Making Effective Ball Change Adjustments (LINK)

[Aslan]

Aslan, is she consistently missing the 7-pin on the inside or getting to the gutter before the pin? Is she even consistent on the way she misses the pin? These things will help in determining the answer to your question.

She helicoptors the ball left to right...high track on the left side. So the ball starts way left and slowly moves toward her pocket.

When she leaves the 7-pin...she tries to go cross lane and hook into it but the ball usually goes out towards the gutter and comes back and she misses inside.

[RobLV1]

Four days out of the week, two leagues and two days of pot games, I bowl on multiple pairs in the same bowling center on a given day. Just today, in the almost-scratch triols league we bowled two games on one pair, and moved one pair to the right to bowl the next two games. If you think that you don't multiple bowling balls because you just bowl in one center, please try this. On the first pair, I shot 182-224, finally finding that I could "conquer" the pair by using two different bowling balls on two different lines on the two lanes. We then moved one pair to the right, where I had been able to watch the people ahead of us bowl, and shot 166-237. In all, I tried four different bowling balls, standing everywhere from 25 crossing 12 to 9 at the breakpoint to 33, crossing 17 to 13 at the breakpoint. Please try this if you really think that just bowling in one center doesn't require multiple bowling balls. As to the lady with the slow ball speed, don't try to help her, other than to convince her to take a couple of lessons. Uneducated advice is not a help, it's a hindrance. A qualified coach can help her to get some ball speed so that she can actually bowl.

[Aslan]

That seemed very negative. But it's hard to tell on the internet…ya can't truly judge "tone". A lot of people think I'm being "sarcastic" or "snarky" which always seems odd to me because when I read what I write…I'm actually very pleasant and jovial. Just hard to judge tone.

[RobLV1]

It really wasn't meant to be negative. If I want to respond negatively to something, you'll know it. No, my answer did, however, communicate a little bit of my own frustration at hearing bowlers trying to "help" other bowlers. First of all, it takes a whole different set of skills to be a good coach than it does to be a good bowler. Coaches need three basic abilities: the ability to "see" what an athelete is doing, and the ability to understand how the different parts of the physical game interact, and the ability to effectively communicate with the athelete to resolve the issue. Oftentimes a problem that a bowler is having is related to something totally different than the effect that the bowler is seeing.

Of the three abilities, the ability to "see" is a talent that some people have and some don't. I really don't think that "the coaches eye" is something that can be taught. The other two things, the ability to effectively communicate (teach), and the ability to understand how the different parts of the physical game interact, can be taught, and are taught through the USBC Coaching Certification program. Anyone who believes that Certification is simply a matter of paying your money and getting your "title" should really go through the program themselves. This is not to say that every certified coach is a great coach and that any non-certified coach is ineffective, however if you want to give yourself the best chance of finding someone to really help you with your game, going to a certified coach is a really good place to start.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I hear really good bowlers trying to teach other bowlers by getting them to bowl like they do. Walter Ray Williams Jr., the holder of more PBA National Titles than anyone else in the history of the game, will be the first to tell you that he would never teach anyone else to bowl the way that he does. That's why he is now a USBC Silver Level Certified Coach.

Rob Mautner

[Hampe]

That's a good point Rob, and it's exactly why I try to refrain from helping bowlers under my level. I'm just not good at seeing what exactly they are doing wrong (unless it's totally obvious), and I can only teach someone to play like I do (which might not be best for them). My wife starting bowling this year, and after she got her first ball drilled, she complained that it was too heavy and couldn't play with it (the first time we went out). I took her to my coach and the first thing he noticed on the first throw was that she was putting her fingers to far into the ball so she couldn't get her thumb all the way in, making the ball feel much heavier than it should. I didn't even notice that when I was trying to show her how to bowl! It's just something so basic I took it for granted, but a good coach will spot it right away.

Anytime a beginner asks me for help with their technique, the first thing I do is refer them to my coach. It might not be what they want to hear, but I don't want to be the one responsible for holding them back or giving bad advice.....there are plenty of other guys at the center who are willing to do that already

I always feel bad for the beginners that ask for help and then get bombarded by (usually contradicting) advice from 3-4 people that have no clue :/

[RobLV1]

Many years ago Wendy Macpherson gave me some great advice. She told me, "Never coach anyone you've ever seen naked including yourself and your spouse." Today my wife is going to take a lesson from a local coach that I recommended... I'm going to a different center to bowl pot games!

Rob Mautner

[Aslan]

I can't begin to tell you how many times I hear really good bowlers trying to teach other bowlers by getting them to bowl like they do. Walter Ray Williams Jr., the holder of more PBA National Titles than anyone else in the history of the game, will be the first to tell you that he would never teach anyone else to bowl the way that he does. That's why he is now a USBC Silver Level Certified Coach.

God I want to win the lottery so I could afford a lesson with Walter Ray. Ughh. Maybe he'd give me a combo price and give me a bowling AND horseshoe lesson. A boy can dream.

I always feel bad for the beginners that ask for help and then get bombarded by (usually contradicting) advice from 3-4 people that have no clue :/

I see your and Rob's point Hampe...but to play Devil's Advocate (which is something I'm used to)...what about the people that get turned off quickly from bowling because they can't do well?? Isn't there something to be said for encouraging new bowlers and sparking interest and involvement in the game? Are the more experienced bowlers not, in at least a small way, ambassadors for the game?

I admit...my first coach...wasn't that good of a coach. He taught me a lot of things that over the last few months I've had to "unlearn" to take my game to the next level. But I'll be honest...it was his willingness to stop by and watch me throw a couple balls and give me free advice and then work with me a little that took a 2-4 times a year casual cosmic bowler and made him a very serious league bowler and new USBC member.

