Physical Game Drills to Improve Your Bowling – Part 2

In my last article, I covered the swing drill as one of my three most-used drills to help bowlers improve their games. The second drill in this series is the slide drill.

The slide drill is the “Swiss Army Knife” of technical drills. It is probably the most versatile of all bowling drills because of all the moving parts, which means you can focus on one of several different elements using this drill. With that in mind, I’ll cover some of the key elements of the drill and detail all of its potential uses.

The slide drill

What I call the slide drill is often also called the one-step drill, which, unfortunately, is sometimes confused for the first step, and not the last step. To differentiate the two of them, I call this one the slide drill. I refer to the drill that focuses on the ball start and first step the ball start drill, which will be the focus of the last article in this series.

The slide drill can be used for lots of different things, but I use it primarily for timing correction (or timing introduction for newer bowlers), swing correction, and as a progression from other drills, which I’ll explain later. I’ve also used it for correcting slide direction, improving posture, and working on the release.

The slide drill is simple to set up. The bowler starts approximately three to four feet from the foul line and swings the ball from a standing position. Once the ball reaches the peak of the backswing, the bowler steps forward into the slide, the ball descends, and the bowler releases the ball. Many young and beginning bowlers actually start out with this kind of delivery before eventually progressing into a full approach.

This drill can be used by both one-handers and two-handers, but two-handers generally need a slightly more ...