Bowling Through Time – Part 2

In this article, we leave the 1960s behind and enter the 1970s, when the foundations of the sport we know today were laid. We will see how bowlers and bowling organizations looked for strategies to gain an advantage, and how governing bodies then stepped in to maintain the integrity of the sport they oversee.

As we go through this period, keep a few key questions in mind:

• Do advances in technology cause evolution in technique?
• Does an individual who does something unique drive an evolution in technique?
• Does the playing environment cause evolution in technique?
• What role do governing bodies play in the evolution of technique?

Evolution of technique

At this point, we’ll take the first of our sidesteps in this series and look at the evolution of technique in a different sport: the high jump. The high jump is a great example of how sport evolves when human creativity meets changing technology and rules.

Over the past century, athletes have continuously increased how high a bar the human body can jump over. In the early 1900s, high jumpers used the scissors technique, approaching the bar almost straight on and clearing it upright, feet first, with the legs split like a pair of shears. This style made sense in an era when landing areas were little more than sand or sawdust. Landing on your feet was essential unless you wanted to risk serious injury. Technique was limited less by imagination and more by self-preservation.

As landing areas improved for safety, athletes could experiment with more extravagant techniques, because landing on one’s feet was no longer quite so essential. George Horine, who popularized the Western roll by rotating the body, effectively lowered his center of mass relative to the bar. This was an early, intuitive nod to the study of ...