Tips for a Better Pushaway

Learning when to get the push away started is a key component to good timing and a free arm swing. Hi, I'm Leah Zahner, a contributor with National Bowling Academy. In this free video, Gold coach Mike Diaz demonstrates how to get the bowling ball in front of your shoulder during the push away and then walk around the ball with the crossover step freeing up your arms swing. Okay Keely, first couple of things I saw is the tendency to just hold the push away a little bit rather than get it started. Anytime you get something in motion you want to keep it in motion. So we wanna get that push away started and keep it flowing. Now, did you have a question about the push away in terms of what you're feeling? Sometimes I feel like if I push too early or not too early but if I pushing early for me which makes it on time that sometimes my balance gets thrown off. Okay so there's a couple things going on with your push away actually, one of them is just when you get it started because anytime you start and stop and then start again, you're really starting your whole approach again over 'cause all your momentum is stopped at that point along with the stopping of the push away. The other thing that's going on is just the tendency to push it out to the right. It's a real common thing to try to push the ball out toward your target. But if we align our shoulders and our hips properly, and line them up to the target line we're trying to go to then all you have to do is just feel like you're you get that push away going right in front of your shoulder and then walk around the ball with the crossover step and everything will take care of itself. So let's do a simple drill that's gonna help you get to that point where you feel like the push away just falls into your swing. So we're gonna take a series of push ways and the first one I want you to just take your first two steps because your five step baller and then just lay the ball into my hands. Okay, that was pretty good but your tendency still is to hold some of the ball weight back. I want you to let the ball weight all fall in my hands. There you go. Just let it all fall into my hands. There you go. Now, just relax, relax out of your body. Let it all fall in. Good, now what I want you to do is take, do that six times on your own where you let it get to that point where it would just fall. The next thing that would happen is the ball would just absolutely fall in your swing and let's see how that looks. Good, make sure your upper body stays relaxed so you let it fall. There you go. Nice and easy and relaxed and just let it fall into there. Is there a certain height it should fall to? Just a little below waist height. Good, good. Okay, how many was that? I wasn't really counting. Okay, we're gonna say it was six. Okay, now what you're gonna do is take time, dry your hand off and then we're gonna have you roll two full approaches. Okay, so that was the first round and ideally we would do this up to 10 times doing the six approaches, just doing the first two steps and then doing two full approaches. And in fact, we have a scoring system for it. So on the scoring system, you would score yourself a point for each time you feel like you do the drill properly, just doing the first two steps and then score yourself two points for each of the two times that you take a full approach and it works good. So in that scoring system, 10 would be a perfect score for the round. And that way you can evaluate on your own when you're practicing, when this works well, when you get that good feel for getting the push away moving and when you don't and you can track your progress. So we're gonna do one more round of this, go ahead and take the six approaches, the six drills with the two-step and then we'll do two full approaches. It's gonna be at that point where it just falls into the swing. Okay, now at this point, it's also really important to set the ball down, dry your hand off, loosen up your body because doing this type of drill repetitively will tend to tighten up your body just a little bit. So now go ahead when you're ready for the two full shots. Okay, so how does those last two shots feel? I guess the first one to me felt like it was a little slow and maybe a little too far down, the second shot felt really smooth and nice. Right, the second shot, you're starting to find that rhythm of what works for you individually, your individual physiology and what works for you and what works for you isn't going to be the same as what works for everybody else. And so it's just a matter of finding that rhythm that's gonna work for you to get the ball in the swing, nice and clean, nice and smooth and continuous and in front of your shoulder and it'll take a little bit of time to get used to it. So you just have to repeat the drill, go through the drill, repeat the drill. And over time that push away is gonna clean right up. I liked the scoring system because it gives you something to aim for so you're not just sort of off there. Yeah and it makes practice makes practice is more fun. Yeah. So it'll be a good way to measure it.