- Home
- Sports and Activities
- Psychology of Sport and Exercise
- Other Sports and Activities
- Bowling Psychology
As the leading authority on bowling’s mental game, Dean Hinitz has worked with the premier players, coaches, and teams in the sport. He’s helped countless pros elevate their scores, avoid slumps, and overcome stressors impacting performance. He’s improved their play, now he’s ready for you.
In Bowling Psychology, you’ll learn the mental strategies to perform your best, day in day out. From progressive muscle relaxing techniques to positive self-talk and focus cues, you will pick up spares more consistently, improve accuracy, and overcome anxieties.
You’ll also find invaluable insights, advice, and anecdotes from bowling’s best, including:
• Kim Terrell-Kearney
• Jason Belmonte
• Diandra Asbaty
• Carolyn Dorin-Ballard
• Rick Steelsmith
• Bill O’Neil
• Mike Fagan
• Gordon Vadakin
• Jeri Edwards
• Bob Learn, Jr.
• Amleto Monicelli
• Fred Borden
• LeAnne Hulsenberg
• Del Warren
• Del Ballard, Jr.
• Rod Ross
• Tommy Jones, Jr.
• Jason Couch
Manage pressure, find your focus, and reach your full potential With detailed information on topics including mindfulness training, sensory awareness, and the body–mind connection, Bowling Psychology is your all in one toolbox for mental mastery of the lanes.
Chapter 1 Goal Setting and Self-Assessment
Chapter 2 Thinking Like a Champion
Chapter 3 Establishing Your Preshot Routine
Chapter 4 The Shot Cycle: One Shot for the Money
Chapter 5 Toughness to Overcome Adversity
Chapter 6 Mental Secrets to Making Spares
Chapter 7 Raising Peaks and Filling Valleys
Chapter 8 Team Building
Chapter 9 Coaching and Raising a Champion
Chapter 10 Putting It All Together to Play Boldly
Dean Hinitz, PhD, has been practicing sport psychology for more than 30 years. He is the sport psychologist for the U.S. bowling team, with facilities at the International Training and Research Center at USBC headquarters in Arlington, Texas, previously training at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. He is the lead mental game consultant in revising the curriculum for the United States Bowling Congress Gold Coaching Program.
Hinitz has been the consulting sport psychologist for esteemed bowling programs at Wichita State University, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Robert Morris University, and Webber International University—all of which have won national championships. He is the consulting psychologist for the Trevino Golf Institute and has consulted to the gymnastics team at the University of Minnesota as well as to the men’s basketball and baseball teams and the women’s volleyball and basketball teams at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. He is also a consultant to the athletic department at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Hinitz has worked with numerous champions on the men’s and women’s pro bowling tours as well as with many amateur champions. For more than 10 years, he was a staff writer for Bowling This Month. He is considered by many to be the leading authority worldwide on the mental game of bowling.
Hinitz earned his PhD in psychology from the University of Nevada at Reno, where he is an adjunct professor. He is a former governor’s appointee to the Nevada State Board of Psychological Examiners and was previously the chief of psychology at West Hills Hospital in Reno. Hinitz maintains a private practice in Reno.
“Bowling Psychology is for those who want to take their game to the next level. I have known Dean for many years, and I have steadfastly used his mental-training techniques with my collegiate bowlers to achieve championship results. I recommend this book to any bowler who is looking to gain a mental edge at any level of competition.”
Gordon Vadakin-- Head Bowling Coach, Shocker Bowling, Wichita State University
“For many years, Dr. Hinitz gave my teams tremendous support and advice on improving our mental game. I truly believe that without his guidance my bowling team at UMES would not have achieved the success we had. He has also been instrumental in assisting teams at Georgetown University. Having the mental edge is what sets top bowlers apart from the rest, and Bowling Psychology provides competitive bowlers with mind-game strategies to excel on the lanes.”
Sharon Brummell-- Senior Associate Athletic Director for Business and Finance, Georgetown University, Former Head Coach, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Three-Time NCAA National Champions, USBC National Champions
Thinking and Personality Traits of Champions ' The Top Eight
There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. -Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion. The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities.
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.”
Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion
The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities. If you already possess any one of them, that's great. If you're not strong in an area, decide whether you could make a desired trait part of who you are.
- High motivation and commitment. In some ways we could begin and end here. Without this quality a bowler will stop training as soon as the going gets too rough. When you have true commitment, you have the world. You'll work through fatigue, injury, disappointment, momentary failure, self-doubt, or any other setback. Your intention is your four-wheel drive. If you have it, you just keep on going.
- Goal oriented. It has been said that you can't hit your target with your eyes closed. Great bowlers are up to something. They have a plan, and they follow through to make sure that it happens. Reaching for the stars is wonderful. Pick a star. Now pick a strategy to get to that star - and follow through.
- Optimism and positive expectations. This quality is an essential part of being able to see the upside, the learning, and the growth in every training and competition experience. Without this winning trait, there are so many pitfalls on the road to winning, and on the road to winning again, that lesser individuals cannot keep traveling.
It doesn't take much imagination to come up with all the things that can feel like setbacks in your body, in training, and in competing. Winners understand this. They act as if the bowling universe gives them exactly what they need in order to strengthen, learn, develop as a person, and become a champion. Losers tend to feel that life has ganged up on them. Are you a winner?
- The right kind of perfectionism. Typically, perfectionism can be crippling, with its overemphasis on doing everything exactly right. Certain kinds of perfectionism can cause overthinking, self-punishment, and a negative emotional life.
The winning kind of perfectionists still maintain high standards. Often they like to be well organized, but not always. Most important, they don't sweat mistakes or missed shots, and they don't mentally self-punish. This kind of winner does not get overly concerned about the judgments or criticisms of others. They know their own standards, and they know that the critics don't roll the ball - they themselves roll it.
Champions use perfectionism to drive their practice plans and practice shots. They suspend perfection demands once the competition lights come on, shifting into the mode of bringing maximum effort to shots.
- A striking ability to focus and concentrate. Way beyond most competitors, athletic champions can zero in on key performance elements. They are uncanny in their capacity to remain untouched by distractions.
A term for this trait might be called “quiet mind.” The bowler has one point of relaxed, clear focus. Time stands still. Nothing outside the moment at hand matters. And the critical point is this - champions stay awake and aware immediately after shots. This allows them to dispassionately sense and see what has happened and to make adjustments for the next shot.
- The ability to handle virtually any stressor that comes up during training or competition. Superiorly trained soldiers learn that all battle plans change once the enemy is engaged. They know that they will deal with situations as they occur and change.
Winners have a sense of confidence about their military-like capacity to adapt, improvise, and survive anything that comes their way. They keep anxiety at bay, have excellent levels of emotional control, and don't let any of the storms of bowling life overwhelm them. A winning trait is to be an athlete who's able to say, “I'm even better under pressure.” With the game on the line, a champion wants the ball in her hand.
- A winning personality that includes mental toughness. Mental toughness can be defined in many ways. Think of a long-distance runner, a boxer, or a veteran bowler. In any one of these cases, how would you define the athlete's toughness? Dealing with pain? Falling down and getting back up? Getting dominated by opponents and not giving in?
No matter what happens, the mentally tough just keep coming. They might not be the most gifted athletes in the world. But they're the ones with blood on their faces, mud in their hair, and tears streaking their cheeks . . . and still going on. Others might shake their heads in disbelief, but when the dust clears, the mentally tough are still standing.
- Intelligence quotient. Sports intelligence is a newly recognized aspect of a winning personality. A person can be a genius, or simply really smart in many things. She can be smart in math, reading, music, problem solving, or other areas. Being bowling smart means you have the ability to accurately analyze your own performance, create and innovate on the lanes, and be an astute student of the game. Bowlers who have sport intelligence can learn even more readily from instruction.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Tips for Spare Shooting
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in. -Napoleon. Spare shooting is an area in which it’s difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game.
“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”
Spare shooting is an area in which it's difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game. At advanced levels it should be no more difficult to hit a single-pin spare with a plastic ball than to throw chewing gum in a basket a few feet away. It's like a 30-inch (76 cm) putt for a professional golfer. Yet even at the professional level easy spares are missed at crucial times, and in collegiate tournaments they are missed at a surprisingly high rate.
