Iowa State’s new Equine Sports Medicine Club will hold its first meeting tonight at 7 p.m. in Room 2532 in the Veterinarian Medicine Building.

The discussion topic is “Race horses are being ‘crippled’ by traditional training methods.”

Lazaro Milian, club president, said trainers that use traditional training methods are running their horses into the ground.

“Most trainers have about 20 horses or more that they run through the same training regiment day in day out. . . but every horse is an individual,” said Milian, a freshman in animal science.

Milian said the traditional method of training is comparable to a person training for a 6K race by running six miles a week.

“The horse can take more training than this,” Milian said. Race horses should be trained using equine sports medicine instead, he added.

Equine sports medicine is the use of diagnostic tools such as heart monitors while training. For the past decade, veterinarians have been translating human sports medicine and relating it to the horse, Milian said.

Horses have a linear relationship between exercise and heart rate. So monitoring the heart rate lets the trainer know when the horse is fatigued, and knowing the horse’s level of fatigue is important because fatigue can cause misstep, which causes injury.

“Most trainers have grown up on the track and have no sound scientific training [and] view sports medicine with suspicion because they don’t understand the science behind it,” Milian said.

Milian said the problem is widespread.

“Sixty percent of race horses are suffering from some kind of ailment or injury,” he said. “The scientific community says that is so wrong and has been going on for too long.”

The meeting is open to anyone who has an interest in horses. An $18 annual membership fee is required to join the club.

“It’s a place for everybody to get together and discuss equine sports medicine,” Milian said.

Milian said several activities have been planned for the club.

A horse breeder from the Iowa Horse Council will speak to the club and two noted authors in the field, Ted Stashak and Tom Ivers, will be coming to speak next semester, he said.

Milian said two weekends out of the month will be used for practical application.

Peggy Miller-Graber, an ISU associate professor, will also show how to train and exercise race horses on a high-speed treadmill in the ISU horse barn.