Bowling Challenges
Bowling has some of the biggest challenges of all sports: Not only do you have to roll a ball 60 feet but you have lots of time to think, prepare to make a shot.
This time available to think makes the shot much harder than hitting a baseball, or throwing a pass, or shooting a basket from the three-point line.
Shooting a free throw or throwing a pitch are similar but there are far fewer variables and the action is identical each time. You can practice that identical free throw or pitch thousands of times. In bowling every shot is different, a little or a lot based on lane transition and the spare leave.
In the other sports you do not have time to think. You must react more naturally without trying to control your action. Quickly you find out that thinking about your body while shooting hurts your ability to shoot well. Our ancestors lived and survived because they could do this well. It is built into us.
But in bowling, there is no urgency, the limit of time is based on your next turn on the approach. You have time to think of all kinds of things and try to control your actions, trying not to make a mistake or make a bad shot.
In bowling, every shot counts. That means that every shot and outcome are important.
In baseball, if you get a hit every third time to the plate you could be in the Hall of Fame. No quarterback realistically expects to make every pass.
The natural response to bowling for most of us is to get more careful and deliberate in our preparation to make the shot and then we often try to control our swing or some other physical component to get it just right, or perfect because the outcome counts. We may be trying to avoid a miss or making a bad shot.
This makes us moreleft brained and less athletic. It messes up our trained swing.
Many perform their best bowling when they stop worrying about the outcome or making a mistake. For most players this happens by accident. There are many challenges in our great sport of bowling.