How to Hit Shots Under Pressure While Still Having Game Awareness?

answering your polo questions polo swing technique & stickwork tactics & anticipation Aug 01, 2020
 

The question asked was "how do you hit shots under pressure while still having game awareness? " which is actually two separate things. 


How to Hit Shots Under Pressure While Still Having Game Awareness?

Transcription:

Alright Gav thanks. Thanks a lot for your time. Let's get into the first question. How, how to hit shots under pressure while still having game awareness. Excuse me, got an itchy eye. I think that there are two completely different questions, Rob, to be honest, you know. I mean to hit the ball under pressure and have a game and have game awareness are not really the same thing.

The game awareness for me comes from having that 360 vision all the time of knowing where everybody is on the field and building up this kind of sixth sense as to where, especially behind you, what's happening and is a player moving. If you've got the ball, have you got somebody running into space? If you marking somebody, are they making a move,

do you need to look back and go with them? That kind of thing, that game awareness is, is a totally different question to hitting the ball under pressure and hitting the ball under pressure, I think is answered so clearly in tomorrow's video, that's coming on because it all comes back to getting prepared in time to hit the shot. And again, we've got another question about how to hit the nearside at speed.

It comes back to your pre-preparation. Really. You've got to be sitting in the correct seat all the time, because if you're in that boxing stance that I keep talking about, then you ready for any shot. So wherever the ball pops out, it's just a case of a quick move and you're in place already to hit the ball. If you're sitting on your butt,

running along, kind of having a tea party out there. Now you've got to try and get organized and get, you know, you will never hit the ball under pressure that way. The other thing is don't fiddle because everybody wants to have that first attack to look up, to see what to do, because you haven't had that 360 vision. You haven't looked around the field.

You don't know what to do when you get to the ball. So you fiddle to give yourself time to look and that's the wrong equation for me. You need to know, do I need to turn the ball because I've got nobody to pass to. But I already know that when I get to the ball or am I listening to a call, but it's been quite interesting just watching the chukkas here the last couple of days,

and you hear the pro's shouting at somebody, you know, stay with so and so. They will, and they'll say it five or six times and the guy hasn't heard it. He's so focused on the job in hand that he literally is unaware of anything else around them. And they'll shout. "Take it forward, take it, take it forward." And then hit a backhand

just because they so literally kind of caught in that moment of, of apprehension. "Can I hit the ball?" They don't hear anything else around them. Those are the little things that help you under pressure. Because if you number one are knowing what's going on around you, but secondly, are listening to the calls, it helps you because if I'm behind you,

I want you to watch the ball. I'm your eyes. I'm telling you where to go. I'm telling you what to do. So if you're doing that kind of stuff, then you know, and you listening to what I'm telling you, you already taking half of that pressure away. But if you are going to kind of get into this little bubble where you don't hear anything around you,

you don't see anything around you, you're creating your own pressure. That that's really, for me, the big takeaway for this is that there's 360 vision and listening to the calls and don't tap! Hit the ball where you can, touch it as little as you can. And all your hitting under pressure really will improve.