Bowling Release Drill: Foul Line/No Step with a House Ball

Welcome to National Bowling Academy. I'm Eric Vermilyea and today I have enlisted the help of Pat here, to show you one of my favorite drills. I loosely call this drill the no step, no thumb house ball drill but it's one of my favorites because it helps isolate just the release position, nothing else, no approach, and really just lets you focus on getting your wrists and your hand in the proper position at release to create a lot of leverage and a lot of good timing as well as good balance without really bringing the rest of the move into play. All you have to do is just simply start at the foul line. You find a lightweight house ball, such as a six or an eight pound house ball. Just something that your fingertips can fit into. That's all you need to start with. And from there, we'll go ahead and kind of explain how this drill works for you. Pat, if you wanna go ahead step at the foul line here. We start off, you get into your slide position. So go ahead and get your foot near the foul line, Bring your right foot back. Just something that creates balance. You don't want to fall over, it's worst case scenario here. So just get into a comfortable position as comfortable as can be. You have a lightweight house ball, just your fingertips inserted, your ball pretty much just palmed onto your hand and forearm. From here, go ahead and get as low as you can. So from here, you're in a good strong leverage position. Here, you wanna just bump the ball forward, let it come back and then go ahead and release it onto the lane. Again, with this drill a couple of things we're focusing on is getting that hand on a strong position at the bottom underneath the ball. And really all we're trying to do is let the hand and the wrist and the arm curl up and then release the ball onto the lane. And then really all you're trying to do is just let the ball go onto the lane without hitting up too much onto it. And also just kind of letting it roll end over end. Not trying to do a whole lot to it, keeping the elbow in nice and tight to your body. So as you progress through this drill you notice that your hands' in a nice strong position, your elbow stays in tight to your body. If your elbow comes out, you drop the ball. So this kind of puts your hand automatically in a nice leverage strong position to go ahead and release the ball without really having to think too much about it. You get rid of the whole approach, you get rid of a whole lot of other things, and you simply focus on what your hand does at release by loading it onto your wrist and letting it go. Let's go ahead and try a couple more. All right, so again, just into our slide position here, and one thing I didn't mention earlier is you always do want to pick out a target, really don't care where the ball ends up at down the lane, but make sure you do pick out one of those arrows to focus on rolling the ball over. So Pat in this one, what are you looking at there? Fourth arrow. All right, so again, in that nice slide position. Bump the ball forward and let it come back and just roll it over for it there nice and smooth on the lane. That one pretty much ran right over the middle of the fourth arrow, so a nice shot. We're gonna do one more for you. And on this one, I'd like you to focus on getting the ball onto the lane a little bit smoother, a little bit quieter. And again, this is kind of incorporates that nice unloading onto the lane without hitting up on the ball too much. Easier motion to repeat, generally gets a little more pin action as well. All right, so again, in the nice slide position, get kind of as low as you can, get the hand in a nice strong position underneath the ball, pick out that fourth arrow target, bump it forward, let it come back, and smooth onto the lane. So again, kind of a recap, you just start off with as light a house ball as you can find that you can fit your fingers into. Come to the foul line here, get into a nice slide position, get low to the lane, pick out your target that you're aiming at, go ahead and let the ball roll back onto your forearm, get everything into a nice strong position, let it come back, keep the elbow in nice and tight, Release the ball onto the lane nice and smooth, get a few repetitions in, get some practice in, and hope it helps you knock down a few more pins.