Polo Tip 54: Soft hands and active legs.

Soft Hands and Active Legs….and a volume or so more.

If you do not know your horse, you should always assume they have both a very sensitive mouth and sides. You don’t want to find out the hard way by yanking or kicking too hard right off the bat and send the horse into outer space, minus one pilot….you.

If you are fortunate, you have a horse that needs very little pressure from your hands to stop and just a slight squeeze of the leg to go. However, if you are a rank beginner, or maybe even a novice, this may be way too responsive of a horse for you to be on at this stage in your polo career.
The good starter horses are pretty much like a wooden horse with training wheels. You can hang on them a little for balance and you can make some mistakes without it costing you your health. These horses may not be real quick or real fast, they are just really dependable. An experienced, older, forgiving horse is a great horse to learn the game and maybe even how to ride if you are trying to do both simultaneously.

Looks and speed are not characteristics you should be concerned with in choosing the starter horse, but that is another article.

When we first start out, a lot of us think you hold the reins for balance….actually, we may or may not think that, but we tend to do that. Heck…there isn’t any horn to hold onto with an English saddle, so we need something….don’t we?

Well….that something will be our balance between our upper and lower body. We will learn to be able to maintain a lot of pressure in our lower leg and maintaining balance in the saddle by keeping our upper body centered. That isn’t quite how it feels at first. Without the ability to steady on those reins, we may initially feel that we are destined for many involuntary dismounts. And if you don’t work on your lower leg, your prediction may be a valid one.

As teachers and instructors, we need to try to find those dependable school and starter horses that will tolerate our early mistakes. It is important to have a couple of horses that will allow someone to hold on with the reins without flipping out or over.

A lot of us guys start out with the motorcycle approach. We yank left for left, right for right and back for whoa. Then we slap them with the reins like we saw in the movies and holler at them to go.

Well…if you are one of those….you will have to work on your technique…a lot. In reality, your reins are just to guide the horse in turns and alert them to your wanting to check or stop. The reins are used in combination with your seat, your body, your voice, and your legs. Everything working together is very much like an orchestra. One at a time, as they begin to warm-up, the music sounds dis-jointed, but when the conductor pulls everything together, it is truly symphonic, as will your riding be……once you pull it all together.

It is actually our body, our seat, and our legs that have more to do with directing and driving the horse. In the beginning, it is our hands that call the shots. As you advance, your hands will slowly begin to blend in with all the elements of the rest of the aids you will learn to use, to properly direct your horse around the field of play.

Beginning players who have grown up with horses have a real head start as the game is soooo much about riding. However, many adults take up polo and riding together. For those of you, it is highly recommended to supplement your polo lessons with riding lessons. So goes your horsemanship, so goes your polo. Very similar to hockey. If you can’t skate, you are not going to be much of a threat to anyone out on the ice in a hockey game….besides yourself. The game of polo is a ton of fun. The catch is that to become a better player, you need to face the required level of discipline that comes packaged in the term “Horsemanship”. That one word represents volumes of information. Just like everything else in life, all it requires is a little passion and a whole lot of work.

Happy Polo…..or rather…Happy Horsemanship.

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