Spare-Shooting Tip 1: Commit to Seeing Your Ball Cross the Arrows at Your Mark
I know this sounds easy, but if you check yourself you might be surprised at how often your head and eyes jerk up. The mental part of this is the mistaken investment in the outcome, leaping ahead of the need to stroke through your line.
Believe it or not, it's fairly rare for the average bowler to be able to accurately tell you what board his spare shot crossed at the arrows. Most can tell you what they targeted. Most can tell you what they intended to hit. But few players can resist casting their eyes up to see their results simultaneously with the ball leaving their hands.
Keeping your head and eyes steady serves many purposes. It gives you a large point of focus, so you need not think about all your mechanics. It helps you plant and stay down at the line. And, whether you make or miss your shot, you get accurate feedback about where, and how, you're rolling the ball. Once your ball crosses the mark, it's natural to raise your eyes to witness what happened, but wait for that natural motion to occur.
Spare-Shooting Tip 2: Confidence Involves the Head and the Gut
Don't roll a spare shot until you know the strategy you're using will work. The profound importance of believing in your spare line can't be overstated, particularly on combination spares and double wood. It's amazing how many bowlers acknowledge that they knew they were going to miss a spare before they rolled the ball - and they rolled it anyway!
You either believe in your line or you don't. If you question what you're about to do, one of two things will happen. Either you'll execute mechanically (and poorly), because your subconscious mind knows you have doubt. Or else you'll unconsciously overcorrect. You know that you should roll it over a certain mark, but you don't trust your arm swing, or believe in the line, so you fudge it somehow by rolling it where and how your gut thinks it will work. This shows a lack of trust in your own judgment from shot to shot. Play the spare shot that you know in your heart of hearts will work.
Spare-Shooting Tip 3: Make Sure the Traffic Light Is Green Before You Progress With Your Shot
Self-starting athletes have a kind of starter gun in their minds. A diver can intuitively feel when to initiate her first bounce. A gymnast senses when to spring onto the apparatus. A yes or a go or a now occurs in the mind. If you can't feel this signal in your head, your response should be, No, don't go!
Bowlers who practice visualization refer to seeing the ball path before they go. For straight spares, you want to visualize a path back to you from the pin. For hooking spares, visually work back from your break point. You must be able to feel and see things in your mind's eye. Without this, it's difficult to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.
It's said that true commitment involves surrender to a choice. If you're still fighting belief in your lane-play decision, you have not surrendered, which makes the go signal in your head a no-go, or a con job.
Spare-Shooting Tip 4: Value Your Best Effort More Than a Perfect Result
Imagine this scenario. You somehow leave the 2-4-5-8 bucket (unfair, I know - the universe must bear a grudge). As you prepare to roll your spare shot, you hear the click of a pistol hammer being drawn back. “Spare or die” says a familiar voice. Whose voice is it? Yours, of course.
Many athletes who are self-demanding perfectionists have a judge and executioner living in their unconscious mind. If you have extensive self-punishing thoughts or feelings following a miss, you know they are there.
“Extensive” means anything that lasts more than a few seconds. If there's self-punishing talk like, “You @#%!” after a bad shot or missed spare, a desire to avoid looking bad in front of others, or even a feeling of increased pressure because of the importance of the spare for total score, you might be flirting with “gun to the head” bowling.
If you're afraid to fall in this game you'll fall far more frequently. If you're willing to risk falling in order to fly, you have a shot at flying. The bottom line is that if you can't stand to miss, then the pressure you feel will make you shovel and steer instead of sweetly rolling the ball.
If you're going to be killed in your own mind for missing a spare, you're not free to bowl. Yes, you might roll your shot, but it probably won't have your signature on it. Your internal self-talk must be as supportive as you would say to an eight-year-old doubles partner. “Come on give it your best. I'm with you no matter what.” This kind of encouragement must occur consistently.
This is especially important after an errant shot. If you kick your own butt after a miss, you end up reinforcing your fears of the internal hangman on the next one. You must know you're going to be OK upfront, and then you're truly free to cut loose.
