Juha Maja

About Juha Maja

Juha Maja is a professional bowling coach with over 20 years of experience. He has a professional coaching degree from the Kuortane Olympic Training Center, where he was also the former Director and Head Coach of their Bowling Training Center. In addition to being the former national team coach for Finland, Romania, and the Czech Republic, Juha is the author and Head Instructor of the Finnish Bowling Federation and European Tenpin Bowling Federation (ETBF) Level 1-2-3 coaching programs.

Improving Lane Play Skills – Part 4

Matching bowling balls to the environment

Improving-Lane-Play-Skills-Part4

To wrap up our lane play series, let’s talk about bowling balls. We’ve talked about physical skills, observational ability, and how to develop these areas in your game. The final piece of the puzzle is obviously the bowling ball. In... [Read More]

Improving Lane Play Skills – Part 3

Training your skills and how to apply them

Improving-Lane-Play-Skills-Part3

Over the first two articles in this series, we discussed the skills you need to develop for better lane play. This included both the physical abilities and how to look for the information you need to make better decisions. To... [Read More]

Keep Spare Shooting Simple

System, technique, and practice

Keep Spare Shooting Simple

What makes a good spare shooter? Many people will consider it as someone who makes no more than one open per game. At the beginning level, this is a very good goal to have, but you shouldn’t be satisfied with... [Read More]

Improving Release Consistency

Ball speed, rev rate, and axis rotation

Improving Release Consistency

What does it mean to have a consistent release? Many bowlers want a "better" release and point to having more revs and more consistency. Taking the revolutions out of the equation for the moment, what does it mean to be... [Read More]

Improving Lane Play Skills – Part 2

Learning to see the lanes and find the friction

Improving-Lane-Play-Skills-Part2

Ball motion. It used to be skid, roll, and hook. Now it’s skid, hook, and then roll. The reality is actually more complicated, but these three phases of ball motion serve as the basis for understanding what your ball is doing as... [Read More]

Improving Lane Play Skills – Part 1

Foundational physical tools for better lane play

Improving-Lane-Play-Skills-Part1

In today’s game, the ability to adapt to different playing environments is a prerequisite for good performance. Unfortunately, many bowlers don’t know what to practice in order to improve their playing skills and decision-making on the lanes. More importantly, many... [Read More]

Skill-Based Practice and Learning

Why "quality over quantity" won't get you very far

Practice-and-learning-header

It’s time to discuss practice. More specifically, I’d like to address the best ways to practice so that bowlers can learn all the things they need to learn to improve. As we’ll see, the best way to practice for any... [Read More]

Bowling 3.0: Two-Handed Technique – Part 3

Body and release positions

Bowling-3-0-body-release-header

In following with the same format of our one-handed discussion from the Bowling 2.0 series, the final two elements of the two-handed game that we need to cover are the body position and release. In addition to these topics, I’ll... [Read More]

Bowling 3.0: Two-Handed Technique – Part 2

Timing and footwork

Bowling 3.0: Two-Handed Technique - Part 2

In our first article covering the physical game of the two-handed style, we got as far as the start position and swing. Continuing on with our analysis, this article will cover two-handed timing and footwork. As we’ll see, the timing of... [Read More]

Bowling 3.0: Two-Handed Technique – Part 1

The stance and swing

Bowling 3.0: Two-Handed Technique - P art 1

Over the past series of articles, we've looked at all of the fundamental physical elements of the modern one-handed bowling game. It would be a mistake to think that we’ve concluded a discussion on bowling's physical evolution without looking at the two-handed... [Read More]