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To paraphrase Yogi Berra, "Bowling
is 90% mental and the other half is physical." You've spent a lot
of time working on your physical game, assuring you look like a
highlight film at the line, learning to read lanes, developing different
releases, etc. All that will be for naught without a solid mental
game, however. A player who enjoys a great physical game will fail
without the mental game to go along with that smooth form and great
delivery. I believe it's true that a great mental game with only
a medium physical game can often make a winner out of a journeyman
player.
Do you remember that great shot you threw that time? That shot that
was absolutely pure, where everything came together at the foul
line? It felt so effortless. The ball flowed off your hand, rolled
right over your target, and blew pins everywhere. If you've had
one or two of those shots in your bowling lifetime, you should know
(and believe) that you have the mechanical skills and physical resources,
strengths, and coordination to do it again. So, why can't you seem
to repeat that shot a lot more often?
The reason is simple but like everything worthwhile, the cure takes
some work. What is happening to you is the same thing that happens
to athletes the world over. Your mind is preventing your body from
performing at its peak proficiency. Bowling out of your mind is
the goal.
As you probably know, there are two hemispheres of the brain. The
left-brain controls all the analytical functions such as sequential
planning, problem solving, rational thinking, deductive reasoning,
and data analysis to name a few. It is the evaluator, the decision
maker, and it devises all your shot-making tactics.
The right brain is the intuitive side. It is responsible for creative
functions, feelings, visualization, emotions, imagination, and the
orientation of your body in space. The right brain visualizes the
entire motion of your shot: the picture in your mind of what the
lane wants the ball to do, what path the ball will follow to do
that, what is required of your body to put the ball on that path
with the correct angle, speed, and rotation, etc. In addition, it
is busy sensing your body's position in space, making sure to keep
you off your nose, and providing whatever physical muscle contraction,
movement, and effort is required to execute this intention. Your
right brain is the synthesizer which collects and collates all the
data into a workable scenario for you, fitting the goal with your
physical abilities. It translates all that left-brain analytical
information into a picture your body can execute.
It was a wonderful lesson for me to learn that I did not always
have to tell a client how to do something. In fact, I often find
that the less I tell someone how to do something, the more quickly
they are capable of doing it. The secret, I believe, is in the verbal
painting of the picture and then letting them interpret the words
with their body. For example, the request "Raise your backswing
4 inches" invariably gets the backswing we're looking for. "Delay
your release that (snap my fingers) long" achieves the amount of
loft we're working toward. That'll teach me to think I'm necessary…
The best possible outcome would be that your right brain executes
the shot you have in your left-brain and that it does so unimpaired
by any conscious thought or detail. Since we are not unconscious
unless we are unconscious, that unimpaired state of mind is pretty
difficult to achieve. Therefore, it would bring great bowling (and
life) joy to be able to acknowledge the left-brain information and
then act upon it with no fear of outcome. That 'what if' stuff is
what splits, opens, or a seven-count-when-you-need-eight are made
of.
It certainly makes things more difficult if you can't let your right
brain execute its picture because of continual interference by the
left brain (Mildred). The absolute here is that once you have accumulated
the data and processed its application to your shot, your right
brain and your body are ready - let them do it. The job will get
done if your left-brain will just butt out!
The complex motor skills used for bowling require the participation
of both hemispheres. The left-brain gathers all the data from your
previous shot and, combined with your experience, uses it to guide
your decision-making about the next shot. Wouldn't it be wonderful
if it could work this way all the time? You would throw a shot and
make non-judgmental observations about it. If the shot worked, your
left-brain would send the 'multiple copies of that, please' message
to the executor, your right brain. If it didn't work, your left
brain would analyze where a change might need to occur: "go around
the high board; this line is no longer working, move 17 and 10 left;
this lane now requires the high RG, slightly polished ball and a
90º release."
Not good or bad. Just the facts. I'm not much of a sci-fi fan but
I remember many many years ago reading a wonderful book by Robert
Heinlein called Stranger in a Strange Land. There were several things
from it I got to keep forever, always a wonderful gift. One was
the word 'grok'. The other was the concept of a 'Fair Witness'.
As I remember it, a Fair Witness was someone who could be hired
to neutrally observe things. They did so without emotion or opinion.
For example, Jubal asked Anne about the color of the house on the
hill. She responded that it was "white on this side". I nearly fell
out my chair! She was making no assumption about the parts of the
house she could not see. There was no judgment, no opinion, and
no assumption - just the unencumbered FACT that the house was white
on this side.