Spare-Shooting Tip 5: Feel It, Do It
It would be easier to execute spare shots if the pins would take a jab at you first. Then you could react, respond, and wipe them out. The problem is the pins are just sitting there. There's nothing to react to, so you must move into action on your own. A great way to do this is to start with brief visualization, and then add feel.
Oddly enough, despite the term, visualization is not just visual. You can picture your ball path and roll as a form of visualization. Feel is a way of imaging with the body. Some people do this by doing a practice swing with the ball before actually setting up and going. This is similar to golfers taking a practice swing, or gymnasts moving their bodies through imaginary routines before jumping onto the equipment. When you do this, your natural and trained skills can come into play.
Having a sense of how your body will feel when you execute a shot gives you an internal point of focus and a way to generate action in a sport that does not give you the luxury of reaction.
Spare-Shooting Tip 6: Let the General Run the Show
There's something about shooting spares that invites bowlers to get lost in the mechanics of rolling the ball. If you're thinking about all kinds of body parts, timing, and movement, you risk overriding your automatic setting with your manual transmission.
Imagine the general of an army issuing orders. There are two approaches to take. He can talk to every private, corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant in order to execute a plan. Or he can trust that his troops have been through boot camp. This means issuing one or two general orders and trusting they'll be carried out.
Issue one or two general orders and call it a plan.Typically, what works best is to have one physical key and one heart key. Your physical key coordinates your entire body - head, balance, soft hands, whatever. Your heart key surrenders full commitment to the shot.
Experiment with these spare-shooting tips to see which serve you best. Sometimes committing to one or two of them works better than trying to keep all five in mind.
It's a Wrap
Don't brood and moan over your spare shooting because you miss one here and there. This only causes all kinds of mental loading that's best avoided. We all make more than we miss. We all miss a big one now and then. Take the stress and drama out of your spare shooting. If you follow the tips, you'll hit most of your spares and can quit worrying about the few that you miss. This is way better than feeling you must strike every time to survive.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Making Spares with Bill O'Neill
From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It’s still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there. -Bill O’Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill O'Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Bill O'Neill
Making Spares With Bill O'Neill
Photo courtesy of PBA LLC.
Bill O'Neill has seen a lot in bowling. He's one of just a handful of players who has known the experience of being a collegiate national champion, a professional tour champion, and a gold medal winner in international competition as a member of Team USA.
Now a seasoned veteran, Bill was for a period considered by many to be the best bowler on tour who hadn't won a professional title. He had been in the finals a lot, “10 or 12 times,” but had never closed it out. That all changed in 2009 in Detroit, when he faced Ronnie Russell on the television final.
Bill had already defeated Walter Ray Williams Jr. in the round of eight to make the telecast. His first opponent was Hall of Famer Amleto Monacelli. The lanes were tough, and neither player scored well, with Bill shooting “170 something” to win. To prevail in the end, Bill knew that his whole game, especially his spare game, was going to have to be solid. “I just wanted to avoid splits. When the lanes are hard, you just have to believe in yourself. You're not going to shoot 240 or 250. You just have to trust yourself.” It seemed like a good plan, and it was. As in so many other venues, Bill O'Neill emerged a champion.
Bill O'Neill is so rock solid in his spare game that he's a clear and obvious choice for exploring mental tricks for making spares. Ironically, what Bill does and recommends is so simple that it doesn't qualify as being a trick. He starts with a preshot routine that does not vary. It's a way he creates familiarity and a sense that he has done this thousands of times before. “That's the idea of the preshot routine. Keep everything the same, strike shot or spare shot. That's why I take a deep breath - it gets me back to the place of mental calmness. I know that I've done this 100 times.”
“First I put my hand down and dry it off, get some air. I then wipe off my right shoe and my left shoe so there's nothing on my shoes. I wipe my ball off. It's part of my routine. I don't want to change it.” Added to that routine, Bill creates a sense of certainty for himself: “I get myself set. I kind of adjust myself, wiggle myself into a spot that feels right, look at my target, and go.”
