Here’s the tenth tip along with a bonus 11th bowling tip for you….When you watch bowling on television, you won’t see a bowler throw a shot that is not aggressive. They don’t baby the ball or throw tentatively or fail to follow through with every shot. Neither should you. The shape and distance of the follow through rarely changes but its speed might.Sometimes we allow the lane condition to take our game away from us. We get a little cautious or begin to aim/fit/steer the ball to the pocket. All spell disaster in terms of carry and confidence. It’s much easier to have a free armswing and a confident shot when you’ve got three boards or more to hit. One of the things that could increase your target area is follow through. When you follow through, NO MATTER WHAT, good things happen to off-hits.Speed control is the most difficult of all adjustments because it is the one that affects your timing most dramatically. You always want to have a ball in your hand and play an area of the lane that allows you to be aggressive. An aggressive swing and demeanor don’t give you time to aim or fit or steer the ball – a very good thing.Decelerating the armswing is one of the biggest enemies of good shot-making and carry. Accelerating the armswing from about your back pocket out toward the pins NO MATTER WHAT is essential. When you try it, you’ll feel that you can’t possibly be very accurate with such an out-of-control feeling. Then when you let the ball go, it travels over your target, your speed is increased and your carry improves, and you might think a couple of things: “Who threw that?” and “It can’t be this easy.”Aggression is an attitude, not an emotion.The more you do it, the easier it becomes. You’re more accurate and the pins seem to move around the deck more. It’s a wonderful experience and a powerful feeling. Aggression is not always related to speed. Being aggressive is an attitude, not an emotion. Sometimes you need to have a little finesse. I call this stroke assertive (as opposed to hit aggressive).To define these terms: hit aggressive does not mean hitting up on the ball. Hit aggressive relates more to the speed of your armswing acceleration. In stroke assertiveness, the follow through has the exact same shape as the hit aggressive follow through, the acceleration is just less. When folks have to slow the ball down, they tend to decelerate the arm too much and baby the ball onto the lane. They bend the elbow too soon and sometimes even stop the follow through instead of letting it continue on its own momentum, as though the arm was boneless.The looseness of the arm and its freedom to fall back down and swing loosely by the side after the ball has gone still happens in stroke assertive shots just like it does in hit aggressive shots. Sometimes hit aggressive shots leave solid tens and back row pins and you need a little less speed for carry. On stroke assertive shots, the follow through is exactly the same shape just not the same speed. You are still playing the area of the lane that allows you to have a free armswing and not aim the ball; you’re just assertive rather than aggressive.It will take some practice to develop the different feel of these follow through techniques and it will be worth it in terms of carry, lane play, versatility, and your overall sense of well-being!.BONUS SECRET #11Constant movement is not always a sign of nervousness or hyperactivity. It can actually be a weapon for you to avoid tightening up. If your armswing is tight, the pins know it. If your legs are tight, you feel it as the games wear on. If you have a death grip on the ball, your release and accuracy suffer.Staying in some kind of constant movement as you prepare to roll your shot can keep you from tightening up – not big moves, just little movements that prevent you from being perfectly still. Gently tapping your elbow against your side a couple of times before you begin your approach, patting the ball with your index finger, or bouncing ever so slightly with your knees will all help to keep you loose before you begin your approach.Norm Duke seldom lets his feet get still and moves the ball left and right in his hand in his starting stance. Betty Morris bounces up and down several times. Tom Baker constantly fiddles with his grip in the ball. They don’t do this because they are nervous. It helps keep them feeling loose and relaxed as they begin their approach. They know that tight = back row standing. Try it for several weeks. Find some movement that feels comfortable (it can be something that only you know, like wiggling your toes) and keep doing it. It should also detract from your ability to think while on the approach – what a good idea!

