This polo lesson will give you some great tips on how to get angle on your backhands.
It's a question that comes in so often, and it's a great questions, because you need to be getting those angles with your backhands.
How to Get Angle on Your Backhands
Transcription:
How do you get angle with your back hands? Number one, your body position. Okay. You've got to hit the ball wide of the horse. So if you're sitting on top of the horse and you're facing forward and you don't make that little seat adjustment that I've talked about, you will never get the angles. Okay.
You need, if you take, if you want to hit in the away back hand, you're going to take your right side forward. Okay? So that you take your right hip and right shoulder forward and get out and away. Now hold the ball away, the horse away from the ball so that when you swing the mallet, it goes literally past the horse, the front of the horse's face.
And that gives you the angle on that a way back hand, don't try and hit it close to the horse and turn your wrist to try and get that angle. You never get the angle from there and you it's a very weak back hand. Okay? You hit it early for an away and wide so that you reaching and the mallets coming, past the horses face and out.
If you hitting a tail shot and you want to get your angles. Remember that the lane you traveling is a meter and a half, okay? Five feet from your near side leg to the line of the ball. So go right to the edge of that lane and drift back slightly to the ball. Don't turn around the front of it. Now you're going to make a foul, but if you just change your horses angle, by that much now hit the ball late.
But it's the angle of the mallet and the plane the mallet is swinging. So your away back hand, the plane is past your horses face in away. That gives you so much strength and your wrist works correctly and you get the angle and the power.
With your tail shot you want to be with that mallet pointing where the ball's going to go, and you are reaching and turning backwards and hitting that ball way back behind you. Okay? But you've got to turn this way. Don't lean back here and don't try and get the angle with the mallet behind your head, because you lose all your power. You've got to hit it with your body.
So if you turn here and you make that tail shot with your body turning, it's a very strong shot, but you've got to reach backwards with that hand and hit that ball opposite the horse's back leg. So just give yourself room around the horse to do that.
And that comes to your body position when you're actually hitting the ball and the plane that the angle of the mallet is swinging when you hit it and into our for an away back hand and an out to in and always the mallet is going to start on your ear, right. It comes from here.
So if you're hitting that away back, kind of starting there and going there because you want it on your shoulder line, shoulder line is strong, if it's tail it's on your ear, but now you've turned your body so that the mallet is going across from out to in.
So again, it's a body swing, not an arm swing that will give you the power. And that will give you the angles.
