Here at the broken hearts polo club, we try to…well, I mean, I guess we try…

I don’t even know anymore.

::swings at nearby NAH ball, misses, sighs to himself while rolling off away from person he was talking to::

The truth is, bike polo takes a good amount of skill and practice to even play moderately well. It’s hard to be on a bike and do anything other than riding it (for most people–not for polo players, necessarily). But we forget this as we develop in the sport – we forget that what we’re doing is pretty complicated for the brain to take in and process.

So when we mess up hitting a little ball with a little striking surface while going full tilt at a goal (and a wall), we get really frustrated with ourselves and think “man, I’m just not that good at polo.”

And you’re half right. Maybe even more than half.

I take lots of time listing the “top skills” needed for polo, but some of the skills that I think are most important are more or less as relevant outside of polo as they are inside of the court: the ability to recognize what you’re doing as difficult, and giving yourself some slack.

The first step is to realize you’re punishing yourself more than anyone else intends to. When you miss three passes in a row, your team mate might give you some jawtime, but  they really shouldn’t mean anything by it. You, on the other hand–you’ll start hating yourself if you aren’t careful. Remember this, broken-hearted player: there is always the next game/next tourney/next year. There is always room to improve, and there is always an “off” day lurking around in your future.

Don’t get hung up on past mistakes either. If you’re going to go all sadface during a particular game, make sure it only stays in that game. There is nothing more sad than watching a player as they spiral down the path of worse and worse play because they’ve lost confidence. Man, that just hurts to see.

Finally, provide reasons and excuses only if pressed. Your team mates really shouldn’t be grilling you about why you flubbed a shot (if they do, find new team mates and dump those jerksticks), but don’t just offer up a stream of what went wrong – at least not if you feel personally responsible. That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t do an analysis of the game if you think it will help your team or your play in general, but make sure you’re making observations and not just excuses. Nobody needs to hear it, least of all yourself.

Or, if you decide that isn’t good enough for your necessary sadness, just play some Cohen records and look longingly out of a window while thinking about how poor your mallet handling is. That should help, too.

Habits, we all have them. Some of them are pretty spectacular (like Irish’s habit of hitting the ball really, really hard, or Karl’s habit of defying physics…most days…). But there are also useless habits that polo players can find themselves taking part in.

By way of example, I have the habit of getting to involved in keeping the ball and slowly trudging my way towards goal. I should look around and pass – I should be interacting more with my team. But I just keep on trucking towards the goal in what will inevitably be a missed shot.

I also have the habit of sitting too close to people on the bench and asking personal questions, but I’m comfortable with that one.

So how does one beat a habit in polo? According to research which I will misquote and is more than likely made up, if you do an action something like 30 times (maybe it’s 45. I know it was a number that had numbers in it), it becomes a habit. Using this quasi-science, let’s look at some ways to bust the trend and expand your instincts.  Read more

So there is a rudimentary way to tell if someone is a brand spanking new player or if they have been playing for a good long while (pro tip: it’s how much they savor the taste of the first PBR on a hot day) – but it’s also how quickly they try to recover the ball after missing the pass/shot/general handling mistake.

A new player (and, to be fair, even a more experienced player who just never learned this lesson) will try for a shot, miss, and then kinda give up. Even moreso, you’ll see players who miss the pass and then keep going in the same direction they were before (instead of trying to dash for the ball).

Lemme tell you: unless you have a team-mate who is shadowing you or is in a position to recover, you should be the person going for that errant ball.

“But Crusher,” I hear you say “The guy on the other team is already facing the right way and going after the pass I flubbed, wah wah wah wah.”

Yeah, whatever.

You might not be able to get the ball back in control, but you’ll be a fine sight better when it comes to disrupting the upcoming play than you will be if you just keep heading down court whilst gently nudging your handlebar to turn back into the play. Bike polo is great in a lot of ways, and one way that it’s great is simply that it doesn’t allow for pity-parties.

So you missed the shot and the ball careened off of your spokes – great, go get that ball, or at least frustrate the guy or gal who is trying to recover it for themselves.

By trying to recover, you’re stopping a “bad” thing from getting worse. Moreover, you’re giving the rest of your team time to reset (into either a defensive position or into a better one to gain possession of the ball).