I use workouts in several of my horse racing systems and people who haven’t tried them often ask me why workouts are so important.  There are several reasons that I use works to find winners.  One of the nice things about workouts is that they are usually pretty accurate despite the often chaotic situation that professional clockers operate in.  If they say a horse worked 3 furlongs in 36 flat, they are usually right.

When you’re lucky enough to get an actual comment out of a clocker, that is absolute gold.  They are some of the most astute horse watchers on the planet and if they make an observation, they are usually on target.  But if you’re not lucky enough to get a comment, and let’s face it, they are few and far between, then the next best thing is to understand works themselves.

Of course, you can also go to your local track, watch the horses work, and try to figure out which one is which and to spot an exceptional work, but it is much better to use your time  more wisely and let the pros do the clocking.  You can use your time more wisely by studying trainers and understanding how each one uses workouts to train his or her horses.

The angles that I have found with horses being trained and exercised have paid off very well for me, but they took a long time to figure out because each trainer and horse is different.  When I finally managed to put it all together, however, I realized that because of the public nature of those early morning runs, they are the one thing they can’t hide from you.

Most trainers aren’t going to trailer a horse to sneak in a workout at a hidden track on a farm somewhere out in the boonies.  They exercise their charges right where they stable them, at the track. Understanding the psychology of each conditioner, and really knowing the truth about workouts, is the key to understanding horse training.  It is hard to be a winning horse player without understanding the basics of training a horse.

I would have to say that is the key to using workouts and why both my angles based on workouts have kept working.  Most people just don’t understand the works because they don’t understand the psychology of the trainer.  The answer to how fit and ready the horse is may be right under your nose, but you fail to see it.