ISNESS
If you have not been told to trust what you see in bowling, let
me be the first. We are surely into conditioned responses. We are
supposed to feel this way if so-and-so happens. We are supposed
to do this if that happens. If we could make pure decisions based
on the observations of our experiences, we would be in great shape.
What actually happens, though, is that we make decisions based on
how we feel about our experiences. In fact, sometimes we even deny
our experiences or what we see in favor of what we have been taught
or what we think should have happened. We will often watch the ball
and be surprised at its behavior. Having been there, done that,
the thoughts are similar to: "That ball could not have done that.
I didn't really think when I let it go that it was a problem. Still,
I must have (tempting though it will be, please pick only one):
let up on speed, missed my target, turned it early, juiced it a
little, missed it at the bottom, been a little late, etc. I'm either
going to throw another one just to be sure or pretend that didn't
happen. I'll be sure to a) bear down, b) try harder, c) throw it
better, d) all of the above."
The FACT is that the shot was just a shot. It did what it did. It
is neither good nor bad. It just is. When you truly can just observe
the shot's 'isness', you can make a quality decision about whether
or not you want the shot to do the same thing again. The ball will
always communicate with you if you'll pay attention. "If you stand
there and throw me here in that manner, I am going to do this."
If you don't change something, you can't expect something to change!
Sometimes we think in should'ves and always. "I should've moved
here." "I always do this when that happens." These responses are
based on your experiences. If you get locked into these responses,
you leave no room for new experiences. If you imagine what the shot
OUGHT to look like and it doesn't, where will you go?
Alternatively, you could be living in a very pleasant place: the
lane is a canvas and your ball the paintbrush. Wherever it goes,
it goes. You observe the ball's action. What matters now is your
REaction. In all of life, not just bowling, it is not the action;
it's the reaction that dictates joy.
If you don't change your reaction (to a bad shot, a bad break, getting
cut off in traffic, burning the lasagna), nothing else in your life
will change either. This type of change in thinking affects your
whole life, not just your bowling life. I think this change is made
a little more easily by feeling like you are replacing one attitude
with another rather than thinking that you have to stop doing something.
This change isn't a dogmatic must. There's no demand that you stop
feeling the way you do. It's merely a conscious effort to view the
action differently. For example, you miss the 6/10 spare. You can
either do the "You jerk. What were you thinking?" or "I always do
that in pressure situations", or the "Everyone will think I'm a
bad spare shooter," thing or you could think this: "Hmmm. Now, on
this next shot, I'm going to…" Please don't think this means that
you don't care or that you will either pretend you didn't miss or
ignore that you did. You did miss. It just doesn't matter. It is
in the past and has nothing to do with the future. The shot just
was.
That is a non-fear based response. It acknowledges what happened
without deciding that it is inevitable that it happen again or that
it defines you as a person and a bowler. You are in charge, you
know. The secret is in your investment. If you are invested somehow
in the outcome, you cannot be unbiased in your view of the process.
Conversely, if you release yourself from being outcome-oriented,
what will matter to you is your performance - the process - that,
after all, is the only thing you're in charge of. Sometimes you
bowl well and sometimes you score well and sometimes you even do
both at the same time! I am reminded of little kids arguing. "You're
not the boss of me!" When your commitment is to your best effort,
you understand that the score is not the boss of you. You are not
your number.
There has to be a solid partnership of both hemispheres of the brain.
Both the analytical and intuitive sides have complementary roles
to one another, working together but performing independently. Anytime
one side interferes with the other, you throw a bad shot. How often
have you thrown a good shot and then said, "Yeah, but HOW did I
do that?" That good shot is an example of the left brain deciding
and right brain executing. If we could just let the right brain
do its thing instead of that buttinksy left brain trying to analyze
how the right brain is doing it…
It is a common tenet in coaching that 'everybody can do it one time
in a row'. When your coach asks you to try something, have you noticed
that generally you can do it? They explain what it is you are to
do and behold, you did it! I believe that is because you have no
preconceived ideas about HOW to do it. You just gave an order or
mental picture to the right side of your brain and it executed your
thought unimpeded by how-to's or what-if's. The right side of the
brain executed your thought. Isn't it curious that we have so little
faith in something we continually do? This is just like health food.
We know it's good for us, we just don't do it!
If you threw the shot of your life every time, you'd quit this sport
and go on to something more challenging. Knowing that every failure
gets you closer to success is what keeps you coming back. Success
is elusive and therefore worthwhile. You must never forget the incredible
amount of precision and extraordinary skill required to bowl well.
