Bowling Secrets To Make You Bowl Better!

If you've ever taken a long break off of bowling, or you're looking for some bowling tips to get you out of your funk, maybe average another 10, 20 pins in league, this video is for you. Cameraman Matt here again. I have taken a five-year hiatus from the game of bowling. I am looking to get back into it. Paki and I are here at Bowling Alley to give my game a little tune-up. Matt was on the Shocker bowling team in 2014, took a five-year break, kids, life, all of that nonsense. He's not looking to go bowl on tour, he's just looking to get back into it and get a little better. His game is going to be very similar to a lot of you guys watching. Give you guys the one-handed, right-handed perspective, because real bowlers use their thumb. Bling! I wonder who came up with that idea. In my mind, getting back into the game, I'm kind of working on balance, hand position, and follow-through. I'm not trying to make this complicated. Like every time I give a lesson, first thing, stay on balance. I don't care if your arm swing loops, if you have five revs or 500 revs, you need to stay on balance to be consistent. You have to be consistent behind the foul line to achieve consistency in front of the foul line. I'm going to start out going kind of slow, half, three-quarter speed approach, just really focusing on my balance, trying to be an athlete at the foul line, and go from there. So I'm going to ease into it. I'm also not going to fret too much if I don't post a shot. I'm going to give myself some grace. I haven't been in the game for a long time. There's not really any reason to get stressed out about not posting a shot or throwing a bad shot. If you do pay for bowling, the way to maximize your dollar for a shot is by shooting your spare shot first. Shoot your spare shot first, and then go for your strike shot, just to try and make sure that you guys get the most for your dollar when practicing. I'm going to speed up my approach a little bit, make it a little bit more difficult, and still just try to focus on posting my shot. Felt pretty good. Looked pretty good. Not as good. That one wasn't as good, and that's okay. I know the more and more I do this, the more and more consistent I'm going to get, and the higher percentage of shots I'm going to post, so I'm not really going to worry about that one too much. That's another good one. So balance, I will say, is one of the easiest things to work on. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort. It just takes the acknowledgement that you need to work on. Working on your balance isn't sexy. It's not even all that fun, but it pays dividends in the long run, and that's most of what we're going to be doing as we're getting back into the game of bowling. So one of the things, and for all of you guys who get coaching, or for some of you who use this as your coaching, is acknowledging what you're practicing for. So Matt and I have talked a lot about his short-term and long-term bowling goals. He wants to bowl a couple tournaments with me next year, the Ozarks tournament. He wants to bowl the city tournament. You want to practice for those events. We're not going and we're trying to become a PVA Tour player upping the rev rate. We're just trying to sharpen the game and make more shots on target. Matt also mentions he wants to bowl USBCs. So as USBC time approaches, maybe our practice switches from maybe a little more house shot practice to going into a little more practice on some sport shots, a little sharper on those harder conditions. My tune-up didn't start at the bowling center. I've been doing some drills at home for about a month, a little bit every evening, to get ready to come back to the bowling center. This drill that I like to do is primarily focused on hand position at the bottom of the swing. And it's really good for one-handers, in my opinion. But let me show you how I do this at home. As a one-hander, kind of how I envision keeping my fingers inside the ball, is I form this V with my index finger and my middle finger. And I saw this tip from Norm Duke a long time ago. And if you have that V pointing up towards your target at release, then your fingers are already inside the ball. Take this and I make that little V and then I flip it up against the wall or into my couch at home. And I'm just pointing that V at my target. In the past month, I've probably done 500 repetitions with this at home. It's like I'm throwing a bowling ball for free at home. It's getting my hand in the right position. And today, when I came out and threw some shots, my hand feels like it's in a pretty good spot. We'll probably just take a look at what your hand's doing right now and maybe I can give you an extra tip to get your hand in an even better spot. That one felt pretty good. What do you got for me? I like what the ball roll's doing, but I think we can almost get our knee bend a little lower to try and get our hand a little more underneath the balls. Your hand's in a good spot up the back. I like where the ball roll is. A little more knee bend when we come into the slide will get our hand into a more consistent spot. My fingers are good here, but I need to be a little bit underneath them more here. And I think it'll happen like naturally. Like I'm not saying focus on your hand. I'm saying if we focus on that last slide step, a little more knee bend, deeper power slide into the shot, I think will create more consistency off your hand. Got that stiff left leg right now. The Flamengo, whatever you want to call it. How'd that feel, Ted? It's what we call the fake post. I tried to hold it, just wasn't quite there. If it doesn't feel