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Thread: I'm 46, and I'm probably switching to 2-handed bowling.

  1. #1

    Default I'm 46, and I'm probably switching to 2-handed bowling.

    First of all, thanks for having me here. A BallReviews user pointed me here, and somehow I had not found this site yet.

    The following are a couple of posts I've put on the other site, and I'm going to sort of blog this for awhile to help people considering the same thing I am to know what the experience is like.

    ---

    There comes a point when you're either going to get better, or you're not. And then you have to decide whether you're even going to continue at all.

    The last five years have been rough for me. I moved to a much harder house than I'd been accustomed to over the previous 10 years, and when I did my average dropped about 35 pins. I've still been able to bowl at a higher average in out-of-town tournaments, so I know my basic abilities are still there, but there's a laundry list of things that have changed for me recently as a function of getting older.

    There was the heart attack, the sudden onset of come-and-go gout (lots of things happen after heart attacks, some that don't seem related but really are), a flare-up of tendonitis in my right Achilles. There's the arthritic right wrist, made worse by years of bowling with the wrong span and pitches. Weight gain. A degenerative right knee caused by a baseball injury from way back in 1988.

    Last year, I made some equipment changes and bought myself a 10-pin jump in average from the year before, but that still only put me in the mid-170s (at this new house, we have fewer than 5 people averaging deuce). Regardless, that made me feel good, because I saw progress. But when the 2018-2019 season began, I lost most of that modest gain and am back to thinking 510 is a "good" series.

    Sure, I can still have a good game (or get lucky) and roll a 230. But I usually frame it with a 150 on one side and a 160 on the other. We don't get a lot of help from the lanes here, but my bigger problem is myself -- my inconsistency, my aches and pains, my lack of time to practice.

    Given that it's hard to get excited about watching yourself and your game disintegrate, I kind of hit a fork in the road a month ago: Either I would get better, or I would get gone. The one thing I will not do, especially at such a young age, is fall back to where I was when I was a beginner. I can already tell I'm not going to be happy in my senior years playing out the string.

    The single biggest issue to overcome is definitely the wrist pain. No combination of pitches or spans seems to fix it anymore. My absolute, upper limit is 6 games bowled at a time. Sometimes I don't even get three. I'm worthless as a tournament bowler even though my last tournament, I finished second in handicap and eighth in scratch scores for all events. I just happened to get very lucky with my body that day.

    I'm not sure going two-handed is going to solve that, but at least it takes the thumb out of the equation. Switching over gives me something to look forward to, at any rate. Maybe I'll find something I didn't know was there in the first place.

    I've considered blogging the change, but I don't really have a place to blog. I don't want to bore everyone else here by posting banal league details every week. But I do want to see if it's possible to do, and if it is, I want to share that with other middle-age/older guys who are at a similar crossroads.

    Or I'm going to give it all up. There's really no in-between anymore.

    Jess

  2. #2

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    Week One...

    Practice scores: 32, 104
    League scores (one-handed, immediately following practice): 185, 200, 201 (Dyno-Thane Threshold)

    So tonight marked the first time I went into a bowling center and bowled two-handed for more than a shot or two. I bowled two practice games prior to league.

    My first game, I bowled 32. Not 132. Not 232. Thirty...two. After three frames, I had a score of 1.

    The second game went much better: 104, with four spares. Oddly enough, I found the thing a two handed delivery made easy was shooting straight at the 10-pin: you just don't turn the ball. Come straight up the back of it and it goes right down the target line.

    My struggles in the first game were mainly due to me having to get used to two things, the change in angles and the fact I couldn't get any speed. I usually roll around the 16-17 mph range. I doubt I was doing more than 10 throwing two-handed. Coupled with the increase in revs, and all of a sudden everything was in the ditch by the 50-foot mark if not sooner.

    For the second game, I finally moved as far left as I could (limited by the ball return, as I had been assigned Lane #2), and committed to moving my target to the right and further down the lane. I finally started to get the ball (sort of) where I wanted it to go.

    I had found a pair of 14-pound balls to test this with, a Storm Dark Thunder and a Visionary Slate Blue Gargoyle. The DT was far too much ball. The SBG, which is urethane pearl, was the only thing I could keep on the correct pocket side, and even then it was a chore. I'm sitting here now sore on my right side at the beltline, and my left chest is sore from the pulling action of opening my shoulders at delivery. Also my right forearm was mildly sore for awhile. I can tell if I keep doing this that I'm going to have to figure out a way to open and clear the shoulders at delivery, or it's just not going to work. I have no idea what to do yet about the speed issue.

    The other thing I realized is that, one- or two-handed, we are what we are to a large degree. The wrist position changes that work for a traditional approach have the same effects on a two-handed approach. If you're good at straightening the ball out as a one-hander, you can probably do it two-handed as well. There is no miracle cure here for flaws, but also your strengths don't automatically disappear.

