Master Your League With These Pro Bowling Tips!

Alright everyone welcome back to the channel and in this video we're going to be giving you guys five tips on how you can improve your bowling during league. Now Kyle what do we got for them? So today we're gonna have me as the coach and Brad as our, what would you say, 175 average bowler, league bowler? Yeah, 170. 175. So we're gonna act like Brad is a 175 average league bowler and we're gonna talk about five things that he needs to be working on to start bumping that average up. Start getting some 600s, start averaging closer to 200 and get that. So tip number one is gonna be pretty simple here but it's gonna be pocket control. Now Brad I want you to throw a shot here. The one thing about a house shot is that even though it's really easy or theoretically it's easier, not all house shots are easy, we want to still maintain pocket control. I think a lot of times people get ahead of themselves thinking they need to throw four, five, six, seven baggers before it even starts and we need to just control the pocket. So on a house shot it's designed to have dry on the outside part of the lane and a lot of oil in the middle. So we want to try to find whatever blend there is of those two and just maintain control of the pocket. And we've seen a lot of bowlers that have an unbelievable ability to strike, you know, where they could throw six and seven baggers but then they also have this ability where they just kind of sprinkle it, you know, or you know, they just spray cannon a little bit. We would rather, especially even on a house shot with higher scores, we would rather see a guy get to the hole and leave nines because you can work with that. You can work with that. You can make some micro adjustments to start getting those ten pins out, start getting those seven pins out, but when you're not controlling the pocket on a house shot and now you're maybe splitting more, it's really hard to start shooting higher scores. Yeah, we have a house shot out. We do. It's one that hooks a lot. So let's see this first shot here. Rolling with the attention star. Took a little hand out. All right, perfect. A little split. A little split out of the gate. No pocket control happening there. So back to Brad's point, we're trying to raise our average and it might be a little different for league as opposed to like maybe like a tournament. But league, you know, you're bowling what? 32, 36 week seasons, long season. We want to hit the pocket as much as we can. Otherwise, you're going to be doing stuff like Brad just did. We're going to be leaving splits and to your point when you said nines, we can work with nines. Well, we can also pick the nines. Yes. We can't pick those. So that's why it's controlling the pockets big. So Brad, that shot hooked a lot. We're trying to just work on controlling the pocket here. What's going to be your move when you're seeing a lot of friction here? You know, like you said, there's the friction and the hook is to the outside part of the lane. This isn't complete across the board, but generally it's there. So if you miss out, it'll hook a little bit more in and get to the pocket. There's more oil in the middle. That way when you miss in, you get a little more slide. Hopefully it still hits the pocket. Given that, I'm just going to move in to a little bit more oil. So we're just trying to move left with our feet and eyes to find a little bit more oil. And I am noticing, or I at least noticed, that that ball splits. So I'm already a little, maybe this one's a little too angular, but we'll see. So that was closer. Yep. And we're closer to our nine. So now we're just, we want to probably still move our feet a little left, eyes a little left. Let's try another shot here. We're working on pocket control here. We're feeling out the lanes. Brad, when he threw his shots to the right, it was pretty dry. You could see the ball roll, come up high. He doesn't want to stand in that same place. So control the pocket. We've got to move our feet and eyes to find more oil. That's going to help our ball get down the lane, hit the one three consistently. He's doing that. This is his second move now. Pretty big move. I think this one's going to hit the pocket. And that was, like we said, this house shot does hook a little bit. That was a pinch grab as well. But this, the last two shots is considered the pocket, right? So it's obviously not striking and it's a little too angular and high, but that is a technically a pocket shot. It is close. Yeah, absolutely. So tip number one, please control the pocket. You're hitting the pocket and you're not striking. You're at least going to leave nine, like Brad left a couple four pins there. But if you're trying to create all this angle and trying to hook the ball a lot and you're just not using smooth, controllable ball reaction, you're going to start splitting. Those splits are going to add up over the course of an entire league season and it's just not conducive for raising that league average. Yeah, and if you're out there, someone who throws a lot of splits, it's just not possible to consistently bowl good week in and week out if you're doing things that cause you, because then it's going to make you try and do some more. You're going to overcompensate. You're not going to feel confident. Your misses aren't going to be as good. So we have to get to the hole if you want to consistently raise your league average. All right, Kyle, now that I'm controlling the pocket, what do we have for tip number two? So tip number two is going to be the bowling balls. Brad has three bowling balls here. When I see people averaging around 170, 180, 190, somewhere in that realm, a lot of times they're