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It seems an absurd notion
to have to dispel nowadays, but pro bowlers aren't
the beer-bellied guys you still see in movies and commercials.
But we're also not massive bench-pressers. In fact, you might
even think I'm the last guy who'd be writing about fitness.
Isn't that reserved for all those hulky people we see on infomercials?
Don't get me wrong: Bowlers are athletes.
We're strong, but it's endurance strength. We don't need to
hit a baseball 400 feet or kick a football 60 yards. Our lanes
are consistent. Houses are similar. Throwing harder, with
more strength, won't knock down more pins--in fact, your ball
will simply deflect more off the pins. That's right, if you
muscle your shots you won't consistently strike as many pins
as someone who knows how to make a ball roll with power.
There are a number of bowlers on tour who
work out to some extent. For example, Amleto Monacelli and
Chris Barnes really enjoy a, one- to two-hour workout on the
bicycle or treadmill to keep up their stamina. I know one
of the secrets to Johnny Petraglia's continued success on
the Senior tour has been his dedication to the same sort of
endurance conditioning.
The thing is, none of these guys and the others
who work out regularly are heavy, hulking guys lifting 300
pounds a pop. That wouldn't make much sense for them to do,
as bowling is not a strength or speed sport. You don't need
to bulk up to bowl. And bowling is also not a sport where
you're running 100s in 10-flat, either. You're not carrying
equipment on your shoulders or sprinting down a long field.
Still, improving your fitness certainly will help your bowling,
as it will enrich every level of your life.
Keep things in perspective, though. Bowling
is at least 50% mental strength. Physically, by far the most
important thing in bowling is leg strength--I'd say that's
25% of successful bowling right there. You can never have
too much strength in your legs. Think about it: In bowling,
you're not only walking briskly in your approach, but an eight-
to 16-pound ball is swinging from your shoulders. If you're
playing in a three-to five-game weekly league and factor in
warmups, your legs have borne a heavy load by the end of the
evening.
Another factor of leg strength--leg muscle
agility--comes into play in another way you might not consider:
the differences in approaches. You'll find that from center
to center--or even on lanes within a single center--approaches
can vary wildly. There are tacky approaches, slippery approaches,
and all surfaces in between. Your leg muscles have to adjust
to the surface as your foot is sliding, and to do that, you
need strong, agile legs.
If you're thinking about working on your upper-body
strength, that's fine if you want to build your overall fitness
and endurance. But the bulkier you are up top, particularly
in the chest, the more you will hinder your bowling score.
The key with upper-body strength is to maintain a comfortable
strength level. You need endurance, but bulkiness will just
lock you up.
What about arm or hand strength? Again, you
don't need massive muscle development in your arms. You should
have an easy pendulum armswing. Bulking up the muscles in
the arm will inhibit a free swing. The best way to develop
your arm strength is through repetition of shots. By repeating
shots, the ball swings freely from your shoulder--you're building
strength and endurance modestly and moderately.
Now, in your forearm and wrist, strength is
definitely advantageous. Why? When the ball comes off of your
hand, your hand and wrist are locked: broken back, fully cupped,
or somewhere in the middle. And the ball comes off of your
fingertips. You can target strengthening your forearm and
wrist by simply squeezing a tennis ball or doing some lightweight
wrist curls, rather than reps and reps of bench presses. Increased
forearm and wrist strength will help you exert more energy
into the ball, giving you a more forceful roll.
It's not only muscle mass we concern ourselves
with as bowlers. The approach is 16 feet long, 25 feet if
you count the settee area. Some quick calculations will tell
you that in a long tournament format, you're walking, at various
speeds, around 20,000 feet, or nearly four miles. Including
practice, you could easily walk six or seven miles in a PBA
long format major.
This means you have to have good cardiovascular
fitness to bowl at your optimal level. As with weight training,
your need to have cardiovascular fitness for bowling doesn't
necessitate a health club membership. Something as simple
as a daily couple-mile walk could be more than enough to keep
you healthy.
And looking at it more broadly, remember that
fitness training needs to be more than just for bowling. Fitness
enriches your life. By creating and maintaining leg strength,
your game will surely benefit, but you also will be less fatigued
throughout your normal day.
Want to combine strength and cardiovascular
training? Go on a couple-mile walk and carry a rubber ball
in your hand to squeeze. Doing these two things at once will
give you a great workout and help you knock out two key aspects
of your training at once.
So you don't need anything special to strengthen
yourself for bowling. But one other thing you have to avoid
doing is over-practicing.
Maybe it seems like a fine line between practicing
enough to commit shots to muscle memory and overpracticing.
But you can bowl too much and overpractice. You have to know
when to get off the lanes. Practice will make you a better
player, no doubt. But when you overpractice, you're not just
wearing yourself out physically.
You're beating yourself up mentally if you're
not practicing the right stuff--you're not only physically
exhausted but practicing a bad habit. If you continue to do
that, in your tournaments you can be frustrated before the
end of the first game because you've overpracticed. (I'll
be addressing mental strength in my February 2002 article.)
The worst part is that when you over-practice, your score
does not reflect how hard you' re working.
An offshoot of overpracticing is trying to
play through injury. Some people get an injury and practice
through it, thinking old school: work it out and it will go
away. If you can't, bowl, don't! The only significant injury
I've sustained as a bowler was when I was 19. I'd won a spot
in a tournament in Connecticut. I'd hurt my wrist but was
so excited to have made a tournament as an amateur that I
wouldn't stop. I ended up injuring my wrist so much that I
couldn't pick an eight-pound ball off the rack for the next
two months.
There are other things you can accomplish
while you're injured. Study the bowlers in your league or
watch us on the PBA tour. Walk to develop leg strength. If
you hurt your legs, there's no reason you can't keep squeezing
the ball to develop your forearm and wrist strength. There
are things you can do without even thinking about them; for
instance, work out your wrists while driving to work or sitting
on the bus. Ten minutes a day will work wonders.
Finally, with an eye to the holidays coming
up, consider a shift of gifts. There's no need to have an
elaborate weight training machine if you're training to be
a better bowler. Consider asking for a rubber ball and some
sneakers instead.
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