- Embrace GPS Technology to Ensure Your Horse is Hitting High and Lower Speeds!
The forces applied and absorbed, and the bone loading that occurs during galloping, is different from any other locomotor speed (e.g. the speeds produced while walking, trotting, and cantering). In this respect, nothing prepares a horse to gallop, like galloping! But because of the high-intensity nature of galloping, and the limited fatigue life of bone (5), only small amounts of galloping is required to elicit positive adaptations to bone. Most trainers will use GPS technology to track the high-speed galloping their horse performs – they want to ensure that the horse doesn’t accumulate excessive high-speed galloping distance. Most trainers also use GPS technology to answer the question “is my horse getting faster, or hitting the speeds required to be competitive?”
Given the importance of recovery in promoting adaptation, an equally important question could be “is my horse running slow enough on its recovery days?” This is where GPS-guided training could help optimize adaptation for horses, by ensuring that training intensity is low enough during the recovery window. Remember, training provides the stimulus, but it is in the recovery window where adaptation occurs!
How Can Trainers Get a Performance Edge?
Not all trainers will want to use all monitoring technologies – nor should they. But every horse trainer wants a performance edge! In this respect, much can be learned from how humans train and how coaches monitor adaptation in their athletes. The best trainers will be the ones who have specific performance challenges and embrace the athlete monitoring technologies to solve them!
References
- Fercher C, et al. (2024). Applying multi-purpose commercial inertial sensors for monitoring equine locomotion in equestrian training. Sensors, 24: 8170. https://doi.org/10.3390/s24248170
- Gabbett TJ. (2016). The training—injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarter and harder? Br J Sports Med, 50:273-280.
- Hill AE, et al. (2001). Risk factors for and outcomes of noncatastrophic suspensory apparatus injury in Thoroughbred racehorses. JAVMA, 218:1136-1144.
- Hulin BT, Gabbett TJ, et al. (2020). Relationships among playerload, high-intensity intermittent running ability, and injury risk in professional rugby league players. Int J Sports Physiol Perform, 15:423-429.
- Morrice-West AV, et al. (2022). Relationship between Thoroughbred workloads in racing and the fatigue life of equine subchondral bone. Sci Reports, 12:11528. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-14274-y.
- Munsters CCBM, et al. (2020). A prospective cohort study on the acute:chronic workload ratio is relation to injuries in high level eventing horses: a comprehensive 3-year study. Prev Vet Med, 179: 105010. doi: 10.1016/j.prevetmed.2020.105010. Epub 2020 Apr 25.
- Pinelli S, et al. (2025). Exploring the relationship between the acute:chronic workload ratio and running parameters in elite football athletes. Appl Sci, 15: 1659. https://doi.org/10.3390/app15031659