only bringing one bowling ball into league. Now, we're not out here saying that you need to bring in a whole eight ball, 10 ball arsenal, but having a couple options is really important. You might have that one ball that looks good almost all the time, but it's important to have a ball that's maybe a little stronger than that or a little weaker than that, that you can go to because throughout an entire league season, every week doesn't play the exact same. Some weeks they might be a little tighter. Some weeks they might hook a little bit more. Depending on who you're bowling against, that can make the league shot be different. So we want to have some different options to go through. So Brad, what kind of three ball arsenal do you have here for us? So we got one of the strongest balls on the market that all the ball companies make them for Storm. It's the Ion Max. Brand new. Kind of really love this ball, to be honest. I have a ball down from this one. A ball down meaning like a weaker ball, which is going to be the attention star. It still has some core and it still is a pretty strong ball, except it just has a cleaner cover. It's a pearlized bone ball. And then on the way down, we have the Faze AI, which is just a step down from the attention star. Cleaner cover, a little weaker engine, a little weaker core. This little three ball arsenal right here can be used on a lot of different patterns, really. Yeah. I mean, you can pretty much create whatever shape you want to create, especially on a house shot with these three bone balls. You have your ball that's a little stronger. You may not use this one all the time, but the game one and a half, game one and into the second game, you might use this. And you have your attention star. I would assume this is probably the ball you would use the most on most house shots. And then you have your weaker symmetrical pearl in the Faze AI here. And you can honestly throw all three on a lot of different things. I'm going to throw a shot right here on a house shot that has a lot of hook with the strongest ball in my bag. And it can still be the right play and the right ball, but it could also be on some very heavy oil as well. Whereas the attention star on the Faze AI, I can throw them on a little bit of oil, but I could also throw them on a little bit of hook. So just because they are three different bone balls doesn't mean like one week, I'm not going to throw the attention star. And then the next week on the same pattern, you know, the IMAX might look really, really good. Yeah. So we threw the attention star. It was hooking in, you know, a little too much. Now I'm going to go to a stronger bone ball and we're going to see what happens. Kind of the same deal. The way it went down the lane and the shape and where it hooked and all the little is obviously a little bit different. Right. Ended up with the same result, but that's a completely different bone ball that kind of gave me a somewhat similar result as the attention star. So just because you're married to one ball, it doesn't mean a brand new ball might not, you know, you might not like it just as much. Let's try the Faze AI from see if this ball gets down the lane a little bit better and hits the pocket. Okay. So just given this pattern right here, this, this ball is probably the ball of choice. I could use a little bit of rosin, but that's okay. You sure? Control the pocket. Control the pocket. Not controlling the pocket, but to have three balls in league, it's important to be able to go up and down. We're going to give Brad a redemption shot here in a second, but I think what's also important is that on a house shot, it's generally easy to get to the pocket on most house shots. But the reason you want to have a couple options is like, for instance, these three balls, Brad, you could actually throw all three of these balls game one elite. It's good to have these different options and see which one's going through the pins better that night. It's because sometimes maybe you'll throw this Faze AI five weeks in a row and it's looking great. And all of a sudden one night it's just flat 10, flat 10, flat 10. And then what's going on? So you want another option to go to. You don't want to just bring in one ball and be stuck with this Faze AI if it's just not working that night. Yeah. And there's also a lot of transition. The rev rates are higher. A lot of two handers, five people on a team. Yeah. 10 people on a pair. You're going to see a lot of, uh, a lot of oil moving. So let's hit the pocket here. Pocket control, 10 back. Oh, he gave it the gusto. Let's go. Here we go. So show up, baby. I don't know if you can see like a huge difference between those balls, but I think I'm going with the Faze AI. Yeah. No, because you can keep your speed up. That looks great. Faze AI for sure. But it's a good thing you have options because if you only have that Ion Max, we'd be in trouble. Options are key. All right, guys. Tip number three is going to be working on a little bit of versatility. Now, we're not saying that you need to be great on all facets of playing everyone in the lane, but if you want to have success on a house shot, you're going to have to deal with the transition. And in order to deal with the transition, we got to be able to move our feet. And if you're someone that really likes to go straight, you got to learn to hook it a little bit. And vice versa, if you're someone that hooks it at the beginning, you might want to learn how to go a little bit straighter. We're going to act like Brad just likes to play straight. So Brad, we have three balls here, three options. I want you to play around 10, 11, 12, and we're going to try to throw a strike. The reason we're going