It is hard sometimes for us to separate our performance from our
self-worth. A bad bowling experience does not mean you are a bad
person. How you see yourself as a bowler and how you value what
you see is critical to your continued success. If you think you'll
chop that bucket, you're right. Expectation affects performance.
If you expect to miss that bucket, you'll be sure you do, reaffirming
that you were exactly right, you missed it! A negative self-fulfilling
prophecy like this is easier to put into effect because there are
so many more ways to fail than to succeed.
THE BRIDGE AND YOUR CUES
There is a communications network between your left brain and your
right brain. It is really called the corpus callosum but we'll just
call it a bridge. It provides a method of communication between
your analyzer and your executor. What you want to avoid are traffic
jams (a bad shot) or no traffic (an uncaring or indifferent shot).
The bridge is a one way street at all times. It's just that the
direction of the traffic flow changes at various times during peak
hours of business - anytime you're bowling. The trick is to use
the bridge for the right communication going in the right direction
at the right time. This can be accomplished through the use of cues
or keys you've developed for your game.
The best time to determine your cues is when you're bowling well.
What did that stroke feel like and how will you repeat it? The key
to its repeatability will be in how you conjure from the right brain
the ability to do it again. For some people the cue needs to be
words that elicit a feeling - like 'free-wheeling' or 'smooth'.
Maybe it was flowing, like a river. Perhaps it was more of a yaaaa-hoooo!
Maybe what works for you is to feel like you're holding an egg or
a bird. If you are this type of performer, your cues will be descriptive
of the FEELING you had when you executed that shot and will help
elicit that feeling again. Pick a phrase that describes for you
the feeling of that shot. That will cue your right brain to execute
that feel again. Some of you might need words which are more like
orders than feelings like "Drop and Through!" For you this would
mean to drop the ball into the swing and come through the shot.
The more accurate and succinct the cues, the easier it will be to
retrieve the magic later.
Perhaps your cue needs to just be thoughts that will elicit that
feel. Sometimes these words are only descriptive to you. For example,
you might try to bowl like David Ozio looks. That statement to you
conjures up images of a smooth flowing approach, a solid and balanced
position at the line, everything in perfect time and rhythm. Or
you might think "Okay, let's have the Barnes follow through" and
since you have a mental image of what that looks like in your right
brain, your right brain can do that follow through for you.
Cues like "hit it hard" or "don't miss left" will not give the proper
information to your executor. A thought like "hit it hard" will
cause muscles to become tense and contract before you need them
to contract affecting your speed, accuracy, and roll. Other than
that, it's a good idea.
Your body cannot "not". It can only do. A thought like "don't miss
left" plants a vision in your right brain of missing left and guess
what? Your right brain is a great mimicker and sure enough, off
to the left the ball goes. Your right brain is just doing what it
does best - executing the shot in your mind. Although your perception
may be that your body disobeyed a direct order, it actually performed
what you visualized. So don't get mad when your body does just what
you told it to do.
That's why so much emphasis is placed on positive self-talk and
visualization. Your executor will perform perfectly when its communication
from the left brain is not flawed. You'll be a more successful player
thinking, "I'll just hit the pocket and take my chances," rather
than "Don't split again".
DON'T BE A ROBOT
We've all seen bowlers who look mechanical and roboty - like they've
studied a lot of books and are all tied up in the "As I'm taking
my first step with my right foot, my right arm is moving forward
to push the ball 4-6 inches over my right foot and I'm breathing
in as I'm taking the second step with my left foot as my right arm
continues to arc back so that the ball is over my right calf while
my left arm moves out and back from the ball..." These are left-brain
bowlers. Without the right brain being involved, you will lack fluidity,
have too much muscle involvement, and your game will collapse under
stress.
An overloaded left brain cannot perform but a properly cued right
brain can do it all. You know very well you can't control every
muscle needed to execute a shot at exactly the time you need to
control them if you THINK about it. However, why not have some fun
experimenting and try it? This will help you see how much you really
do on cruise control. Try to think your way through the motions
of a shot the way I just listed those motions. It will give you
a real appreciation for how much your body can do without you!
The secret of cues is finding what works for you. It might be a
'feeling' cue or a 'do it' cue combined with a vision. I believe
all cues should be accompanied by the image in your mind of what
you want to accomplish. Whichever type of cue you choose for yourself,
its purpose is to elicit an IMAGE. The more often you can see a
shot in your mind - going over your target with the right speed
and roll, reaching the breakpoint exactly as you intend - the easier
it will be for you to execute that shot. |
