How Internet Videos Can Ruin Your Release – Part 1

A lot of bowlers in the internet age have been searching YouTube and other sources for those marvelous, slow-motion videos of all the pros’ releases. We want to see every inch of our favorite bowler’s release, in super slow-motion and in high definition. We try to copy-and-paste that release right into our own game. I say “we” because I have been guilty of the copy-and-paste routine myself for years, with very mixed results.

When I started coaching PBA members 25 years ago, I had to spend $2,500 to get a video camera that would slow down a bowler’s release and still remain clear on playback. Now, 25 years later, your smartphone will do an even better job for less than half the money. As a result, the internet is loaded with great slow-motion videos of the best bowlers in the world. They are great to watch, but the problem arises when we try to copy them.

Here is where the subtitle of this article comes in: honesty is the best policy. This isn’t a lecture on how you should interact with mankind, but rather that you should be honest with yourself. Over the next two articles, I’ll review the pro release and the potential dangers of trying to emulate it. Then, I’ll dive into teaching you a release that’s a better fit for the vast majority of bowlers.

The “many” versus the “few”

For the majority of us, we need to admit (to ourselves) that we are not professional bowlers, and we will never be professional bowlers. That means that most of us mere mortals will never be able to achieve the amazing releases that professional bowlers see as second nature. As a professional bowling coach, I spend a great deal of time fixing bowlers’ releases that were perfectly fine until they started watching internet videos. It’s all part of the job, but we could be spending that time building a better bowler for the type of bowling they do, instead of trying to match what the ...