    Strangely enough, I had my best set of the season after I switched back to one-handed for league. My wrist release felt a little snappier. But I have tendon-related pain in my right wrist as I type this, which I usually do after league.

    I'll keep working on this in practice. It's not going to be an overnight change.

    Jess

  3. #3

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    Week Two...

    Practice scores: 132, 136
    League scores (one-handed, immediately following practice): 180, 195, 246 (Dyno-Thane Threshold)

    Summary: I bowled the first practice game with polished urethane (Visionary Slate Blue Gargoyle) and the second with a polished solid reactive (Storm Dark Thunder). I incorporated the skip-step into the delivery this week after practicing it "dry" in my driveway (i.e., without a ball in my hand). Whereas last week I had lost 6-7 mph from my one-handed delivery, I picked back up probably 3 mph and was throwing around 13 mph this week. That's not optimal, but it's progress.

    The biggest contributor to those mediocre scores were seven different occurrences of this: 1/. That would be picking off the 7-pin on the first ball, and then clearing the rack for the spare. Of course, when you do that three times in a row, you've scored a whopping 33 or so over three frames. With both balls, I found myself gradually taking hand out of the ball by weakening my wrist position, or simply not rotating out of the ball at delivery, in an effort to keep the ball pocket-side. That helped, but again, that's not an optimal play. It did, however, tell me that I'm going to be able to make small changes in the delivery and adjust.

    One thing I was not expecting tonight was a fair bit of pain in the middle finger after I was done with two-handed practice. This was the result of a pitch issue, and I'm not sure how to fix it. The SBG has forward pitch in the fingers (my old measurements), while the DT is reverse-pitched in the fingers. I was much more comfortable throwing the DT. Where the pain was coming from, though, was from the side of the fingers if I tried to come around the ball strongly. I'm wondering if I'm going to have to have extreme right pitch in those two fingers eventually. If so, that's not optimal, because now I would have to plug all my equipment. However, I'm sitting here typing this still with soreness in my finger, and since going two-handed is mostly about getting rid of pain, I'm not going to just tolerate it. I guess the middle finger is hanging up in the insert and getting jerked sideways at release.

    On the flip side, I could have bowled as much as I wanted to tonight and had no wrist pain, forearm pain or shoulder pain. I haven't had that kind of experience in years.

    Going from this into league and switching back to one-handed bowling, I found I was able, for the second straight week, to be very consistent and make better adjustments in the wrist. I still got a little wrist and hand pain afterward, though.

    Hopefully I'll get a chance to do this again next week. It all depends, week to week, on my work schedule.

    Jess

  4. #4
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    Two handed bowling is not easy, guys like Belmo, Simonsen and Troup make it look easy but that's just how skilled they are. As you notice, the hardest thing about two handed bowling is generating enough speed and of course accuracy. What I would suggest is doing a one step drill until you get comfortable with the release and then you start incorporating a full delivery to add speed.

  5. #5

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    Having tried the 2-handed technique due to an injured finger I found I was able to get a lot of hook out of a house ball at a very light weight (9 to 11 Lbs). However, that was on lanes that are pretty dry. Have you considered giving a plastic spare ball a try?

    Your 1-hand scores seem to be go up nicely maybe that trend will continue. I found my spare shots suffered with the 2-hand technique so I started going back to a 1-handed spare shot which helped in my case.

  6. #6

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    I'd really like you to think about this. You say that your body is falling apart (join the club). Two-handed bowling is much more physically demanding than one-handed bowling. Looking at this logically, do you really think this is a good idea? From my own experience with degenerative bone disease the entire length of my spine, bad hips, and bad knees, I've been able to come back to about 90% of my former bowling self just by picking the right equipment, and learning to play different parts of the lane.

  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by RobLV1 View Post
    I'd really like you to think about this. You say that your body is falling apart (join the club). Two-handed bowling is much more physically demanding than one-handed bowling. Looking at this logically, do you really think this is a good idea? From my own experience with degenerative bone disease the entire length of my spine, bad hips, and bad knees, I've been able to come back to about 90% of my former bowling self just by picking the right equipment, and learning to play different parts of the lane.
    It isn't necessarily that everything is degenerating but that certain key components to a traditional style are. Biggest is the wrist. I have tried so many different grips, pitches and whatnot trying to alleviate thumb, hand and wrist pain that I've nearly lost count. What I have determined in a couple of weeks of practicing two-handed is that I have zero pain in those areas once I'm done. Meanwhile I hit a wall of sorts bowling one-handed around the game 3-4 mark. This makes any kind of tournament bowling a real issue since I have a hard time finishing a block.

    Because of the negative pressure that puts on my game scores, I'm at a crossroads: Do something drastic, or accept that I'm pretty much at the end of my ability to compete at a modestly high level. I'm not one that can tolerate just sort of sliding into irrelevancy. I'm either going to fight and take risks, or I'm not going to be able to stay interested.

