The Three P’s of Bowling Success – Part 2

In my last article, I introduced the three P’s of bowling success: perceive, process, and perform. While the first article in this series focused on the perception stage, this article will focus on the processing stage.

It’s worth noting that one of the most common things you’ll hear when it comes to sport performance is “committing to the process.” That’s not the “process” I’m referring to in this context.

Process

By process, I’m actually referring to the verb, not the noun. By definition, it means to perform a series of actions or operations in order to achieve a result. How you process your perception of the mental, physical, and tactical cues will dictate your success.

The first P, perception, was all about accurately taking in the information needed to help you make a decision about what to do. The second P is all about making the right decision.

The environment

Processing what you see in front of you has been the subject of many of my articles over the years. Without a doubt, the most common goal of bowlers (right after increasing their rev rates) is to make decisions faster and to understand the bowling environment better.

There are essentially two things to look to understand once you have a handle on the shape of your ball motion:

• What are the pins telling you?
• What should you do about it?

We’ll talk about how to improve in these two areas below.

Your emotions

You’ve gotten in touch with your emotional state and the mental habits that help you perform at your best, but what do you do about it? Sometimes, these things feel completely out of your control, and it’s just “a good day” or “a bad day.” Well, improving your ability to process your emotional responses at a micro level (i.e. related to specific shots, results, and mistakes), and improving your ability to control your mental state at a macro level (i.e. before the block and between frames) will ...