“I try to make sure I take a big deep breath. I try to make sure that right before I step up on the approach I let out a big exhale and get it all out.” Most important, he believes in himself. “I trust that everything that I work on, and that my ability hasn't gone anywhere. No matter what the situation, everything is still equal. From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill recognizes that for many players, as they advance, the excitement and the nervousness can be part of the experience. You don't have to have ice in your veins to be a great spare shooter. And you must hold on to your preshot routine as part of your spare-shooting ritual. “When I step up there, I might think about just one thing. If you think about more, it's not good. Depending on how I'm bowling that moment, that one thing could change. Of course it's anxious, but you learn over time how to handle the anxiety. You have to train your body and your mind that everything is the same. You go through the same routine every time.”
As far as technique and strategy go, Bill O'Neill favors rolling straight at almost every spare, except for perhaps some combinations, such as a 2-8 spare. “I'm a guy who likes to shoot spares straight no matter what. Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm shooting straight at everything. You take all the variables out of play when you do that.”
Although a plastic ball might be the obvious choice for most straight spares, Bill no longer travels with one. To conserve his arsenal, he's worked on, and mastered, coming up the back of the ball to shoot his spares. “Because with overseas travel I could only take six balls, so I wanted to learn. I haven't noticed any negative effects of that.”
Bill emphasizes minimizing the mental interference that can be part of the spare-shooting process. He's leery about taking too much time to overthink things, or to consider being too perfect. “When I start hanging out up there too long, the hand sweats, and different things go through my mind. The over-analyzing of everything is bad. When you're competing, there's just no need to go out there and over-analyze.”
Bill's clear intention paves the way for him. “I'll get this eerie calmness that comes over me. I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Conversely, when you allow your mind to linger in other places, that doesn't play well. “When the doubt creeps in, you get out of rhythm and time. It doesn't always go 100 percent according to plan. The weakest part of my game is when I'm over-analyzing too much.”
Of those rare times when Bill or another professional misses an easy spare, he suggests some common human factors are part of it. He emphasizes the need to be completely present, but not perfect, when shooting spares. “There could be a lapse in concentration. Some people leave a ring 10-pin and are angry that they have to shoot it. Then they just go up, and they aren't even there. When it goes bad, you get down on yourself. It's good to remember the right things to do.”
That seems like a good plan!
Save
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Thinking and Personality Traits of Champions ' The Top Eight
There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. -Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion. The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities.
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.”
Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion
The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities. If you already possess any one of them, that's great. If you're not strong in an area, decide whether you could make a desired trait part of who you are.
- High motivation and commitment. In some ways we could begin and end here. Without this quality a bowler will stop training as soon as the going gets too rough. When you have true commitment, you have the world. You'll work through fatigue, injury, disappointment, momentary failure, self-doubt, or any other setback. Your intention is your four-wheel drive. If you have it, you just keep on going.
- Goal oriented. It has been said that you can't hit your target with your eyes closed. Great bowlers are up to something. They have a plan, and they follow through to make sure that it happens. Reaching for the stars is wonderful. Pick a star. Now pick a strategy to get to that star - and follow through.
- Optimism and positive expectations. This quality is an essential part of being able to see the upside, the learning, and the growth in every training and competition experience. Without this winning trait, there are so many pitfalls on the road to winning, and on the road to winning again, that lesser individuals cannot keep traveling.
It doesn't take much imagination to come up with all the things that can feel like setbacks in your body, in training, and in competing. Winners understand this. They act as if the bowling universe gives them exactly what they need in order to strengthen, learn, develop as a person, and become a champion. Losers tend to feel that life has ganged up on them. Are you a winner?
- The right kind of perfectionism. Typically, perfectionism can be crippling, with its overemphasis on doing everything exactly right. Certain kinds of perfectionism can cause overthinking, self-punishment, and a negative emotional life.
The winning kind of perfectionists still maintain high standards. Often they like to be well organized, but not always. Most important, they don't sweat mistakes or missed shots, and they don't mentally self-punish. This kind of winner does not get overly concerned about the judgments or criticisms of others. They know their own standards, and they know that the critics don't roll the ball - they themselves roll it.
Champions use perfectionism to drive their practice plans and practice shots. They suspend perfection demands once the competition lights come on, shifting into the mode of bringing maximum effort to shots.
- A striking ability to focus and concentrate. Way beyond most competitors, athletic champions can zero in on key performance elements. They are uncanny in their capacity to remain untouched by distractions.
