Five Focus Areas for Tuning Up Your Physical Game

With all of the emphasis on the technical aspects of modern bowling, the thing that is most often overlooked is the physical game. While having the correct ball in your hand and playing the correct line is very important, without a solid physical base to your game, you can never reach your full potential.

With this in mind, I thought I’d take a few minutes to go over some ideas with you and suggest some drills to help you to incorporate these ideas into your game this summer.

Before we can even begin a discussion of how to tune up your physical game, we have to talk about practice. Ask most any group of bowlers about how they practice and what you will probably hear is a bunch of lies. They will tell you that they routinely do one-step drills to work on their timing and releases. They will tell you that they play “low ball” to practice their corner pin spares. They will tell you that they practice without paying attention to score.

Now, compare these statements with what you see. How often do you see bowlers doing one-step drills? How often do you see anyone playing low ball? How often do you see bowlers purposely throwing bad shots to practice difficult spares? The answer to all of these questions is rarely, if at all.

In reality, bowlers not only keep score at their practice sessions, but they also often keep track of their practice averages and stats on their cell phones. This is not practice. It’s fantasy league or fantasy tournament bowling! If you are ready to make the commitment to actually practice, read on. If not, enjoy your fantasy league!

The most important aspects of the modern physical game are timing, release, projection, footwork, and ball speed. All five of these can be developed through rigorous training and planned practice. Let’s take a look at each one and explore how each can be fine-tuned and improved.

Timing

Every aspect of the physical game is affected by timing. Timing is nothing more than where the ball is in relation to the bowler when he reaches the foul line. If the ball gets to the line in front of the bowler, it’s called early timing. If both ball and bowler reach ...

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