to try to throw a strike is it might be a little difficult here because this house shot's burnt up, but we're acting like you only like to play 10, 11, 12, and you don't like moving left. So much hook there. I would say that was somewhat of a normal release. We have our weakest ball, our ball that's going to get down the lane the most, and it's still not getting down the lane. Brad, let's transform you from your 175 average to now you're your pro self. Okay. Right now, I want you to play there. I want you to try to hit the pocket. Okay. I want to see if we can even do it and how much effort it's going to go into doing this. Oh yeah. Baby. How comfortable were you doing that? Not comfortable at all. I'm not even comfortable with the way the pins fell. I was almost leaving a what, four, five, seven? Yeah, about a four, five, seven. The point is that this house shot here, if you were someone that just likes to go straight, and I see this a lot, people think they start throwing it bad or whatever the case is. They start thinking they're tugging it because the ball is hooking and going through the face. In reality, the lanes are transitioning and we need to make moves. Believe it or not, it's not always you making the bad shots. Sometimes it's we're just playing the lanes incorrectly and it's hard to pick up ball motion at times. So then we think we're throwing it bad when in reality, we just got to make some adjustments. Yeah. One of the last times I bowled a league, they give you a printout of all your weekly series and all your games at the end. My game one average was high, like 240, 250. Game two average, 230, 220. Game three average, 220, 210. Why? It's just because the oil moves and it can be hard to keep up with it. And it's fine. Most of the time in a lot of house shots, you can kind of just do your thing, but there's going to be nights where you can't. And that's where it's nice, where we have an hour of practice in that week where we're playing a little bit of a hook shot when we like to play a straight. Just some kind of versatility practice can go a long way. And just saving those like really bad game threes. Yeah. Saving those 570 and 580s that we don't really want to shoot to keep our average high. Versatility is key. Yeah. So let's go play left now. Let's just kind of where we were at before. And let's just show that, I mean, hopefully we can show that it's just easier in there. Like if we were playing straight, that might've worked at the beginning, but depending on how the lanes are playing, you've got to be able to move left and just have a different shot than playing straight. Yeah. And generally when I am playing a larger angle, slower ball speed is nice. So if you're someone out there that like loves to play straight and you don't know why you can't hook it very well, just drop the ball speed. It's kind of a, it's a little simpler move. So that's what I'm going to do. Even though the pattern hooks, my angles are more open. So just a little bit less ball speed. Yeah. All right. Now you can just see. Yeah. I didn't have to force that one. I mean, I could tell when you were, we told you, Hey, you need to strike from playing out to the right. You did it. It was actually really impressive to do that. But how much more effort did that take as opposed to playing left? Left, it's giving you the room. It's providing the ball to just glide down the lane. And that's because these lanes are beat up. But if you were only able to play straight and you don't like moving off that 10 zone, 10, 11, 12, whatever that is right there, then you're going to have a rough time as opposed to someone that can move a little left, start shaping the lanes and still control the pocket and start striking. All right. Now that is three tips for you guys. Kyle, what do we got for the fourth? So the fourth one is going to be your mindset slash mental game. This is something that we have fallen into. It's trapped plenty of times on the house shot. And that is when you're on a house shot and say you're bowling a tournament, you just press that. You just think that you have to throw eight baggers, nine baggers, 300, five. Like you just feel like you have to press to throw a lot of strikes in a row. You know, if you want to win some house shot tournaments and all that, you do have to do it. But the thing is you can't put all that pressure on yourself to try and shoot those five baggers and six baggers. You have to let the strikes come to you and you have to focus on the things that you can control. And that is actually a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about. Control the pocket, get the right ball in your hand, and then repeat shots. And if you do all of those things well, the strikes will follow. But if you get out there and you know, from the first frame, you're like, all right, gotta throw six in a row. It's like, dude, you haven't even thrown one in a row yet. If you've ever felt that pressure, which, you know, I think we probably all have, you got to try to alleviate that. Yeah. And the mindset thing's really cool because on every level it matters and you could always trick yourself into having some like weird mindset. So you could actually do what you wanted to do. Bowl your 750, greatest night ever. Wow. I'm amazing. But now the next week you have like this expectation of, Hey, now I'm going to do that again. And then it doesn't. And then now you're down on yourself. You're down again. And you, you succeeded in doing what you wanted to do the week before. And then the next week wasn't the same because the expectation, now you actually have a worse mindset coming off of like one of your best series. So the emotional part of it, you'll see your scores