A term for this trait might be called “quiet mind.” The bowler has one point of relaxed, clear focus. Time stands still. Nothing outside the moment at hand matters. And the critical point is this - champions stay awake and aware immediately after shots. This allows them to dispassionately sense and see what has happened and to make adjustments for the next shot.
- The ability to handle virtually any stressor that comes up during training or competition. Superiorly trained soldiers learn that all battle plans change once the enemy is engaged. They know that they will deal with situations as they occur and change.
Winners have a sense of confidence about their military-like capacity to adapt, improvise, and survive anything that comes their way. They keep anxiety at bay, have excellent levels of emotional control, and don't let any of the storms of bowling life overwhelm them. A winning trait is to be an athlete who's able to say, “I'm even better under pressure.” With the game on the line, a champion wants the ball in her hand.
- A winning personality that includes mental toughness. Mental toughness can be defined in many ways. Think of a long-distance runner, a boxer, or a veteran bowler. In any one of these cases, how would you define the athlete's toughness? Dealing with pain? Falling down and getting back up? Getting dominated by opponents and not giving in?
No matter what happens, the mentally tough just keep coming. They might not be the most gifted athletes in the world. But they're the ones with blood on their faces, mud in their hair, and tears streaking their cheeks . . . and still going on. Others might shake their heads in disbelief, but when the dust clears, the mentally tough are still standing.
- Intelligence quotient. Sports intelligence is a newly recognized aspect of a winning personality. A person can be a genius, or simply really smart in many things. She can be smart in math, reading, music, problem solving, or other areas. Being bowling smart means you have the ability to accurately analyze your own performance, create and innovate on the lanes, and be an astute student of the game. Bowlers who have sport intelligence can learn even more readily from instruction.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Tips for Spare Shooting
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in. -Napoleon. Spare shooting is an area in which it’s difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game.
“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”
Spare shooting is an area in which it's difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game. At advanced levels it should be no more difficult to hit a single-pin spare with a plastic ball than to throw chewing gum in a basket a few feet away. It's like a 30-inch (76 cm) putt for a professional golfer. Yet even at the professional level easy spares are missed at crucial times, and in collegiate tournaments they are missed at a surprisingly high rate.
Spare-Shooting Tip 1: Commit to Seeing Your Ball Cross the Arrows at Your Mark
I know this sounds easy, but if you check yourself you might be surprised at how often your head and eyes jerk up. The mental part of this is the mistaken investment in the outcome, leaping ahead of the need to stroke through your line.
Believe it or not, it's fairly rare for the average bowler to be able to accurately tell you what board his spare shot crossed at the arrows. Most can tell you what they targeted. Most can tell you what they intended to hit. But few players can resist casting their eyes up to see their results simultaneously with the ball leaving their hands.
Keeping your head and eyes steady serves many purposes. It gives you a large point of focus, so you need not think about all your mechanics. It helps you plant and stay down at the line. And, whether you make or miss your shot, you get accurate feedback about where, and how, you're rolling the ball. Once your ball crosses the mark, it's natural to raise your eyes to witness what happened, but wait for that natural motion to occur.
Spare-Shooting Tip 2: Confidence Involves the Head and the Gut
Don't roll a spare shot until you know the strategy you're using will work. The profound importance of believing in your spare line can't be overstated, particularly on combination spares and double wood. It's amazing how many bowlers acknowledge that they knew they were going to miss a spare before they rolled the ball - and they rolled it anyway!
You either believe in your line or you don't. If you question what you're about to do, one of two things will happen. Either you'll execute mechanically (and poorly), because your subconscious mind knows you have doubt. Or else you'll unconsciously overcorrect. You know that you should roll it over a certain mark, but you don't trust your arm swing, or believe in the line, so you fudge it somehow by rolling it where and how your gut thinks it will work. This shows a lack of trust in your own judgment from shot to shot. Play the spare shot that you know in your heart of hearts will work.
Spare-Shooting Tip 3: Make Sure the Traffic Light Is Green Before You Progress With Your Shot
Self-starting athletes have a kind of starter gun in their minds. A diver can intuitively feel when to initiate her first bounce. A gymnast senses when to spring onto the apparatus. A yes or a go or a now occurs in the mind. If you can't feel this signal in your head, your response should be, No, don't go!
