Don’t Just Watch…Observe – Part 2

Every serious bowler wants to improve, but how? Hire a good coach? Of course. Without exception, every bowler needs the help of a trained coach—but that can get expensive. How about reading bowling books and instructional articles? Sure—it goes without saying that learning-by-reading is a good aid.

In the first part of this series, I pointed out the difference between “watching” bowling and “observing” bowling, but it bears repeating:

• Watching means you’re just sitting there with your eyes open as visuals are thrown at you. There’s no work involved. You’re being entertained.
• Observing, on the other hand, means you are taking note of what you are seeing. Who is doing what? Why? What is being accomplished? Is someone else accomplishing the same thing, but with a different technique?

Regardless of the reason for your curiosity, your best bet is to go online in search of answers. Online video—such as what you’ll find on the PBA’s YouTube channel—allows you to pause and “rewind” shots, so you can observe over and over again.

How you decide what you’ll be observing is up to you. You could see a video of yourself and notice what you perceive to be a problem that needs to be dealt with. Most likely, though, you’ll have a sense that either (a) something in your game needs correcting, or (b) you simply want to see “how the pros do it” so that you can incorporate some of what you see ...