Tips for bowling training for spares…We practice strike shots continuously. You work with each of your balls determining their different reaction patterns. You practice striking from all different areas of the lane. You work with different releases to determine how they affect ball reaction and carry. You therefore have a tremendous inventory from which to choose when you’re faced with differing lane conditions.Generally speaking, the only time you practice spare shooting is those occasions when your practice experiments don’t carry and you work on converting your spares. (This happens a lot, obviously, because you NEVER rerack in practice, understanding the importance of making spares as you do.) Or the worst of all scenarios, you are keeping score while you think you’re practicing and shoot your spares. (If you’re keeping score, winning matters. If winning matters, you’re not practicing). Your spare shooting timing and inventory is therefore not as vast as your strike inventory. As you know, the philosophy of great players is that they make their spares and the strikes will take care of themselves. Besides, spares are what keep you in the money. ‘Strike for show, spare for dough.’I recommend that in some of your practice sessions, your spare ball is the only one you take in the building. It is certainly true that when you shoot the 6/10 with a full rack, the consequences of your failure are not great. After all, if you miss, you get another chance. When that 6/10 is standing there by itself, the pins sometimes look like toothpicks. However, the only way to get comfortable with the angle and your timing is to repeat shots until you feel competent. This feeling of competence makes those pins look like barrels instead of toothpicks.After shooting the 6/10 with a full rack, you’ll probably have some pins on the left side of the lane – a perfect chance to pick off a left side spare. When you shoot the 4/7 with a full rack, a right side spare will most likely remain. Choose what you shoot to challenge yourself. That’s the only way you’ll get comfortable and competent. Practice sessions like this will help alleviate that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you leave a difficult spare or even those single pin clusters that bother you.You know how many times you’ve missed the cut by a spare or lost a game because of count on a split. I cannot stress enough how important this is to your success as a player. You’ll never strike enough to cover up for a missed spare.

A bowling tip for playing deep without getting a nosebleed!If the line you are playing inside is fairly tight, meaning you can’t miss left and you can’t miss right, you could use the following variation. Open your stance and hips very slightly. Feel like you are pointing your navel toward the 3 pin (for right-handers). Now, point your upper body toward the 2 pin without moving your lower body. This may sound like you are torqueing at the waist but for shots where you need to be on 19 at the arrows and go no further right than 17 for instance, it works. You wouldn’t be playing this shot if you had a better carry angle from somewhere else, so 15 must be out of bounds. Having your upper body feel square to the pins will eliminate from 15 to the outside. By eliminate I mean this stance gives you the feeling that from 15 out doesn’t exist and you’re not tempted to leak the ball to the out-of-bounds. Your hips being slightly open will take away the temptation to miss to the inside.It is absolutely amazing how accurate you can be and how the need to stand far left is eliminated when playing deep and using this method of targeting. It may even work for you when playing down the boards although I have not seen it be as effective as when playing inside. It will help keep your armswing in line and the ball close to your ankle (never a bad idea!). This method is also very effective for cross-lane spare shooting.Keep your target in the middle of your body with your eyes throughout your approach. After all, if it doesn’t work, what’s going to happen? You’ll miss left or miss right. You’re already doing that…

Sometimes we have a great deal of difficulty playing deep on the lane because we don’t get to do it very often. We tend to try to help the ball so we pull it through the nose and to compensate for that we send it too wide to avoid pulling it and get it too far outside for it to recover, make the corner, and get back to the pocket.As an alternative to Secret #6 you might try this. When playing deep try putting your target in the middle of your body. This does not mean to move your body left or right to get the target in the middle, but rather to merely rotate your upper body until the target is in the middle of you. Think sternum or nose and remember Secret #1 about body alignment. Now don’t go crazy! I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense. After all, the ball is not in the middle of your body. Wouldn’t that make you walk away from your shot to get the ball lined up with the target? Thank goodness in this case logic can go right out the window. Come to think of it, in many things in bowling, logic is out the window..I have no idea why this works, I just know that for many people it does. It can arrest drift or at least make it consistent. It gives an interesting view of the lane and in the stance you feel like there is no way possible to hit a target that far left of you. (The target does feel like it is to the left rather than in the middle of your body).

