Preventing injuries, your tips and ideas.

[Hammer]

A lot of injuries are caused by bad technique. Thumb problems will be caused by putting a death grip on the ball with your thumb so your thumb will hang up when it reaches the release area. Another bad technique with the thumb is not letting the thumb come out at the release area. If the thumb is still in the ball when the hand starts turning the thumb is in trouble and will hang up. What will give you lower back trouble is when your forward swing is not close to your sliding foot but instead a foot away from it that will put strain on your lower back because it has to control the weight of the ball pulling on the outside of your body. If the swing is closer to your slide foot there is less strain on the lower back. So right technique will save a lot of body injuries. Take one or two lessons to correct technique problems. Your body will thank you.

[Tampabaybob]

Good advice from all, except for maybe Bills on quitting the Ciallis !! As we age (speaking from first hand knowledge) our bodies get rusty and it's a lot tougher to try and stay in shape. The best thing is to do some streching before bowling and try to loosen everything up. Not many of us 60+ year olds look forward to exercising or worse yet going to a gym. Just have to learn to take it slower and learn to pace yourself.

[J Anderson]

Good advice from all, except for maybe Bills on quitting the Ciallis !! As we age (speaking from first hand knowledge) our bodies get rusty and it's a lot tougher to try and stay in shape. The best thing is to do some streching before bowling and try to loosen everything up. Not many of us 60+ year olds look forward to exercising or worse yet going to a gym. Just have to learn to take it slower and learn to pace yourself.

Those of us over a certain age may have forget what we thought we knew about stretching and warming up. Back when I was in school, warm up was static stretches like touching your toes. Now sports trainers know that static stretches are best done after the muscles are warm, and that trying to stretch too far when the muscles are cold can cause injury instead of preventing it.

The best practice now is do 10 to 15 minutes of dynamic warm-ups like brisk walking, jumping jacks, arm swinging, etc. The static stretches are best left for when you're done bowling for the day.