Im not arguing..Hampe and Rob make some great, great points. I'm just wondering where we draw that line between helping/goring the sport/doing good and sort of putting our palms in their face and deflecting them to a coach which they may or may not go to. Coaches aren't everywhere and the good ones aren't cheap. I used the coach locater on bowlingball.com and there are only 4 coaches near me...and I live in the second most populated area in the United States. And 2-3 of those 4 coaches charge at LEAST $75/hour for a private lesson. Lots of new bowlers hear, "go see a coach" and think, "Yeah....thats good advice...but...I can't afford it. I just want to learn to bowl good enough not to completely embarass myself."

Interesting...

[swingset]

I'll make an obvious and adversarial point about coaching/teaching, but one I believe in very strongly. I'll word it in the form of a question:

How did anyone ever get to be a coach in the first place? Who taught them?

That knowledge had to, at some point, arrive from being self-taught, or we'd still be standing at the foul like hucking the ball like a rock (as they did when the first person attempted the game). And, as we've progressed from rubber balls to plastic to urethane to resins and the very different modern approach, all along the way someone took to the lanes and came up with a new way, and then imparted it by example or by advice to everyone else...and without fail, it was someone re-inventing the wheel when there was no one there to teach them. It's how we have two-handers, UFO bowlers, crankers and the like, isn't it?

Now, don't get me wrong, I do absolutely respect and value the process of learning from someone who knows the game and has the skill to teach it...on that note I very much agree with Rob, many people can and do benefit from professional coaching...but I do realize that it's not for everyone and being self-taught or even taught incorrectly can be advantageous (yes, I mean that).

One thing about being self-taught, if you're the right kind of learner, is that you might break new ground in understanding or discovering how best to do something without bias or influence and those changes may be more profound and stick better when you've arrived at them of your own doing. And, experimenting or coming at things with an alien perspective can lead to revolutionary improvements or styles. Learning incorrectly (such as the poor advice from a fellow bowler) can also be put to good use, as it can illustrate that some skills are not translatable and prompt someone to seek a new, or their own way.

I've seen some pros (as WRW above sort of illustrates) whose form is so fundamentally whacky that I am relatively sure if they walked into the Kegel center as total unknowns and were judged by their mechanics alone any sane coach would try to remake them. How did Leanne Hulsenberg ever escape a coach with her side-ways walk and lurching, off-balance delivery? Clearly, she self-invented her form to a degree. Yet, who can argue the results? Did a coach help to shape her game? Absolutely, but I think the sheer diversity of top-level athletes in this game with "WTF?" form illustrates that coaching has its limits, or is totally subjective....or in some cases is at its best when teaching the mental game over the physical.

I say all this as someone who had 2 bowling coaches in my youth who managed to build for me a foundation of bowling skill I've had to spend 20 years undoing in order to play the game well. They were both, to be honest, poor at their craft but how would I have known that at the time? More to the point, does being a certified coach mean your advice is better than someone who is not, or trusting your own observation and experimentation? The answer to that is sometimes yes, and sometimes no. I have a laundry list of examples of this in my own game - where some of the best and time-tested advice I ever got came from a fellow bowler and contradicted a coach.

The key to that was, and this is paramount for any bowler, I took their advice as an experiment to try and incorporate into my game and skill set. If it improved me, physically or mentally, I kept it. Otherwise, I wrote it off. Some advice I've received and discounted, only to revisit later and realize the wisdom in it (such as moving forward on the approach to force shorter steps and a slower delivery). When I first tried it, it confused me and got me too much in my head, but now I've learned to use that adjustment to great effect...it's in my war chest of the very best tools to adjust to changing conditions, and it came from some normal guy I hardly knew years ago.

[tccstudent]

I think the point is some people are better teachers then others. A coaching certification does not make you a good coach. In a sport like this there is no one size fits all answer to fixing someones technique. We have all seen good bowlers who we look at and see some sort of flaw in their technique.
While we all want to help of fellows out there and most of us are more then willing to give advice. Not all of us have the skill set to be able to teach. Most of us know our own game and how we do things and while that works for us it may not work for others. But telling someone to make the adjustment we think should be made may not be the right adjustment for them.
There is a whole laundry list of possible adjustments. It is up to you to learn your game and to learn when to make a specified adjustment. Many times there can be 3 or 4 adjustments that can give you the positive result you are looking for.

[RobLV1]

Good points all.

Aslan: I totally agree that someone who stops by to watch a rank beginner throw a couple of shots and gives them some free advice to help them with the basics, is certainly an ambassador for the game. I had an interesting discussion with Mark Baker a couple of years ago who stated that the most important thing that any coach can do is to help a bowler to break 100 regularly. He alluded to the fact that once they can break 100 we have a chance of having them become serious bowlers, but if they can't break 100, they probably won't be back.

No, what I am talking about are people who actually function as coaches, charging bowlers minimal amounts for advice that is totally off the wall and has no foundation in accepted fundamentals.

swingset: To answer your question, the first coaches came from people who yearned to be teachers first, so they became students of the game. The approach that more advanced coaches take is illustrated by the differences in the USBC Coaching Levels. Level I and Bronze Level Coaches are taught to look at bowlers from the beginning of the approach forward to the foul line. This is how the basics are taught to beginning and intermediate bowlers. Silver and Gold Level Coaches are taught to evaluate more accomplished bowlers from the foul line backward. A good example that you mentioned is Leanne Hulsenberg. While her approach is unorthodox to watch, her position at the foul line is perfect. A high average bowler who suddenly decided to call himself a coach would try to change her. An educated coach wouldn't dream of it!

Rob Mautner