More bowling information for you….You have probably been told that when you want the ball to go farther down the lane, look farther down the lane. This really does work for most people. Targeting at the first line of the splice (where the maple and pine are alternated to make the transition from one wood to the other) or at the far end of that splice will work well. You should also be able to target at 30′ or 45′ or use the reflection of the head of a certain pin on the lane for targeting. (It might surprise you to know that, depending on how far back you stand on the approach, the reflection of the head of some of the pins is at about 45 feet rather than the “way down the lane” we think it is.)Targeting at different distances down the lane takes practice so that it does not affect your basic delivery unless you want it to do so. Sometimes folks tend to loft the ball farther out onto the lane or pull their head up when targeting far down the lane. This can be very detrimental to your consistent execution.If it is your intention to increase loft by looking farther down the lane, okay. You just need to be sure that looking down the lane is not the only way you can get the job done. You should be able to look farther down the lane and put the ball down early as well. It can’t be an either/or situation.Most of the time when you are targeting down the lane it is because the lanes are dry and you’re trying to get the ball to go farther before it makes a move to the pocket. Try this: When you are forced to play deep, target the dots on the left side of the lane (for a right-hander). Before you discount it, give it a try. When playing deep (especially if you’re not used to it), your tendency might be to pull the ball trying to help it go left as you’re fearful of sending it too wide. On the next shot, you really will send it too wide to avoid pulling it.Targeting the dots on the left and visualizing the path you intend to throw the ball (as of course you do with every shot) can help you to throw the ball along that path. Your target is not unattainable because it’s so far down the lane but rather in your comfort zone. As on every shot, if your follow through follows the path you have in your mind, most of the time the ball will too. By targeting the dots or even closer, you can more easily project the ball on the path you intend.I know this sounds nuts. You’ve been told all your bowling life to move your target closer to the foul line when you perceive the lane to be oily and want to get the ball into an early roll. Now I’m telling you to do that when they are dry and you need to get the ball very far down the lane to keep it on the correct side of the head pin. Try it. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to project the ball consistently to the right looking at the dots on the left!

The heads dictate everything that happens down the lane. Your ball must skid, hook, and roll in the proper places on the lane to be effective. If your ball doesn’t skid enough, it will begin to hook too early. If it skids too much, it will begin its hooking process too late.For instance, if your ball is hooking too early, some people think that this calls for more loft. After all, the lane is 60′ long. If you loft it 4′ out over the foul line, your lane is now 56′ long. If it’s hooking early, a 4′ loft should make it hook 4′ later, right? Well, not necessarily.Remember, most folks lay the ball not far over the foul line. This could tend to dry up the front part of the lane. If you do the same, you will be laying your ball down in a dry area that will not allow the ball to skid enough and therefore it will hook too early. If you loft the ball out over this dry area of the heads, you should get more skid and delay your hook. So, in this example, lofting the ball out accomplished what you wanted – it delayed the hook.However, sometimes the more loft you have the earlier the ball hooks and the stronger it finishes. It is not impossible that when your ball is hooking too soon, you need to lay the ball down earlier to take advantage of whatever oil is in the heads. You have probably been told that when lanes are oily you should get the ball down sooner because you need earlier roll. Now here I am telling you to do the same thing when the ball is hooking too soon. How can this adjustment work for both conditions?Again, it depends on what’s happening with the heads. Sometimes you’ll find that what’s really oily is that first few feet of the heads. When you loft the ball over this area you will get it out over the slickest part of the heads, eliminate the skid and encourage enough roll to get the back end reaction you desire.Sometimes these first few feet of the heads are dry. When you loft the ball over this area you will get it past the driest part of the heads, and onto the part of the lane which will give you the back end reaction you want.The best way to know whether to loft or lay it down early is to try it in practice. If you feel you are lined up to the pocket but can’t carry, change your front-to-back laydown point and see if your carry improves.

