In team roping, spoke is the distance between the hondo and your hand. The length of your spoke can have a lot to do with how you control your swing and your delivery.
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TOO MUCH SPOKE takes away your tip control. It goes past the point of being balanced. That means there’s no tip in your loop, and the tip is what brings your loop through like you have a baseball tied to it. That is what brings the loop through to the feet, and that’s how you lead the bottom strand. If you can’t feel your tip, you can’t get your loop in front of the feet because you don’t know where your loop is. You might as well not even try if you can’t feel your tip.
TOO LITTLE SPOKE means that there’s no bottom to your loop. It’s better than too much, but there’s no bottom strand at all, which will close your loop. It’s not balanced, so it will just close up. If it’s balanced, it will stay opened more and open up better.
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HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF SPOKE?
Get help! It’s a personal feeling, and you might need help at first to figure it out. There’s a happy medium there as far as what works for you. If you don’t have tip, then you can’t drive it through. You know exactly where the tip is if you’re swinging it when you have the right amount of spoke. For me, it’s about an arm’s length.