will go up almost when you pay like less attention to them. Like you're saying, like if you just go in and say, you know what, I don't want to be up and down tonight. I want to throw the best shots I can. If I focus, if I just, you know, get to my turn a couple seconds before I'm there, I'm not rushed. If I really focus on my shot making and just how I'm feeling in that moment, how I'm talking to myself, just all this stuff upstairs, you'll see your scores rise. You know, it's, it's kind of, it's pretty linear. They are connected. Yeah, no, there's plenty of times where when I'm bowling in a tournament and you're in that flow state, dude, I don't even know what I'm shooting. I just, Oh, I shoot two 30, two 40, two 50, whatever the case is. Cause I'm, you're so dialed into the process. So you guys at home, if you are somebody that has felt, or do you think you feel like you put too much pressure on yourself or feel like you're getting ahead of yourself, what I want you to try to do is the next time you bully, don't look at the score at all, all night, obviously pay attention to who you're following, but don't worry about the score. Don't look at it. Don't think, Oh, I have a turkey. No, we don't want to think about any of that. All I want you to think about is the stuff you can control. Worry about reading the lane, figuring out where you need to throw to control the pocket, figure out what ball you need to throw, and then just work on repeating the shot, throwing it the same every time. And then staying ahead of the transition, just focus on that. And then see what the score is at the end of the night, pay attention to how you feel. And then maybe you'll shoot a higher score. And that can become the success of the night. You shot 600, 550 or whatever it is, but man, you were in a great mood. You were focused. You were there every single shot. You're going to feel way better about that rather than bowling, like a decent night where you're, you know, up and down super bad. It's nice to have your emotions in check and then know that you could just sweep off any kind of bad luck, any kind of bad night. It's not easy to do that. No. All right. So I'm going to lead into tip number five, and this one comes close to home for us a little bit because we're growing up in one of the most interesting time periods of being a bowler, because we have this beautiful thing called the internet and it connects you to the entire world. And you have world-renowned coaches. You have professional bowlers. You have a very large amount of people making content on the internet about their journey, about how you can be a better bowler. There are coaching platforms like Kyle and I have, the Brad and Kyle membership, where you get private access to us every day of the year and Coach Daniel as well. So there are these ways and platforms that you could learn how to bowl without even leaving your house. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. And you can get instant feedback. So wherever, you know, you are in your bowling game, getting the right coaching is huge or just getting coaching. A good coach, especially on how to improve your league, you know, average, that's what we're trying to talk about here, can talk to you about like lane play strategies. Maybe you're just off a little bit on your strategy. Maybe you don't quite have the right ball and they can guide you in the right direction. Maybe you're just playing here and we kind of need to play here. Or maybe it's something in your physical game that you can tweak that will help you start repeating shots. Whatever the case is, getting a professional set of eyes that can help you with that is going to improve your game drastically and probably pretty quick if you've never had coaching. Yeah. There's just, there's nothing out there that we're going through. You guys are going through that a coach hasn't seen or been through before, or a professional bowler hasn't seen or been through before. And that goes with everything in life. It becomes so much easier to learn and improve when you just have someone to talk to that's literally done all the stuff that you're trying to do. It expedites the process and you just, you can get instant feedback. Everything's very quick. So the internet is a beautiful tool for you there. All the social media platforms, all the coaching content, all the professional bowling content, you know, it's out there for your pleasure. You might as well take advantage. Yeah. If you're, if you're out there spinning your wheels and you feel like you're not getting better, just go out on a limb, get some type of coaching, whether it's with us or another professional coach, just try it and see, because you know, you don't want to spend all this time spinning your wheels and feel like you're not getting better when someone can tell you one thing and all of a sudden your game starts improving. So go out and try some coaching. Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, five tips on how to improve your league average. Now, you know, I was trying to think, I haven't really been bowl, I haven't bowled league in a while besides seven. I did get a few games of seven in last week. And I'll tell you this, to have success in league, you know, it's really important to understand your center, get the right ball in your hand and just repeat shots and not worry about the scores. The scores will come, but I think we got that point across through all the points that we were talking about. Absolutely. And if you guys liked that video, make sure you like and subscribe. And if you are looking for coaching, send us a DM, click the link below. We would love to have you in our membership. So we'll see you guys later.