Like so many human activities, bowling is actually not that difficult to become proficient at, once you’ve mastered some basic commonsense steps. As a sometime bowler myself, I finally learned a few years ago from an expert bowler friend of mine how to become truly good at the sport. Make no mistake, I’m not ready for the Pro Bowlers’ Tour, but I am ready to take on pretty much anybody at the local bowling lanes. If you follow the steps below and focus on them, you will become a better bowler in a short period of time. Unlike golf, for example, bowling is a game that you can become quite good at in a short period of time.
Here are the steps involved in becoming a better bowler.
- Loosen your arm and your grip on the ball. Virtually all new bowlers make the mistake of gripping the ball tightly and thinking they need to muscle it down the lane. Believe me, you have plenty of strength to get it down the lane and knock the pins down. What most new bowlers are missing, though, is balance and the ability to keep the ball in the middle of the lane. When you loosen your grip, and loosen your arm, you are giving yourself a much wider margin for error. A tight grip and a tense arm means you need to have nearly perfect direction on the ball when you release it. As you stride toward the line, the more tense your muscles, the more perfect your aim and stride must be. Once you loosen your arm and your grip, you will be able to slightly compensate during your stride.
- Eliminate wasted motion. Take three or four good strides to the line and relax your hips, your legs and your neck. Focus on eliminating all extraneous movements, which can throw you off of center and cause the bowling ball to veer off center.
- Bring your arm back straight and envision yourself basically dropping the ball in front of you. Too many people think of bowling as ‘throwing’ the ball.. It’s not. A nice simple release, which encompasses little more than allowing your natural body motion to propel the ball upon your release will circumvent a wild ‘throw’ to either side of the lane.
- Keep your eye on the target! I can’t stress this enough. You will be amaze how much your score and success will improve the more you keep your eye on where you want the ball to go. Just like baseball, you cannot expect to hit what you’re not looking at!
- Slide your BACK foot and leg toward the target. If you focus on having your back foot glide towards the target, it will keep your entire body in line and not get off course.
Bowling is a fun game…and even more fun when you’re getting better and knocking down more pins!
All you need to do is to choose from the best bowling balls in order to have a perfect game because bowling is as tough as it is entertaining and knocking out the pins need you to keep your focus on them without a scant thought for anything else until the pins are knocked down.
