How to determine the proper ball height in your stance

[zdawg]

So I finally subscribed to BTM, and as I'm reading the 7 deadly sins article by Ron Clifton I see he mentions ball placement (in the stance) as one of them. He mentions the problems if it is too low, and if it is too high.

My question is, how do you know how low/high to hold the ball? I think I have a tendency to hold the ball too low, and it has an effect on my swing and overall my ball speed. Of course if I go raising it, I will have to adjust other factors as well so as not to throw off my timing.

Just something I'm thinking about working on when I have some free time, just wondering if anybody knows a good rule of thumb for this.

[bowl1820]

Most of the time in bowling the classic starting point is with the ball at waist height, forearm parallel to the floor. You would then go from there, seeing if you need to raise or lower the ball in your stance. So that your swing matches up with your footwork.


Here is part of a old post I made

There's a old book "Bowling: Knowledge is Key" by Fred Borden in it there's a part where he talks about "vertical placement" (Holding the ball higher or lower).

In it he talks about not holding it higher or lower to increase or decrease speed. But use it as a way of controlling arm swing timing to match the tempo of your feet movements. Raising the ball retards the arm swing in relation to the feet movement, lowering the ball advances the arm swing timing in relation to the feet movements

So Bowlers with a naturally fast tempo, hold the ball lower to match up with their footwork. Those with a slower tempo, hold the ball higher because it retards the swing.

[RobLV1]

The most important thing is to hold the ball at a height where the push away or hinge is a natural motion without any upward movement. Any upward motion requires muscle in the armswing, and once it's there, it is very difficult to get rid of.

[zdawg]

Ok thanks for the pointers, I think I'm going to experiment with my forearm parallel to the floor to start off with and see how much that changes things.

[Monte]

Remember, also, that your arm is a pendulum. So in a lot of cases, unless you force the backswing, the height and forward motion/velocity of the swing is going to be determined by the initial height of the ball.

Here's a good video with Norm Duke explaining "Swing Planes", that you may be interested in: