Monitoring Performance for a Practicable Assessment of Aerobic Performance

This paper has much practical information. Show jumpers are used for the study but most of the conclusions should apply to other disciplines. A key conclusion is that the best way to monitor fitness is to evaluate the horse’s cardio-vascular response to the work expected during competition. Also heart rate, and I would add HR recovery times, is a good indicator for fitness when used in conjunction with discipline specific training. A new piece of information falling out of the study is that performance is more closely related to aerobic capacity and less related to anerobic capacity than previously thought.
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Monitoring Performance in Show Jumping Horses: Validity of Non-specific and Discipline-specific Field Exercise Tests for a Practicable Assessment of Aerobic Performance
Front Physiol. 2022 Jan 14;12:818381.
Authors
Katharina Kirsch 1 , Christina Fercher 2 , Stephanie Horstmann 1 , Caroline von Reitzenstein 1 , Julia Augustin 2 , Henrike Lagershausen 1
Affiliations

1 German Olympic Committee for Equestrian Sports, Warendorf, Germany.
2 Olympic Training Center NRW/Westphalia, Warendorf, Germany.

Abstract

Show jumping is a highly specialized equestrian discipline that requires technical skill but also power and fitness. Monitoring the horses’ aerobic performance is therefore essential in order to verify whether the training has induced the desired cardiovascular and muscular adaptations. This study therefore aimed at evaluating the validity of non-specific and discipline-specific field exercise tests for objective evaluation of aerobic performance in show jumpers. For this purpose, data obtained from horses competing at Junior and Young Rider level during show jumping competitions as well as field exercise tests were retrospectively analyzed. The effect of the level of difficulty, the horses’ age, the penalty score and the horses’ previous level of performance on blood lactate concentrations after show jumping competitions (100 observations in 49 horses) was evaluated by linear mixed effects models (horse as random effect). Estimated marginal means significantly increased from 140 (4.1 mmol/L) to 150 cm (5.2 mmol/L) classes (P = 0.02). Furthermore, post-exercise lactate values significantly increased with the horses’ age (P = 0.001). Another group of 12 horses performed a standardized incremental field exercise test on a track (SETtrack), a standardized show jumping course (SETcourse) and a standardized grid exercise (SETgrid) each on three consecutive days. Indices of aerobic performance, derived from the SETtrack [velocity at a heart rate of 140 bpm (V140) and at a lactate concentration of 2 mmol/L (V La2 )] were highly correlated with heart rate (V140: r = -0.75, P = 0.005; V La2 : r =-0.66, P = 0.02) and lactate (V140: r = -0.73, P = 0.02; V La2 : r = -0.72, P = 0.02) in response to SETcourse as well as heart rate during SETgrid (V140: r = -0.73, P = 0.02; V La2 : r = -0.76, P = 0.01). Subjective rating of muscular fatigue was significantly correlated to the mean heart rate during SETcourse (r = -0.64, P = 0.05) and SETgrid (r = -0.74, P = 0.02) but not to the aerobic indices calculated from SETtrack. Besides non-specific incremental field tests, performance monitoring in show jumpers should therefore also include discipline-specific tests that more closely reflect the internal load induced by show jumping competitions.

Keywords: GPS; exercise test; heart rate; horses; lactate; show jumping.

Copyright © 2022 Kirsch, Fercher, Horstmann, von Reitzenstein, Augustin and Lagershausen.