Why You Should not Grab the Ball

Many of you are bowl in PBA Experience leagues or other sport competition, some for the first time. You may have noticed that when you bowl on sport shots that what seemed like a small mistake on the house shot became a big mistake on the sport pattern. While you knew the challenge would be there on sport patterns, maybe you didn’t realize that the differences would be that drastic, and now you are asking yourself why that is true. There are a number of reasons that some  people only drop 5-10 pins, while others drop as much as 40 pins when bowling on a sport condition. This month I’d like to address one of the most common reasons – grabbing the ball.

What Does This Mean?

What does it mean to grab the ball? Simply put, this is when you apply too much grip pressure or other arm muscle at some point during your swing. The “grab” occurs at the moment in which you apply the excess force. When you apply this force to control the bowling ball, you actually create the opposite effect.
Muscle that is applied to the swing causes the swing to change in direction and/or speed, and the ball does not go toward the intended swing path and/or it goes there at the wrong speed or the wrong rev rate. The effect of this is that the ball either goes off-line directionally and/or the ball changes direction at the wrong
point down the lane. The real problem with grabbing the ball is that it is very difficult to grab the ball the same way on every swing, so you become inconsistent.

Why do We Grab the ball?

There are many reasons, some physical and some mental. Have you ever started to fall, then caught your balance? When you fall, you instinctively stick you arm out to brace yourself and you tighten up. In a bowling swing, if you get off balance, you will attempt to “grab” the ball to try to control it in an effort to re-gain balance. The solution to the balance grab is to establish great balance at the beginning of your swing by using an athletic pose in your stance with your weight well distributed across both feet. You have no chance to finish with good balance if you start without good balance.

The other reason you might grab the ball is if the swing alignment is off, either at the start of the swing or at any point during the swing.  The effort to get the ball back on the intended swing path often is a source of grabbing it to get it there.

Guiding The Start

A frequent source of grabbing the ball is to push or guide the ball from the takeaway (pushaway) into the backswing. The initial motion in your swing to start the ball gently to your target just establishes the direction of the armswing. From there, you must let the weight of the ball swing your arm back into the swing. Using
muscle at this point will always change the direction of your swing and will then make the direction of the ball coming off your hand be inconsistent.

The solution here is twofold.  First, make sure you are aligned to your intended Line of Play (LOP) in your setup.  The middle of your ball-side shoe, your ball-side hip, shoulder, elbow and hand should all be aligned in the direction of the line you intend to play.  Draw a line through this LOP to the pins and make sure everything on the ball side of your body is initially aligned to this point.

Once you do that and you have started into motion, your ball start step (the second of five) should keep the ball in the line of play, and let gravity and momentum let the ball fall, replacing your ball-side leg as the ball drops into the swing.

Getting Anxious

Here is one method of grabbing the ball that is difficult to fix. Many people have good balance, allow the ball to swing back to the top of the swing freely and still they have errors in direction and speed of the ball. This is because they grab the ball during the downswing. You must wait for the ball to come to the bottom of
the swing from gravity and not the force of your forearm pulling the ball down to the release point.  Again, as the ball falls straight down from the top of the backswing to the release point, it will replace your ball-side leg on the way down.

This mistake can be physical or mental. Mentally, some people are not confident that the ball will go to their target and thus will make sure the ball goes to target through the force of their forearm. This grab will have a similar effect to other grab points in the swing. The solution to this problem is to allow the ball to swing through any point at which you want to grab. Think “swing” at the very point in the swing where you want to grab. Mentally, you want to visualize or provide affirmations that you trust your target line and that you will be successful. This physical and mental parts of the downswing grab are sometimes difficult to sort out.

Leverage (Late) Timing

Finally, grabbing the ball is often caused by excessively late timing.Slightly leverage, or “late” timing where the ball is released just past the point at which our slide stops is not a bad thing. Excessively late timing causes the bowler to begin to slide before the backswing is ready to follow the feet to the release point. This causes you to have your body going in a different direction than the ball, and you will instinctively pull on the ball to try to get back in time. This attempt to pull at this point in the swing will cause your shoulders to change direction slightly, and the ball will naturally follow this change in direction. The solution to this problem is to get the ball started sooner, so your backswing completes at the end of your pivot step (step before the slide).

Conclusion

The straighter your armswing is relative to your target line, the better you do at crossing the second of five steps over to clear a space for the ball to replace it to stay in a straight path, and the better you do at letting gravity swing the ball in both directions, determines how free your swing will be.  Mentally, you must learn to trust the ball to fall to the bottom of the swing as a result of gravity.