I visited a friend on the weekend who currently has a fine litter of athletic sport competition puppies.
The parents hold a number of records in weight-pull, treadmill racing and wall climbing. I took a buddy along with me as he’s planning on acquiring a new pup (it will be his first sport dog) The breeder has several adult dogs on his yard too and my buddy was in heaven as we toured the place (we all know that feeling when we first started out 🙂
When we got to my friends main stud we started talking about his conditioning. I asked the breeder what he had planned for his conditioning and my buddy who is new in the dogs was amazed at the precision behind all of the stud dogs conditioning sessions.
”It’s like he’s a pro-athlete” he said. That’s right, I replied, he is.
You see, conditioning a dog for world class performance is WAY different to exercising a dog to burn off a little energy. One of the key fundamentals is the focus on performance. When you condition for performance your conditioning must be highly organised and you must track the frequency, intensity, volume and type of conditioning you do daily. It’s not just a matter of hooking your dog on the lead and going for a walk.
I’ll give you an example using one of the main conditioning variables we track on our 12 Week Conditioning Programs….. ”Intensity”
Intensity can be defined as the quantifiable amount of physical exertion your dogs body uses when performing an activity. Most people do not track the intensity of their dogs conditioning. This is a huge mistake and by not doing so you are not maximising your dogs potential.
Below is a table that shows the fitdognation intensity continuum.
As you can see, there are different levels of intensity based on the exercise. This is important to note because it will massively impact your dogs performance. For example, if you want to improve your dogs strength, power and lean muscle mass you must focus on high intensity exercises as they increase the demand on your dogs type II muscle fibres and burns body fat percentage at a highest rate.
A great form of high intensity exercise is sprinting. We prefer sprinting on a Slatmill because apart from the fact that it’s safer (and bad weather proof LOL) it’s also the most effective way to control, track and measure your dogs intensity.
You can also sprint your dog by playing fetch but this does not give you full control and management of your dogs sprinting intensity which is how much distance your dog covered in the quickest time possible.
Not only that but dogs can get distracted during a game of fetch by either stopping to scent or by showing interest in other prey articles or animals.
This reduces the intensity of your dogs sprint workout massively. Compare that to a dog hooked up on a slatmill who is 100% focused on the task at hand, no distractions, no scenting, just pure intense sprinting.
Unlike most other Slatmills and dog treadmills on the market, all of our slatmill models now come with speed computers to provide you with extra key data about your dogs sprints. Combine that with a well planned conditioning program and your dog is truly on the path for elite canine excellence!
That’s all for today,
Keep them FIT!
P.S.
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