Bowlers who practice visualization refer to seeing the ball path before they go. For straight spares, you want to visualize a path back to you from the pin. For hooking spares, visually work back from your break point. You must be able to feel and see things in your mind's eye. Without this, it's difficult to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.
It's said that true commitment involves surrender to a choice. If you're still fighting belief in your lane-play decision, you have not surrendered, which makes the go signal in your head a no-go, or a con job.
Spare-Shooting Tip 4: Value Your Best Effort More Than a Perfect Result
Imagine this scenario. You somehow leave the 2-4-5-8 bucket (unfair, I know - the universe must bear a grudge). As you prepare to roll your spare shot, you hear the click of a pistol hammer being drawn back. “Spare or die” says a familiar voice. Whose voice is it? Yours, of course.
Many athletes who are self-demanding perfectionists have a judge and executioner living in their unconscious mind. If you have extensive self-punishing thoughts or feelings following a miss, you know they are there.
“Extensive” means anything that lasts more than a few seconds. If there's self-punishing talk like, “You @#%!” after a bad shot or missed spare, a desire to avoid looking bad in front of others, or even a feeling of increased pressure because of the importance of the spare for total score, you might be flirting with “gun to the head” bowling.
If you're afraid to fall in this game you'll fall far more frequently. If you're willing to risk falling in order to fly, you have a shot at flying. The bottom line is that if you can't stand to miss, then the pressure you feel will make you shovel and steer instead of sweetly rolling the ball.
If you're going to be killed in your own mind for missing a spare, you're not free to bowl. Yes, you might roll your shot, but it probably won't have your signature on it. Your internal self-talk must be as supportive as you would say to an eight-year-old doubles partner. “Come on give it your best. I'm with you no matter what.” This kind of encouragement must occur consistently.
This is especially important after an errant shot. If you kick your own butt after a miss, you end up reinforcing your fears of the internal hangman on the next one. You must know you're going to be OK upfront, and then you're truly free to cut loose.
Spare-Shooting Tip 5: Feel It, Do It
It would be easier to execute spare shots if the pins would take a jab at you first. Then you could react, respond, and wipe them out. The problem is the pins are just sitting there. There's nothing to react to, so you must move into action on your own. A great way to do this is to start with brief visualization, and then add feel.
Oddly enough, despite the term, visualization is not just visual. You can picture your ball path and roll as a form of visualization. Feel is a way of imaging with the body. Some people do this by doing a practice swing with the ball before actually setting up and going. This is similar to golfers taking a practice swing, or gymnasts moving their bodies through imaginary routines before jumping onto the equipment. When you do this, your natural and trained skills can come into play.
Having a sense of how your body will feel when you execute a shot gives you an internal point of focus and a way to generate action in a sport that does not give you the luxury of reaction.
Spare-Shooting Tip 6: Let the General Run the Show
There's something about shooting spares that invites bowlers to get lost in the mechanics of rolling the ball. If you're thinking about all kinds of body parts, timing, and movement, you risk overriding your automatic setting with your manual transmission.
Imagine the general of an army issuing orders. There are two approaches to take. He can talk to every private, corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant in order to execute a plan. Or he can trust that his troops have been through boot camp. This means issuing one or two general orders and trusting they'll be carried out.
Issue one or two general orders and call it a plan.Typically, what works best is to have one physical key and one heart key. Your physical key coordinates your entire body - head, balance, soft hands, whatever. Your heart key surrenders full commitment to the shot.
Experiment with these spare-shooting tips to see which serve you best. Sometimes committing to one or two of them works better than trying to keep all five in mind.
It's a Wrap
Don't brood and moan over your spare shooting because you miss one here and there. This only causes all kinds of mental loading that's best avoided. We all make more than we miss. We all miss a big one now and then. Take the stress and drama out of your spare shooting. If you follow the tips, you'll hit most of your spares and can quit worrying about the few that you miss. This is way better than feeling you must strike every time to survive.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Making Spares with Bill O'Neill
From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It’s still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there. -Bill O’Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill O'Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Bill O'Neill
Making Spares With Bill O'Neill
Photo courtesy of PBA LLC.
