Does your arm come up straight over your shoulder and back

[Albundy]

..after the release... i see alot of young female bowlers do this. I find this a little hard ..i think im a little less flexible. My arm comes up a little to the side. Im not a teenager any more. Will i bowl better doing this or does it not really matter and i should do what is comfortable. Im just a bit of a perfectionist...

[RobLV1]

A lot of the more traditional female bowlers still do this, while the more contemporary bowlers use an arm swing that projects out, rather than up. Besides not encouraging "hitting" up on the ball, this takes into account that there are no pins on the ceiling! LOL

[bowl1820]

Yes, a arm swing that projects out, rather than up is the preferred method. It's when you try to force the arm up, that you start risking hitting up on the ball etc.

You want to try to project the ball out on to and release it parallel to the lane. But once the ball is released, your arm can and probably will continue upwards naturally do to it's momentum without any help from you.



here I'll try the Landing the plane video from Banner Bowling, The kid projects the ball down the lane. But as you can see his arm still naturally comes up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbsn-xlV7Os

[taxexpert2]

The general coaching I have seen is to have the hand come straight up as if you were going to hit yourself in the head if you continued the arc. Personally I feel that what works for you works for you. You may have years of bowling behind you with an average you can live with. You may try things to improve, but if it makes you unhappy in the attempt there is no reason to keep trying.

[RobLV1]

The general coaching I have seen is to have the hand come straight up as if you were going to hit yourself in the head if you continued the arc. Personally I feel that what works for you works for you. You may have years of bowling behind you with an average you can live with. You may try things to improve, but if it makes you unhappy in the attempt there is no reason to keep trying.

Much of what is taught in bowling is based on the sport prior to the nineties. Since then, reactive resin was introduced, dynamic cores were added to the balls, lanes were converted from wood to synthetic, and the kinds of oil being used is different. Unfortunately, many coaches simply repeat what they learned back in the seventies or eighties. Not only does some of the advice fail to help modern bowlers, some of it is actually detrimental to the modern game. If your release is such that the "hand comes straight up as if you were going to hit yourself in the head if you continued the arc," you cannot help but to lift the ball. This lift was needed before the modern era. It is as detrimental now as "trying" to make the ball hook.

[got_a_300]

My follow thru goes up somewhat and to the right with an open hand and
my thumb more up if I'm keeping my line and target in front of me.

Now if I'm playing a deep inside line then my follow thru goes more to
the right and not up as far with my thumb pointing more to the right to
allow me to project the ball more to the right toward my target.

Yeah the way I was taught to bowl back in the early 80's was to follow
straight thru and up toward the ceiling with a lot of lift on the ball to
make it hook back when they were made of rubber and plastic but that
just does not work now days with the newer balls.

[foreverincamo]

I was taught as is still being taught, that a right-hander should finish the arm swing with the bicep by the ear. I do this as I did 30 years ago with one exception: my hand is open after releasing the ball instead of closed. This way I'm not lifting the ball, just imparting rotation and direction. It's been the hardest adjustment to the modern equipment. Hitting the ball, for me, causes that wet/dry reaction that drives me crazy. Is it me or the lanes causing the reaction? Usually it's me. " Keep the hand soft !" Is what my coach drills into me. Hard to do still.

[fokai73]

I'm from the 80's youth generation and I had to relearn the game when I returned 3 years before 9/11. The old school teaching of following through was that the hand touched the back of your head, or on top of it for me. This isn't how I follow through anymore. My follow through varies (it's prolly a bad thing) from a 90* angle similar to Norm duke with my hand open and not in a closed fist like I used to do. OR, 90* with a tilt. My elbow finishes slightly in front of my face, my hand is open but towards the outside of my right shoulder.

I really didn't focus much on my follow through, or force it to finish, it just happened on it's own when I worked on adapting my game to today's environment.