The DRASTIC change that Pete Weber made to his game (and how it made it worse)

Pete Webber had one of the most fluid and consistent styles we've ever seen on the PBA tour. In particular his swing was very smooth and when he was in full flow he was nearly impossible to beat. However there was one major thing wrong with his approach and it came into his game towards the later stages of his career. It held him back for some time and took away the fluid In this video I'm going to look at exactly how his style changed over the years and how it affected his game. Hopefully this will help you to learn about how your body reacts while bowling and how you can stop fighting against your body and begin to work with it. We'll also discuss a lot about pressure and high expectations and how that affects the body often in subtle ways. We will start at the beginning of his career and this footage right now is from his first ever win on the PBA tour in 1982. We can see his style is very raw and nowhere near as refined. It just sort of sums up his whole approach. It's very all over the place in places. His swing is quite different. It's a very high backswing and there's a lot of movement as he swings the ball up. It's not terrible but it's just when you compare it to the approach in his prime it just looks very disjointed overall and there's definitely some elements that needed a lot of work. If we look at a clip three years later there's definitely improvements. Things are a lot tighter but it's still not the fluid Pete Webber we all know. The release is more forced and there's just quite a few elements in there that need to be tightened up still. When we look at clips from the 90s though there's a lot more improvements that are obvious and overall it's a lot closer to the style that we saw in his prime. But I want to jump ahead specifically now to the year 2001. This was a very difficult period in his life and bowling career. In 1999 he was serving a suspension for conduct unbecoming a professional. This was related to his drinking problem however. In 2000 the PBA was bought out and Webber's antics on TV were seen not as a hindrance to the tour but a great opportunity to reignite bowling's popularity. So by 2001 he had his career right back on track and from the 2001 PBA Great Lakes Classic where he won the title and bowled a 299 game along the way we can see a very good example of what made him so good. What I want us to focus on is his body language and how fluid he is. As soon as he puts his thumb into the ball he starts his approach. This is a sign of somebody who is absolutely confident in their game. There is no need to think it's just get up and go and it made it look completely effortless. Now yes you can see he's feeling pressure but also he does have that complete confidence in his game and that's absolutely apparent here. If we look at another clip a full six years later at the 2007 US Open we see the exact same thing here. He's not thinking he's just doing he's already won a title that year so he's confident and since 2001 he's picked up several titles including the US Open. He went on to win the 07 US Open but after that things started to go wrong for him on TV. He would go on a three-year title drought. He was making plenty of TV shows but could not seem to win a match let alone the tournament itself. This is where his approach began to change and we can see exactly when this started to happen. The following year 2008 he still has the same fluid approach but in 2009 look at what he does now and this is not a coincidence okay. I really truly believe this has come from his inner state from his mental game and from him struggling on TV because he's looking to find that form again. He's looking for something to make himself feel good to calm himself down on TV so he's brought in this new approach. So what is the new approach? Well first of all he's holding the ball much higher he moves his arm down and it's a much more exaggerated push away but look at how much longer he takes on his approach. Before it was basically instant but the difference is clear to see. So what exactly has happened here? You might think it's natural progression you might think it's age but I completely disagree. I truly believe that it is all to do with him going through this period where he couldn't win on TV because there's come a point when he started to think and he started to doubt in his abilities. Pete Webber was a competitor an absolute fierce competitor who couldn't stand to lose and the body remembers these things and often what it will do is start to tighten up and it doesn't become effortless anymore because the body is trying to communicate that it does not feel right it does not feel safe but what Pete is doing here is what most of us would do in this situation. He starts to fight against that and it becomes a conflict where his brain is trying to get himself to feel good now he has this longer pre-shot routine because he doesn't feel comfortable so he's brought that in to make himself feel good the body is trying to communicate something and it's all about the body here it's nothing to do with his skill level he doesn't need to change anything in his approach he actually needs to stick with what he's doing and be effortless and the key part here is what he should have done is to address the internal issues that are causing the doubts that are causing the worries or the fears and therefore causing him to perform poorly on tv so it's not a physical issue in his game it's a mental issue but unfortunately the human mind perceives it differently and the tendency is to think you have to change something about your physical game essentially trying to force the body to cooperate and this is a prime example of what happens when there's doubts fears and pressure because Pete now doubted he was the best his big fear would have been that this could actually be the start of the end for his career and that caused him to add huge amounts of pressure to himself and all of that creates what we see in these clips if we fast forward to 2010 where he did finally win another title but what's fascinating here is what happened after because from that point on he didn't go back to his old style he kept going with the new one because his mind was saying well this new style works so i have to stick with it but by doing that you haven't actually dealt with the body the body is still expressing those fears and the pressure because the root cause has not been addressed in 2012 he won the us open and in 2013 he won the tournament of champions and all that does is to reinforce the idea that making those changes to your approach brought you that success but that's not the truth it doesn't matter whether you take 15 seconds to start your approach or start it instantly all that matters is how you feel inside when he felt at his most confident in his prime we saw the real version of weber when he tried his hardest to make it work all he was essentially doing was trying to force himself back to the previous version and because that worked eventually he stuck with it despite the fact the actual root problem i.e the fears and doubts had not been resolved the body always expresses the internal state and it's a little thing here but you can see if you look closely in his face and his jaw the amount of tension there the way his hands tap on top of the ball these are all signs that the body is just essentially expressing the internal issues i just quickly now want to compare him to water ray williams jr and this match was an interesting one as it came during that period where weber was really struggling on tv you can see he just looks uncomfortable he's struggling to throw the ball in the way he wants to but if you look at walter it's a totally different story he's so calm and confident he does express emotions such as annoyance or excitement but it doesn't affect him he expresses it and moves on whereas weber lets bad shots affect him long after they happen and walter's demeanor is simply an expression he's been winning titles he's feeling confident and he's also regularly beaten pete on tv over the years he's got nothing to fear or anything to prove but for weber it's the opposite he wants to beat water badly and redeem himself for all of those previous losses but all of that emotion and frustration was completely controlling him and ultimately affecting his performance so i hope you can see how important it is to work on these skills such as grounding and emotional regulation and how your mental game really can change your physical game without you even realizing it you see in all sports players going through difficult times and they start searching for ways to get back to their best which can often lead to changes in their physical game sometimes these changes can be beneficial but often they are unnecessary and what is far more important is working on your internal state and working on your internal state and mental game is what will help you get through those difficult periods and that will bring us to an end of this video i hope you all enjoyed this one if you would like to see more of these type of videos breaking down some of the best pros that we've seen over the years then let me know your suggestions for other players that i should do a similar video for this one let me know your thoughts in the comment section below if you have enjoyed what you've seen here today i'd really appreciate it if you would hit the subscribe button below so you don't miss any of my future videos well that will do it from me for today and as always thank you bowling fans and see you all next time