    Jess

  8. #8
    Pin Crusher classygranny's Avatar
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    If your wrist issues are related to any type of tendonitis, believe me, it won't go away on its own. Left to its own demise tendonitis turns into tendonosis. Tendonitis is an acute condition in which inflammation is caused by a direct injury to a tendon. Tendonosis is a chronic or recurring condition caused by repetitive trauma or an injury that hasn't healed.

    Healing a tendon injury is a long process. Rest with mild exercise (not bowling) and lots of stretching is about the only way to recovery. Other things help the symptoms, but don't actually lend any healing - sports creams, pain relievers, heat, ice, compression sleeves, etc.

    Whether you bowl two handed and take the wrist out of the equation, if there is any tendonitis or tendonosis - it will still be there if you don't address it now.

    Physical therapy might help, but when I had surgery on my elbow to remove the dead tendons, to allow the healthy tendons to take over and eliminate the tendonosis, the doctor stressed the best thing I could do (for the rest of my life) was to stretch, stretch, stretch and then stretch those muscles again. But not over-stretching to the point of injury.

    You may want to consider finding out what the issue is and addressing those, rather than changing your bowling and thinking that might be a cure-all. Not saying changing may help and might be needed in the long run, but I still think the wrist will flare up at some time. Also, acupuncture helps in some cases of tendonitis for some people.

    Keep on blogging about 2 handed. I know I couldn't have changed as it would be too hard on the rest of my body. I went left-handed for nine months, boy was that interesting. Good Luck!
    Last edited by classygranny; 03-06-2019 at 09:42 PM.
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  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by classygranny View Post
    If your wrist issues are related to any type of tendonitis, believe me, it won't go away on its own. Left to its own demise tendonitis turns into tendonosis. Tendonitis is an acute condition in which inflammation is caused by a direct injury to a tendon. Tendonosis is a chronic or recurring condition caused by repetitive trauma or an injury that hasn't healed.

    Healing a tendon injury is a long process. Rest with mild exercise (not bowling) and lots of stretching is about the only way to recovery. Other things help the symptoms, but don't actually lend any healing - sports creams, pain relievers, heat, ice, compression sleeves, etc.

    Whether you bowl two handed and take the wrist out of the equation, if there is any tendonitis or tendonosis - it will still be there if you don't address it now.

    Physical therapy might help, but when I had surgery on my elbow to remove the dead tendons, to allow the healthy tendons to take over and eliminate the tendonosis, the doctor stressed the best thing I could do (for the rest of my life) was to stretch, stretch, stretch and then stretch those muscles again. But not over-stretching to the point of injury.

    You may want to consider finding out what the issue is and addressing those, rather than changing your bowling and thinking that might be a cure-all. Not saying changing may help and might be needed in the long run, but I still think the wrist will flare up at some time. Also, acupuncture helps in some cases of tendonitis for some people.

    Keep on blogging about 2 handed. I know I couldn't have changed as it would be too hard on the rest of my body. I went left-handed for nine months, boy was that interesting. Good Luck!
    I appreciate the feedback. I might have mentioned it up top but there are a couple of issues in play here: old playground injury from when I was 12 years old, and then I probably spent a good 10-12 years of bowling, when I first really started throwing a hook, using equipment with spans that were stretched way out and mis-pitched. I had a couple of drillers who were very old school in the way they approached rev creation and equipment and I ended up paying the price for it. Pretty sure I have some arthritis in the right wrist now, as there is a swollen knot on the outside of the wrist that I've now had 20+ years.

    When you add that to my borderline wrist strength, it's a bad mix. The stretching advice is good; what I can't figure out are the exercises to stretch some of the particular tendons/ligaments that are hurting. The hand pain manifests more as a type of CTS, but it isn't CTS because I can type on a computer all day with no issues (I pay very close attention to workplace ergonomics). I also play piano and keyboards, with no issues. The only time I have issues is bowling.

    I can cut about half of my problems by using a complex wrist brace like a Robbys, but that creates other issues for my game. Chief among those is my wrist is so locked into one position that I lose the majority of my ability to make small adjustments. Spare shooting goes off the rails. What I have found helping is to warm up with the Robbys brace, then ditch it once the game starts. That probably buys me 1-2 additional games before the wrist pain reappears.

    The other issue is the right knee; I have cartilage damage and possible ligament damage there from a teenage baseball injury. That's my push-off leg, and when it locks up mid-delivery, well, that's a problem. I have solved probably 90 percent of it using a Robbys Kneed-It brace, which has been nothing short of miraculous for me. However, there are nights when the knee is stubborn. The two-handed delivery seems to go easier on that knee simply because it's different and is probably using different areas of that leg to generate power.

    Jess

  10. #10
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    Have you ever gave any thought about bowling with the other hand? If you are a righty bowling left handed would be even better. One other thing what are you going to do when you get older? You are already a mess.

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