The mechanics of a good arm swing

Keep your elbow in close

I also learned that the pros keep their elbows tucked tight to their body throughout the swing to promote a tighter, much straighter swing path. Now, what is the benefit of this? Basically, it increases the chance you will hit what you’re aiming at. If you’re waving you’re arm around throughout the arm swing, you have to work a little harder to make sure your arm comes through at the bottom of the swing in the direction of your target.  Now, this might be a simple task with a baseball or a tennis ball, but when you’re throwing a 15lb bowling ball, the effort required is that much greater.

That being said, everybody has a little movement in their arm swing, the real key is repeatability. If you can do it the same every time, or pretty close to it, then you make the adjustments over time to ensure you hit your target, thereby increasing your strike rate. Put simply, a straighter swing path translates to less moving parts, which ultimately means fewer point which things can go wrong.

Bend and snap!

Yes, that is a quote from Legally Blonde, but I felt it was appropriate. “Ah, the bend and snap! Works everytime!” Anybody who has bowled in a league at all, will undoubtedly have heard many comments about keeping your arm straight and not dropping your shoulder.  However, if you watch the pros on TV, you might notice that a good number of them break both of these cardinal rules. What the hell is going?

The dropped shoulder is actually a product of the bent arm. If you watch bowlers like Chris Barnes, Tommy Jones or Robert Smith, you notice that all three bowl with a bent arm and they all drop their shoulder at the release. There are two benefits that come from these simple actions.  Accuracy and power.

By dropping your shoulder at the release, you release the ball right under your head, which should be pointed in the direction of your target.  If you arm follows through your line of vision, the chances of hitting your target, the thing you should be looking at, goes up. Sounds simple, huh?

So, by a process of elimination, the bent elbow must provide the power. Correct! Just like working the inside of the ball, the real magic of the bent elbow happens at the release. Just as the ball is coming off your hand, if you snap your arm out dead straight (remember, we’re already uncocking our wrist) you’ve essentially turned your arm into a spring. Think about playing with a yo-yo.  When you throw the yo-yo down, you straighten your arm just a little and you snap your wrist downward. The faster you do this, the faster the yo-yo spins, the more likely it will come back up the string and in to your hand.  The same principle applies here, the faster you can straighten out your arm, the more energy you can impart to the ball, the more revolutions you put on the ball, the more power you will have at the pins.


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