newbie question

[slayer]

Hiya...

I am completely new to bowling and i am in the process of organising a lesson.

but i went out the other day after watching alot of videos online and 1 thing i had a question on is:

my understanding is that your wrist/hand shouldnt bend back at any point in the swing? but how do you prevent your wrist from bending back at the beginning when you start your swing and when your arm is pointing to the floor... i found that as soon as as my arm was pointing to the floor then my wrist would bend back due to gravity and the bowl... maybe i was swinging too slow?

cheers!

 

[storm53]

Hi,

Bending your wrist back is something that happens alot in bowling.

The only two ways i know how to stop the problem is

1) Buy a wrist support, to hold your wrist straight during the arm swing

2) Start doing exercises to strengthen the muscles in your wrist, the one i was taught was to get a length of dowel rod(or similar) big enough to hold onto with both hands leaving a reasonable space in between. Then attach a length of rope with a weight on one end to the rod and then just wind the string up and unwind it, repeating it a number of times daily.

If I'm wrong with any of the above, I'm sure someone will correct me

 

[jason_doust]

Unless you have a pre-existing condition, don't buy a wrist support. Watch some PBA telecasts and count the number of guys using wrist supports... Zero. (Sorry - Pet hate. I'll get off my soapbox now.)

Now I've said what not to do. Here's what TO do. A quick lesson in biomechanics first.

Look at your hand, palm facing you. Go on. Look at it. Good. Now imagine you are going to throw a cricket ball. What two fingers would you throw the ball with? More than likely you would use your index and middle fingers. That's because this side (called the pincer side) of your hand is 40% stronger than the ring finger/little finger side.

So what's this got to do with keeping your wrist straight? If you apply a firm handshake's worth of pressure from the pincer fingers onto your bowling ball, your wrist gets straighter immediately.

In fact, with a straight wrist, push your index finger against your other hand now as if it were the surface of our ball. Until you take pressure off the index finger, your wrist will remain braced by the pressure from it.

It's that easy. You just saved a bomb on a wrist support. Buy me a beer after a qualifying squad one day and we'll call it sweet.

IMO, some good advice from Scott was to do some strengthening exercises. I like the old fashioned one of doing wrist and or forearm curls while holding your bowling ball. Forearm curls are self explanatory, bu to isolate your wrist you place your forearm on a solid bench then curl the ball. On second thought, you may want to build up to his weight by using lighter objects first. As I don't know how strong you are now, I'll have to let you make this call.

Cheers,
Jason

 

[slayer]

okay cool!

yes i was avoiding buying a wrist support based on some of the reading and watching on the net i have done...

the index finger pressure makes alot of sense in keeping the wrist straight!

cheers - will give it a go!