Stuff I would love some tips on 🙏

  • positioning of body/bike/ mallet for playing the ball on non dominant side

  • tips for better aiming on distance goal shots (I’m horribly off most of the time :grimacing:)

  • what’s the skill you learnt that most leveled up your gameplay?

-add to this…how do I know when I’m tournament ready? Like what is base level for a regular tournament??

  1. Dribbling the ball from left to right in front of your front wheel helped me obtain muscle memory.
  2. Shooting, shooting, shooting. Aside from that, check if you’re left- or right-eye dominant (or none).
  3. Not falling off my bike. Falling less off my bike.

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What do I do after finding out my dominant eye?

Stab yourself in the other one.

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I am left eye dominant. When the goal is factually centered in front of me in the distance and with both my eyes open, my brain believes wrongly that the goal is a little to the right. Since both eyes are open my brain subconsciously believes wrongly my left-skewed viewpoint to be aligned with the center of my body.

There are different approaches to overcome the “lying brain” (see pure shooting disciplines and tennis).
What works for me in polo (absolutely no scientific background) is teaching my brain to understand that my viewpoint is left-skewed and therefore not aligned with the center of my body:

I do target shots with my none-dominant eye closed, until I reliably hit the target from a distance. Afterwards I continue target shooting with both eyes open in the hopes that muscle memory and the brain-rewiring sticks.

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You scare me !
When you drive a car at 130km/h, does your brain wrongly believes that your are on the good side of the line ?

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No. Also, I’ve never been behind a wheel.

One can be shitty at ball sports (i.e. aiming) and still drive a car.
How so? Repetition and practice.

About the tournament question: I think you should to tournaments to get better, and not get better to go to tournaments. There are plenty of ABC or single shuffle tournaments where you get the chance to play with better players and against new players. It’ll take years of playing tournaments to win anything, so you might as well start getting your ass kicked as soon as you can. Half of the fun of tournaments is about the traveling, meeting weird people, hanging out, etc. Maybe the biggest difficulty for new players is building the network needed to for cool teams.

Check out Rising Stars in the upcoming tournaments page. Every team has to have a rookie :slight_smile:

Other cool beginner friendly tournaments that come to mind are Dresden and Peppermint. Also Mallet Dolorosa, FLINTA only. You don’t need to form teams to any of these.

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This is excellent advice, thankyou :pray::heartbeat:

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• non dominant side i would have to be physically with you to give you proper advice , like i ll have to see your default position before giving any other advices.

but the more i played polo the more i realized its how you PLACE the ball in front of you and which CURVE you will take to get to it and act on it

but look at other people do it and spend some time practicing ! try to have a very long mallet ( you can always grab it shorter) it helps finding the sweet spot for off side controls

• try your usual shot , while facing the goals ( i guess ? unless you working on a backshot ) and perform your more natural shooting motion , not too hard , not too fast but the fastest and hardest you can execute with accuracy.

for that shot to be considered valid you have to hit the ball plain center. when you are about to hit the ball keep your wrist firm and aligned with your clenching hand ( if you have to break your wrist to hit the ball its fine but most likely your mallet is too long , try holding it slightly shorter until you find the sweet spot) . if you miss the ball and shoot the air above it , most likely your mallet is too short. place the mallet head flat in front of the ball like you about to shoot it, it will make you drop your shoulder lower but you will be more accurate. memorize the shoulder drop.

also you shouldnt hit your wheel or handlebars. if you had to stop your motion to avoid hitting one or the other, then you are missing out on power. try a different curve or ball position ( further away from your bike )

once the valid shot executed , look at the result:

although you faced the goal the ball didnt went the same direction. but here is the trick instead of changing your shot movement , tilt your whole position as abike rider to complement the natural angle of your most natural shot !

this angle change depending on everything you decided to set up with : wheel size , handlebars size , mallet size , the height of your saddle.

i used the same logic to calibrate my shot at basket ball and darts, it worked well for everything.

good luck , like the guardians said once in a itw you can never be too good at shooting and its a move you will always work on

• go to a tournament when you feel ready for it , you will feel it in you and thats the call for bigger things :triumph:

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Knowledge! Thanks for the advice :pray:

1)Work on dribbling the ball as far infront of your bike as possible. Clamp your legs onto the top-tube for support and drop your shoulders down to the handlebar. Then segway into sharp turns towards the non-dominent side.

  1. Shots? Practice forever.

  2. best skill? Rolling backwards quickly without hopping around or rowing with your mallet. This is important for playing on the wall, or being in goal.

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