The Three P’s of Bowling Success – Part 1

In some of my past articles, I’ve written about the shot cycle, which is the mental and tactical process that a bowler goes through each frame. Usually, I’ve approached this from a “focus” point of view, discussing the type of focus needed for each step of the cycle.

This month, I’m going to approach this topic from a different perspective. I’d like to simplify things and put less emphasis on focus and more emphasis on the process itself. With that, I’d like to introduce the three P’s of success:

• Perceive
• Process
• Perform

To be successful, an athlete needs to be able to do all three. In many cases, what holds a bowler back is a weakness in one of these areas. This will be a three-part article series, and this first installment will focus on the first P, perceive.

Perception in bowling

Perception is the process of becoming aware of something through the senses. In the bowling environment, the object of your awareness is the lane conditions and the only real sense being used is vision. From an internal standpoint, being able to perceive how well you threw the ball—and your subsequent emotional reaction to the shot and result—will give you a complete picture to decide what comes next.

The environment

The goal is to be able to perceive in order to make informed decisions about adjustments. Unfortunately, the bowling environment’s primary variables—oil and topography—are invisible to the naked eye. Because of this, perception of the environment in bowling needs to be done by watching the ...