Bowlers have all sorts of different ways to get to the foul line, whether you’re male or female, big or small, left or right-handed, but at the point of release, you’ll find that the best of the best look very much the same. If you want to know in a nutshell how to bowl a strike consistently, I can tell you that balance and focus throughout your approach and finish are the keys.
Optimizing the balance of your stance or setup will help improve your foundation and make you more consistent with every shot of every day. Over time, we’ve seen many different ways and many different styles of stances or setups. One thing you’ll notice is most of them look pretty close to the same, but there are some pretty individual characteristics.
Ultimately, you just want it to be comfortable. We will see a few different ways to get your stance and set up as comfortable as possible and as consistent as possible to help you throw your bowl a strike.
A lot of the inconsistencies we see with bowlers relate right back to the stance.
We want to try to have a balanced finish, but if you don’t start in a balanced position, it is hard to create balance at the finish. We want you to start in a balanced position as opposed to an unbalanced position.
If I can push you a little and you go easily back, the issue that we have here is that all your energy and all your weight go on reverse, instead of forward up the line towards the pins. So, what we want to do is get into your stamps, flex your knees and get the weight onto the balls of your feet forward.
So now you’re in a very stable position. Now it’s going to enable you to have more balance at the finish position, because all our balance and energy are going up the same way, instead of in the other direction. Now that we got your balance better established on the balls of your feet, we want to look at your alignment going up to the lane.
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What you have is a square, square of your shoulders, your hips, and your feet. So, what I want you to do is take your bowling side, if you are right-handed, your right side, and take your right foot slightly back. Take your right hip slightly back and your right shoulder slightly back too.
We want to keep the ball in the same position. We want to keep the ball between your shins and shoulders still going up the line just going to give you more of a better athletic position, but release the ball and keep it on a line going down the lane. Now we got your weight on the balls of your feet in a more balanced position, and we got you open in the stance we want to take care of this ball placement we talked about.
We want it between your chin and shoulder, not outside the shoulder. We want to get in a little balanced position, so you can relax your hand more. I should be able to push you and it should be hard to move you.
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Pull your elbows slightly back, and pull the ball a little bit closer to you, keeping it in the same position between your chin and shoulder. Your hands are going to be more relaxed in the ball, with a stronger release at the finished position and you’re in a better balance.
Okay, the next thing we want to address now that you have a better stance, we want to get into a very good start initiating the whole approach. So what we want to do is get the ball closer to a better-balanced position. We want to keep the weight of the ball in the center of your hand. Here we don’t want to let that ball get in front of your hand. We don’t want it coming back, we want it nice and centered here.
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The next thing we want to do is, as we start to initiate the swing, we want to have a nice rounded shape to this push way. We want it around it. We don’t want to have sharp edges; swing doesn’t have sharp edges. You want to have a nice, rounded swing, so we’re going to keep the shoulder back as the ball goes forward and it’s going to have a nice rounded swing.
We’re going to synchronize this with the very first step of your ball-side foot. So if you’re a five-stepper, you’ll take a step and then the right side or the ball-side foot and the ball will go forward at the same time, if you’re a four-stepper, we initiate just with the right side, the right step in the right-handed on the ball will go forward and synchronize the same thing so that weight will hit your hand at the same time that ball-side foot hits the floor.
Now then we go to get the stance in the waiting ball. You want to make sure that when you go out there forward you start this push way that you keep your hand underneath the ball to start. That keeps your hand nice and relaxed.
If you get out here and you let the ball get up from your hand, now you’re going to have to grab that ball, you have to grip it and pull it back. It’s going to cause you an inconsistent swing and grip pressure throughout the release, so we want to keep it nice and balanced and rounded.
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When talking about the best way to do an approach in bowling, there are many things that go into it: stance, push away, timing, body position, and finish position. Here are some tips on how to make your best approach.
There’s a very important part for consistent delivery and accuracy going down the lane, we want to start with the ball between your chin and shoulder in the stance.
