Do you practice your penalties? ... Probably not enough.
In this polo lesson I answer how you should be practicing your penalties.
How to Practice Penalties
Transcription:
So, how should I practice penalties. Over to you Gav. Okay so, if you are looking to practice penalties, there will always be a distance that you start to battle to hit the ball through the goals. You need to find what distance that is - where's your Achilles heel. And you also need to program your brain to success. That you are hitting the ball through the goals.
So if you're a beginner, start at 20 meters and put a board at 20, 25, 30, 35, 40. Okay. And go back in increments of five meters. Now go in and hit the twenty yard penalty through. Now, make a circle, come and hit the 25 yard penalty until you consistently missing at a particular distance. Now don't go beyond that before you know that you can hit that distance and get confidence hitting that distance through the goals.
So start at the beginning and every time you miss go back and start at the beginning. Don't go back. If you've missed the 30, don't go back to the 35 and the 40. Start again, go to 20, 25 30. And if you've missed the 30, go back to 20 until you hitting those consistently through the goals.
Now, when you've got the 30 yard penalty, going through the goals, go to 35 and then to 40. If you're missing the 40 start at 20 again, you're gaining confidence because you're getting there, and those shorter penalties are easy to hit through the goals.
So you're gaining confidence and you're not kind of really stressing yourself because the biggest thing, when you hit at goal is don't become goal-orientated okay, because you have a photographic memory where you think you do or don't, you do.
If you look and you see a tree over, then you point and you look, you'll be pointing directly at it. So look up, see the goals, then think swing thoughts, not goal thoughts. You need to just get your swing going and practice that time and time and time again.
Come in and think about your swing and hit it. Wherever it goes, you've done the best you can. If you miss the goal. That's okay, go ahead and do it again until you actually really confident to get down and hit the 20 yard penalty through then at 25, then the 30, and you thinking swing thoughts all the time.
Don't think about the goals, hit the ball, crisp and clean and straight. That's all you need to do. And just gradually work your way back until you've got to 60 yards. And even if it's along the ground, that's okay. You know, what you're doing is practicing correct principles. You're hitting the ball straight and it's going straight through the goals.
Once you've got that happening, then we can start to look for lift loft, direction and all the rest. Just get those balls going dead straight to the goal. If the 60 yard penalty goes two meters over the back line, it's a goal you've done what you've meant to do, you know, and we'll build on that.
So that, that's how I practiced the penalties. I want to just get that confidence that when I go up there, I can think about the swing and hit the ball, go through the goals. And that's how I practice my penalties.