More bowling information right here…..You can never ignore what the heads are doing. When targeting far down the lane, for instance, you must know what is happening to your ball in the heads even if you don’t see it. How? By knowing where the ball came from (the angle from which your ball hit your target).Let’s say that your target is the 10th board at the arrows going in the same direction as the arrow. This would mean that your intention is to hit 10 and go no further out than 10. If you are looking at 10 at the arrows and your ball crosses it going left to right, you haven’t hit 10 the way you intended and therefore you didn’t get through the heads the way you intended. After all, you can’t send the ball left to right through the heads and then when the ball gets to the second arrow, it all of a sudden straightens out and starts going in the same direction as the arrow!If it hits 10 and is already going toward the pocket, you’re probably slightly outside of where you intended to be through the heads. So, you see it isn’t THAT you hit your target; it’s HOW you hit it. You must have a plan of what direction you want the ball to be going when it hits your target. This is true regardless of where you are targeting. The goal is not just to hit the target. It’s what direction you want the ball to be going when it hits that target that is essential to the success of the shot.If you target the arrows, you might be thinking you can’t possibly know where the ball was before it got to the arrows since you are not looking there. But you can. Pay attention to how the ball crossed your target and you’ll know where it came from to do so. This may take some getting used to. It is, however, information you cannot do without. It stops that “I hit my target. Why did the ball go there?” confusion.

Here’s another great bowling tip. This one is regarding the evil ‘drift’.Drifting is not necessarily bad although to be effective you must drift the same amount in the same direction EVERY shot. A two board or less drift is generally accepted as not too much. That’s not in concrete. Dick Ritger won 20 PBA titles drifting four right. There could be a couple of problems with drift. One is if you drift 7 left, 4 right, 2 left, 6 right. This inconsistency breeds erratic ball behavior. The other is if your drift prevents you from playing the shot the lane might require of you. For example, folks who drift to the right sometimes have problems playing the ditch.Most people lay the ball down about 6-7 boards to the right (for a right-hander) of the inside of the sliding foot. If this lay down point is inconsistent because of drift, your ball reaction will be inconsistent because you have laid the ball down on a different part of the lane every time. Therefore, the ball will act differently. If you have a problem with inconsistent drift, put a piece of tape at the foul line on the board on which you intend to slide. You can see this tape peripherally and don’t need to look at it. Walk toward it until you can cut your drift down to two boards or less.This may mean that you must take your first step slightly to one side or the other to help get your body aligned. So what? As long as you walk consistently, your lay down point will be consistent and you give your ball the best chance to behave consistently on the lane. It would, of course, be better if you could train yourself to walk straight without taking a circuitous route to the foul line as that can become a complicating factor in your game. What if one time you step 2″ left and the next time 6″? Can you compensate for that on the way to foul line?I often see people standing on 25 or so and trying to play down the second arrow. The only way to get the ball over to the second arrow with that trajectory from so far left is to walk a lot to the right. This causes you to either pull the ball back across your body as you have walked too far to the right, or to miss your launch angle too far right because of the severity of the angle you are walking. Either way you lose. If you walked straight with the boards, you’d end up on 25, fifteen boards away from your intended target! You’d have to walk from 25 to 17 and then square up to the foul line to throw a shot down 10. Why make things so complicated?If you watch bowling on television, you’ll often see the pros looking down at their sliding foot to see where they have finished at the foul line. Contrary to popular belief, they are not checking to see if their name is on their shoe or if they fouled. They are doing this to learn valuable information.If the shot worked: they want to know where they slid so they can slide there again.If the shot didn’t work: they want to know if it’s because of where they slid and therefore where they laid the ball down.If they slid where they intended and it didn’t work: their intentions are wrong and it’s time for a different think and an adjustment.If they didn’t slide where they intended: they won’t be making an adjustment off a bad shotKnowing where you slide is imperative to making good adjustments. If you make a bad shot and look down to see where you finished, what have you learned if you don’t know how that finish position compares to good shots?One caution here about checking out where you slide. Do it AFTER you have watched the ball make its way down the lane and through the pin deck. Your foot isn’t going anywhere. You’ll have time to look after you’ve paid attention to all the data your ball is giving you.