You have two options: you can take the ball around your body during the approach or take your body around the ball. It’s better to take your body around the ball and stance.
So, if you take the ball in front of you and just push forward up the lane, you know it’s going to go into your leg, so what you want to do with this ball-side foot is step from the slide foot to create a path for the ball to drop in nice and tight to our body. If we don’t do that, the ball has to come around the body and when it comes back down, the swing is going to have to come around the body again.
This is going to create inconsistency of our launch angles going down the lane. If you let go of the ball early, it’s going to miss to the outside. If you let go over late, it’s going to miss on the inside. The advantage of stepping in front of your slide foot right here at the start is that if you let the ball drop into the spot it’s going to keep it straight back, straight-forward if you let go of it early or if you let go of it, late is still going to be on the line.
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The key for a good arm swing is keeping consistency in the angles all straight as we take the ball back and forward towards our target. So, as we initiate that start and that push we want to have that crossover step, so we can keep the swing tight to our body. If the swing goes back, we want to keep it in line with our body to the top of the backswing. At the very top, you’ll notice that the swing, the bowling ball, and the head are all in line with his target.
At this point, you can just let the ball drop, not change direction, and it will go to the target line. This enables a bowler to have a nice free swing, and consistency to release and control his launch angles.
So, the key here is at the top of the backswing. We just let it rest and it’s just like it’s coming down a ramp, just let the ball drop straight down. Underneath the head to the release position.
How to improve your bowling finish position
The Finish Position is a key component in how to bowl a strike consistently. Very often we find players that fall off their way and get frustrated, but we can trace most issues back to the beginning. They’re usually not getting consistent starts. A good consistent start will dictate a good finish.
There are lots of different ways to get to the line, but if you look at some of the greatest players, you’ll see that they may get there in a lot of different ways, but in the end, everybody is in the same balanced, committed, finished position.
Great bowling players have in common that they have great use of their balance arm and their trail-leg. They want to counterbalance all of the weight that’s swinging alongside them. That’s what helps them stay upright and in a great line toward their target line that they’re trying to complete.
Having a great posture is what allows you to have good leverage at the line. Often times we’ll see, players get a little bit too compressed with their waist and they’re giving away that good posture and good leverage that gives them the good ball roll down the lane.
A good way to correct that would be to make sure that your shoulders stay in line with your hips. Don’t let your head get out in front of you when you deliver the ball.
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For great leverage, you want to make sure that you have a stacked position from your head to your knee to your foot, that’s going to give you the best ball roll on the best follow-through down the lane.
Now, let’s talk about the release, how you put your hand in the ball dictates how you’re going to release the ball. It brings it all the way.
A lot of bowlers will just grab the ball off the ball rack, put their hand in the ball and go without paying any attention to how they put their hand on the ball. We recommend that you kind of get used to putting your hand in the ball in a consistently relaxed state.
Pick up the ball with both hands and put your fingers underhand and roll the ball onto your thumb. Don’t take your thumb to the ball. If you take your thumb to the ball, you can have to grab or grip that ball. Take that ball onto your thumb. It rolls it on and keeps the thumb nice and relaxed. The hand relaxed is going to facilitate you to have a nice clean release.
On the release, once our hands are in that ball at that release position, we want that ball rolling off the front of our hand. You want to take your hand through the ball, not around the ball.
One mistake amateurs make is, they want to come around the ball, trying to give that ball spin or side turn, trying to make that ball hook. You create hook by the ball rolling off the front of your hand, it will turn your hand. Let the ball turn your hand and release. Don’t have your hand turn the ball.
If you follow these tips and avoid common mistakes you’ll be able to bowl a strike much more consistently and improve your technique. Remember, balance and focus are the way to consistency. Keep practicing and refining your approach and finish to maximize your score in every match.
Next Steps and Where to Purchase Equipment
When you’re ready to make the leap, you can read these articles to learn what bowling equipment we recommend for every different kind of player and choose what suits you better. We try to review the best bowling equipment in the market every few weeks to keep up-to-date with the current trends.
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