|
|
| Saddle your dreams afore you ride
'em. — Mary Webb |
How often have you come back to the seats after an errant shot and
said to yourself: "What was I thinking??!!" If you are like most
competitors you've had some version of this thought far too often.
It is, however, a really great question to ask! In fact, it's funny
that we would ever let ourselves throw a shot without having answered
it up front.
Just about everyone agrees that if you were to target an essential
mental game attribute that could serve virtually any bowler, concentration
would be one of the leading contenders. This quality is so critical
that lack of concentration is the favorite whipping boy for everything
from missed spares, to nervousness when the lights go on, to anything
else that might go wrong for bowlers in competition.
Even though most people know that concentration is crucial, few
people can define it, and even fewer athletes know how to teach
it to anyone else. For many bowlers rounding up and controlling
their attention and concentration is like herding cats, out of control!
This month we are up to helping you understand some things about
concentration, and giving you the tools you need to beef it up.
Simply put, concentration is the ability to place your attention
on anything you choose, and to hold it there for as long as you
want. Most of our minds resemble a television viewer with an out
of control remote channel changer. We are so used to hopping around
with our attention it is sort of funny. We read while we eat. We
watch television while we work out at the gym, and some people even
bring their music players to the bowling center. We seem to have
a really difficult time keeping our attention on just one thing
for any period of time.
But bowling is different right? I mean all you have to do is hold
your mind on one thing for four to five seconds and then the shot
is over! It is probably true that if you take a bowler that already
has a good solid physical game, and simply get him/her to maintain
peak concentration for five seconds per shot, you would raise their
average and tournament results measurably. Five seconds max!! What
is really startling is how few bowlers actually do this.
So how come we trip so much over this important basic athletic concept?
For starters, we don't train our concentration properly, so it fails
us routinely when the tournament lights come on. Most bowlers have
some kind of swing thought when they are standing on the approach.
We coach everything from keeping your eyes on the target, to free
arm swing, to hand release position.
Here is the problem with this sort of thinking. The key thoughts
that bowlers need to focus on change from day to day, sometimes
game to game. What's more, in the short time from the push away,
to the height of the back swing, back down to the delivery point,
most bowlers add and subtract other thoughts as they go. The mind
works amazingly quickly, and is capable of going through dozens
of useful (and interfering) bowling thoughts.
A bowler develops his/her list of key swing thoughts, adds to it,
then automatically goes through all kinds of thoughts in the infinity
of time after the push-away. Unconsciously competitors learn that
with various swing thoughts they are putting their faith and trust
into these thoughts. The problem is that they don't really know
if any given thought will hold up for one entire shot cycle, much
less for a game, or for tomorrow. Bowlers keep jumping around from
thought to thought to thought. This is not what we mean by concentration!
When I do clinics there is a simple concentration exercise I do
with bowlers on spare shooting. I ask them to state what they are
aiming at, and to report whether or not they hit what they are looking
at. That's it. The exercise is eye opening. The overwhelming majority
of players, at virtually all levels of skill, jerk their eyes and
head around. They look down the lane as soon as they release the
ball, and have to make a good guess at which board they actually
hit at the arrows.
It doesn't really matter which thing I ask players to keep their
attention on. Whether it is arm-swing, hand position, or balance
at the line, just about everyone's mind skitters around and touches
another idea during actual execution.
| The Challenge of Staying Present |
Here is a typical sequence of thought focus:
1) Key shot delivery thought.
2) Shift to other physical and performance concerns between push-away,
height of the back-swing, and down to delivery.
3) Anticipation at the point of release.
4) Evaluation of how the release felt.
5) Evaluation of the shot.
Notice in all of this that evaluation is part of most bowlers' shot
cycle. We train this way, judging each release, shot, and result
as good or bad. This might actually work in practice. But is it
any surprise that when competition starts we don't trust our own
powers of competition? You are already waiting to judge what you
do as good or bad before the ball is even off of your hand! Practice
bowling has so many different variables from competition play that
the pattern of mental hop scotch can never lead to a sense of confidence,
much less concentration when the heat is on.
Gluing Your Mind Back Together
Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening
the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on
something solid. — G.K. Chesterton |
When there is room for your mind to move around you are wide open
to fear, doubt, and indecision. If you want to have an all-world
game there is a kind of concentration that bowling demands, different
from so many other sports, that will have your game elevate based
on this alone.
The task is to pick one thing to think about through the entirety
of the shot cycle. Here is the exercise:
1) Set up in your starting position with ball in hand.
2) Notice the position of the ball in relation to the target, i.e.
where the front of the ball is positioned in your hand.
3) Push away and go through your shot cycle while maintaining your
attention to the ball position only. The task is to release the
ball in exactly the same position, and in exactly the same relation
to the lane, as when you started. Your mind maintains awareness
of the ball position in your hand. No thoughts about anything else!
4) You are tasked with maintaining your concentration on just this
one thing throughout the 540 degrees of swing (push away, backswing,
forward, and follow through)
5) Notice how you did without judging yourself to be good or bad.
6) Pick the next thing to do this with, e.g. totally watching your
target throughout the whole shot until the ball passes over it,
attention to free swing from the shoulder, or any other physical
focus.
Importantly, as you do this you will notice that the rest of your
bowling works just fine. You will execute, stay upright, and deliver
good shots even when your attention is on just one thing. Your awareness
will work for you automatically, just as it does when you are eating,
holding a conversation, or running on a treadmill.
This exercise will serve you in three key ways. It will help you
really learn about any aspect of the game you really want to either
improve on or make sure you execute. It will also teach you to bowl
without allowing mental interference no matter what the circumstances.
Finally, you will have the fun of being free to bowl that comes
with clearing out the clutter.
How Safe Is Your Parachute?
Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated.
You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. — David Lloyd
George |
There is one challenge to total concentration that remains. If you
choose to really focus for the full five seconds of your shot cycle,
you are going to have to give up all the thoughts, plans, and judgments
that have run you during the eternity of each swing. Do not underestimate
how difficult this is to do. You may not have cared for all this
interference, but it has been your constant companion.
You'd be surprised at what a security blanket all those confounding
thoughts have been. They increase anxiety and interfere with the
purity of shot-making. But in the end most bowlers are control freaks,
they hate to give up the mental chatter of all the stuff they believe
they must think about.
Your parachute will catch you if you let go of over-control. You
will stay upright, your timing will be what it usually is, the ball
will come off your hand, and etc.
It flies in the face of our culture to attend to just one thing
at a given moment in time, no music, no gum, no attending to other
thoughts. One of the reasons to be a bowler is that it allows you
to be great, for just a moment, for ten frames every game. This
is a vastly different frame of mind than most people have throughout
most of their time on the job and at home. The ability to concentrate
fully on one thing for a whole shot is a spectacular tool to have
in one's war chest.
To clear your mind, focus on one thing only. This move allows for
greatness, and is critical for world class bowling. This is especially
true as the stakes in competition go up. You can extend this skill
beyond bowling to virtually any other area of life. You then have
a crack at being all-world in relationships, work, and any other
sport you may play as well. In short, your bowling mental game training
will teach you to be a winner everywhere!
Quotes from Fitzhenry, R., Ed., The Harper Book of Quotations, 3rd
edition, HarperPerennial, New York, 1993.
Source material drawn from Shoemaker, F., Extraordinary Golf, Perigree,
New York, 1996.
* This article appeared in similar form in the Dec. 2003 issue of
Bowling This Month. |