good and it looks weird the first shot, you probably did something new. I think my knee bend will be one of those things that starts to get better just the more shots I throw, getting my body back into bowling shape and conditioning. But I think you're 100% right. I do think a deeper knee bend will help me post more and it'll help me get my hand underneath it a little bit. Maybe bump my rev rate up 10%. I'm like, hey, who kind of throws it like Matt? Okay, no, like a Thomas Larson, maybe a Francois Lavoie, even like a Chris Prather doesn't do anything crazy. His hand is crazy. You look at all those guys, the similarities that they have, like some good knee bend. Their posture is good all the way through the shot. Chris Prather is one of my good buddies, so I hope he doesn't see this, but when I'm trying to really post and keep everything super quiet and solid, I envision his game. Don't tag him in the comments. He also sucks at fishing. I felt a little out of control on my last shot, throwing at normal speed, so I'm going to try to slow my pace down into a deeper knee bend on this shot. I'm 100% with that. Yeah, that was better. Yeah. Shooter! If you had to give me one more thing to kind of work on over the next couple weeks, what would it be? I'd probably say your follow through just needs to be in the same spot, so when you throw one good, where is it? Let's just try and get them all right there. General rule of thumb, your follow through shouldn't be at your target. People like to call my follow through smooth, I kind of call it lazy sometimes. I know when I'm not bowling well, a lot of times it's because this follow through is just quiet, and a lot of times I have to remind myself to get through it, so let's work on that for a few shots. All right. Stay aggressive at it. Try and follow through all the way through the target. Nice. That was good. And it hooked more. Yeah, because you stayed aggressive. You know what I want you to do? I want you to make it with two balls, you little ****. You might need three. That was a little lazier than the last one. Your last one was pretty aggressive, that one wasn't as aggressive. When you say you want to make it more aggressive, just make sure that you're not pulling it down from the top. It's almost like you want one pace all the way through, right? So make sure you're not pulling down from the top, but you're making sure when you get to that bottom, you fire through that thing and get through the target all the way. I was also going to say that your first one looked like you pulled down from the top, that one didn't. A little bit, yeah. That one felt in time and smooth and aggressive, but not overly aggressive. Yeah, I agree. I like that one better than the first one. If you guys haven't seen our online interview with Jason Belmonti, please go watch it. He gave Paki some amazing tips on that. I was a cameraman on that, and I got to listen to the whole thing. One of my favorite tips he gave you was just having a consistent pace throughout the entire swing. It's not slow, slow, fast, fast, fast. It's not fast, fast, slow, fast. Everything's slow, everything's medium, or everything's fast. When I feel like I'm pulling my best, when I have that pace and flow down, it was really cool hearing that out of Belmont's mouth. You got to throw a double to finish, and you got to feel like they're good shots. If you're someone that uses a lot of video, make sure it's on video. That way you can go back home and look at it when you're done. All right, guys. On these ones, I'm not really focusing on any one thing. I'm just trying to make good athletic shots and wrap it up with a double, like Coach Pak said. That's a good one. A little bit, I think. It's getting a little lazy. Two balls? Two balls. Since you always rip me a new one for this. I've been talking s**t for months. It's time to pay the piper. I hope you make this, you little piece of s**t. I've literally never done this in my life. Just try and follow through, like, towards the middle arrow. And they should cross and hit each other. Match my expectations. It might re-rack and still have time for your ball to get down there. Ball change. Move a little left. Okay. Which one was that? The Kuda? Physics. From Storm. About six years old. I've drilled a few new balls, but I still got a lot of old balls in my bag. For the double. To end a practice. You got the pocket under control. It's the story of my life. Control the pocket. Shoot 2-12. Win on some hard patterns and get my brains beating on some easy ones. Another thing that I think is really important for people trying to get back into bowling is to make sure that your expectations match your current reality. I need to understand that I am not going to be as sharp as I was in college right now with all the things I have going on in my life. If I can accept that, bowling is going to be fun. If I can't accept that, bowling is going to be miserable. Obviously, I'm not putting as much time into the game, and that's okay. That's just how life is for me right now, and that's completely fine. But if I have a hard time accepting that, bowling is not going to be any fun, and I'm going to go back and retire. Well, we gave some tips to Matt from balancing to training at home, a little extra knee bend and the hand position at the bottom, as well as the ball. Even just one of those tips, helping one of you guys out, would make me a little happier, make me go to bed at night a little easier. Maybe if you're just getting back into bowling, this video helped you out a ton. Maybe not. Either way, thank you guys for watching, and we'll catch you guys on the next one. Until then, peace.