Beginner Bowling: Conventional Grip
Scott PohlDescription
Bowling is fun! Beginners have the luxury of starting with a clean slate and the conventional grip is the perfect place to start. In this free video, Scott Pohl, owner of On Track Pro Shop, explains how to identify which bowling ball is best for you and how it should feel in your hand at your first league night.
Span
On a bowling ball, the distance between the thumb and finger holes is your span. For a conventional grip, your fingers should be approximately a 1/4 inch below the second knuckle on your fingers.
There shouldn’t be a lot of pressure on your bowling hand while you are holding it and throwing it. If you experience too much pressure, your span is too long and your fingers are too tight in the holes.
This results in squeezing the bowling ball. Squeezing in bowling results in errant shots. Keeping your hand relaxed and letting the bowling ball roll off of it with as little grip pressure as possible is the goal.
Hook
The thumb and fingers come out at the same time with a conventional grip bowling ball. The bowling ball rolls end-over-end and has less rotation. This allows the player to learn technique and targeting without the bowling ball over reacting when it hits the friction down the lane.
For more great beginner bowling instruction check out “How to Bowl: Getting Started” and “How to Throw a Hook in Bowling.”
Hi, Scott Pohl here with the National Bowling Academy. What we're gonna look at right now is the conventional grip. Well, what exactly is the conventional grip? Basically, it's what we see with a lot of beginning bowling, recreation bowling, a good way to get started. How do we figure out if we have the right grip with a conventional ball? Well, let's take a look at a couple of fitting balls in front of us here, okay? So, first of all, we're gonna talk about how far along the span needs to be in relation to our fingers. First of all, it's up to the second knuckle in our fingers, and we wanna take the span about 1/4 of an inch below that, or even sometimes a little bit more if we don't have very flexible fingers, okay? So, for instance, I'm gonna put my hand in this ball here. We're gonna get to a spot where it's basically about 1/4 of an inch below the ball. Another option for fitting, we have this type of material. Same idea. Put the finger 1/4 of an inch below that knuckle. All right. So, what are a couple things we know about the conventional ball? First of all, there's not a lot of rotation or hook on the bowling ball. Think of it this way. The thumb and fingers come out at the same time, very similar to a knuckle ball that you'll see in baseball, softball, something like that. Okay? Important to note, you don't want a lot of pressure on the hand. This can happen if the span is a little bit too long, if the finger holes are very tight, and you just have to squeeze that ball too much. Be sure to get the span correctly, along with the sizes. What do we see with the pitches in the ball? Well, since the fingers are inserted a little bit further, we can typically go a little bit more forward with the fingers towards the palm of the ball. Vice versa, we can go with the same idea with the thumb a little bit more forward toward the center of the grip. Hopefully, all this helps. See your local pro shop. Get a conventional grip.
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