How To Achieve Bowling’s Proper Finish Position

Hi, I'm Richard Shockley, USBC gold level coach and I'm in charge of bowler development for the bowlers Mark company. Today, we want to talk about two topics. Number one is posting that byline. What does posting mean? Being imbalanced, seeing what your targets are by being in balanced with a good post and what your body position should be in as you come up to the file line. So Dan is going to be our model today. First of all Dan let's show our viewers what we do to post a good shot. All right. So we're going to be able to hold this pose for at the, at the foul line. So you could see where Dan's left foot is back and he's got his knee flexed and he comes through and he's going to hit that foul line with good balance. Do it again Dan. You're about two feet behind the line to give you room for your slide spine angle back, knee bend, ball in the right position if it was in his hand and then you go through the swing back through and hold that pose. As you can see when he holds the pose he's in balance everything's in a good position, so he can keep his eyes on his target, which is a key to good ball motion is to see where your ball's going to be going. Dan I want you to throw a shot that we see a lot of our bowlers and a lot of my kids really don't have a good finished position or posting the shot. What you want to do is own that shot and own that post be your real good signature of how you hold the line. Particularly for Dan he has a unique way of finishing, but I want to show you some bad shots when they don't post the light. So show us what we're going to do. Give us a bad shot. So a lot of things will happen when we do this and you see this coach, is you see a couple of things. One they're forcing the arm swing down or two they're lunging, and they're getting quick so they can't get in that balanced position. So we're going to show both of them. So we're going to show the first one we're here and now we're going to muscle the ball. And I got to step off of it. So many bowlers that I see in my lessons just fall out. They fall out or step out to the right. Dan I would say there's a huge percentages of bowlers. If you look in leagues across the country and I've watched a lot of bowlers, they do the same thing. They're up and they fall out, there's one more thing too. They were, we were talking about earlier. And the other thing that they'll sometimes you'll see them do is when you're trying to get to this position, they're moving a little bit too quick with the feet. So they here and they get here and the same thing, they lose that balance we had to pull up out of the shot. They're pulling up, you know a lot They got to put the brakes on They put the brakes on a lot of times bowlers think in order to get really good ball roll they have to really pull up or they want to lift on the ball or raise up and put a lot of effort on it too. Like this, where today's game is a lot more of a modern game where you want to come in and roll the ball into the lane. Nice and easy. You see the pros on the tour. They're real smooth back and through hold the pose and they could see what's going on. So there's posting the shot. You work a lot with kids doing this. Does your high school team work on this a little bit? Correct yes. So a lot of times that I do when I'm going to teach this and it helps them with body position is I do a little cadence for them because then they say the cadence they understand exactly what they want to do. So when I'm going to have him here what I'll have the kids do is I have them push the ball out swing and then slide. And by going that way again, we're going to go out, swing, slide and they're able to do this and by saying that they're able to easily get back in that balanced position that you're talking about. Right You know, one thing I noticed in watching you bowl you have a unique follow-through in your position at the end. There's different ways that bowlers can follow through. They always want to be in a straight line. What I see a lot of times Dan is you hold the pose with your arm. Sometimes a lot of bowlers will swing their arm back and forth. There's nothing wrong with that technique. You've released the ball. Then you have a free back and forth which is something that can be different. Show us what you like to do and I'll show how you look whenever you'd make a good shot. This is Dan. So this, this is for me. This is what I like to be. He's always coming through nice and strong. A lot of times, Dan, I'll see you kind of come up and hold the pose right here for your shot. Now there's another technique that I see a lot of great bowlers. A lot of ladies on the pro bowlers tour what they like to do is come through the shot same positions and they'll come up and come like this a little bit. So they want to really come up and give it a really good force coming through the shot. So those are different ways that you can do the post of the shot. Let's talk about the body position at the finished position where your body should be as a rep at the foul line. So, number one, you can see that the foot is in liners at a straight, but the key for me too is to have the head right over the ball. The ball is supposed to be right beside the ankle of course, left arm out for balanced, thumb down. You see the spine is really tilted 10 or 15 degrees maybe a little bit more. The back leg is down on the approach. He's roll the toe over and he's in a really good position. You can also see where the hand position is straight forward. Anything else you'd like to see in this position here Dan? You know Coach in that, in that spot that's actually pretty comfortable because you've got good weight distribution with a balanced arm out. So you're actually able to hold that pose for quite a length of time. Now, when we're doing these droves we'd like to see the kids and or adults hold that pose until the ball hits the lane or hits the pins. Right Once the ball hits the pins then they've executed that proper shot. Right you know, one more thing as far as posting the shot and get in this position again, Dan. Good let's go back and make a shot. Like we did a minute. That's just terrific right here. We've discussed that. One thing too I was going to mention, as you come through and make the shot, go ahead and post the head is still. One of the things about making a good shot and posting the shot is seeing your target. Your head is steady your eyes are on the line. Do that one more time Dan. So notice Dan's head you're in the front view here so you can see Dan's eyes riveted on this target whatever it is and hold the pose. So you head never ever moved right Dan? Never stayed in the position, like we said earlier if you're popping up and you're coming out where are your eyes going to be on your target line? Your eyes are not going to be on your target at all. You're going to be flopping all over the place you're in trouble so if you come in, you're out, had no way to see where the the line of flight was as far as your launching on it, where you want to be. So really this is a really good tip. I think we want to find out about body positions. We want to know about posting the line. Anything else you got to add Dan? You know when you get into because everybody's built a little bit differently you've got different people that have say knee injuries in the past, maybe back problems Senior citizens maybe. Yep you get into the senior citizens, which I do coach some senior citizens which you know they don't have the ability to get that deep knee bend or hold that back in that position. So what we really focus on them is trying to stay consistent. And when they're repeating the shot, basically once the ball is off their hand, as long as they can get to that target. So when you talk about your head position they keep their head stable and where they want and focused on their target. They have a lot better opportunity to hit that target. Even though you might see them come up and where they kind of step off the shot a little bit the ball has gone off their hand but it's because again, they don't have the ability To get that position. Correct. And of course, a lot of my students may have a knee problem had surgery which comes into the same thing. So hope you enjoyed this information about posting the shot on that, on that shot, balance, body positions where everything should be to help make you get your game to another level.