Arena Polo Insights: One Way to Improve your Polo

Hey folks, thought we'd mix it up a bit.

Instead of giving an infrequent update on the changes we've made to the Wells Polo website, we'd start a monthly newsletter called Arena Polo Insights where we share 1 professional tip each month that has helped us improve our polo.

Our hope is that we can provide value by giving actionable tips that you can use on your polo journey!

The topic for this letter: cloning.

Cloning is a powerful mental model that you can use not just in polo but in any pursuit in life. Cloning is simply the act of copying someone or something.

For polo, cloning another person's individual plays can be a very effective method to improve your polo. See someone do a play in Saturday's practice that makes your jaw drop? Why not take that play and make it your own?

I'm a shameless cloner. I've stolen set plays that I've seen while watching polo after thinking, "wow that works really well." I've stolen individual plays from rivals and competitors that I thought were effective and/or cool. The key is to focus on one, singular play at a time, and practice it.

An example:

In 2017, I went up to Cornell University to play against their collegiate men's polo team. They had a very strong team that year with a few players that were rated 4-goals+ on the grass.

I remember one moment from this game so vividly.

One player on their team ran down the middle of the field with the ball at Mach 10, took the man to the right, came back to the ball on the nearside, and hit a nearside tap shot with the mallet head angled the same way as an offside tap shot, scoring the goal. All at SPEED. It was a "holy shit" moment.

I had never seen a nearside tap shot used as a shot to goal like that before AND I had never seen it executed at that speed either.

I went home and practiced that shot for weeks. I cloned that player. Took his play, added it to my arsenal. That year my team won our first Interscholastic Open National Championship, a goal I had dreamt about as a kid. Learning that shot helped my team achieve that goal.

In school, copying another person's answers is seen as a bad thing and morally wrong but in some cases copying people who are further along on the journey can be the best thing to do!

Be a shameless cloner.

Your task: Clone one play from another player that you admire. Identify it. Practice it. And shock everyone when you whip it out the next time you play!

Cheers,

Brennan