Bill O'Neill has seen a lot in bowling. He's one of just a handful of players who has known the experience of being a collegiate national champion, a professional tour champion, and a gold medal winner in international competition as a member of Team USA.
Now a seasoned veteran, Bill was for a period considered by many to be the best bowler on tour who hadn't won a professional title. He had been in the finals a lot, “10 or 12 times,” but had never closed it out. That all changed in 2009 in Detroit, when he faced Ronnie Russell on the television final.
Bill had already defeated Walter Ray Williams Jr. in the round of eight to make the telecast. His first opponent was Hall of Famer Amleto Monacelli. The lanes were tough, and neither player scored well, with Bill shooting “170 something” to win. To prevail in the end, Bill knew that his whole game, especially his spare game, was going to have to be solid. “I just wanted to avoid splits. When the lanes are hard, you just have to believe in yourself. You're not going to shoot 240 or 250. You just have to trust yourself.” It seemed like a good plan, and it was. As in so many other venues, Bill O'Neill emerged a champion.
Bill O'Neill is so rock solid in his spare game that he's a clear and obvious choice for exploring mental tricks for making spares. Ironically, what Bill does and recommends is so simple that it doesn't qualify as being a trick. He starts with a preshot routine that does not vary. It's a way he creates familiarity and a sense that he has done this thousands of times before. “That's the idea of the preshot routine. Keep everything the same, strike shot or spare shot. That's why I take a deep breath - it gets me back to the place of mental calmness. I know that I've done this 100 times.”
“First I put my hand down and dry it off, get some air. I then wipe off my right shoe and my left shoe so there's nothing on my shoes. I wipe my ball off. It's part of my routine. I don't want to change it.” Added to that routine, Bill creates a sense of certainty for himself: “I get myself set. I kind of adjust myself, wiggle myself into a spot that feels right, look at my target, and go.”
“I try to make sure I take a big deep breath. I try to make sure that right before I step up on the approach I let out a big exhale and get it all out.” Most important, he believes in himself. “I trust that everything that I work on, and that my ability hasn't gone anywhere. No matter what the situation, everything is still equal. From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill recognizes that for many players, as they advance, the excitement and the nervousness can be part of the experience. You don't have to have ice in your veins to be a great spare shooter. And you must hold on to your preshot routine as part of your spare-shooting ritual. “When I step up there, I might think about just one thing. If you think about more, it's not good. Depending on how I'm bowling that moment, that one thing could change. Of course it's anxious, but you learn over time how to handle the anxiety. You have to train your body and your mind that everything is the same. You go through the same routine every time.”
As far as technique and strategy go, Bill O'Neill favors rolling straight at almost every spare, except for perhaps some combinations, such as a 2-8 spare. “I'm a guy who likes to shoot spares straight no matter what. Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm shooting straight at everything. You take all the variables out of play when you do that.”
Although a plastic ball might be the obvious choice for most straight spares, Bill no longer travels with one. To conserve his arsenal, he's worked on, and mastered, coming up the back of the ball to shoot his spares. “Because with overseas travel I could only take six balls, so I wanted to learn. I haven't noticed any negative effects of that.”
Bill emphasizes minimizing the mental interference that can be part of the spare-shooting process. He's leery about taking too much time to overthink things, or to consider being too perfect. “When I start hanging out up there too long, the hand sweats, and different things go through my mind. The over-analyzing of everything is bad. When you're competing, there's just no need to go out there and over-analyze.”
Bill's clear intention paves the way for him. “I'll get this eerie calmness that comes over me. I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Conversely, when you allow your mind to linger in other places, that doesn't play well. “When the doubt creeps in, you get out of rhythm and time. It doesn't always go 100 percent according to plan. The weakest part of my game is when I'm over-analyzing too much.”
Of those rare times when Bill or another professional misses an easy spare, he suggests some common human factors are part of it. He emphasizes the need to be completely present, but not perfect, when shooting spares. “There could be a lapse in concentration. Some people leave a ring 10-pin and are angry that they have to shoot it. Then they just go up, and they aren't even there. When it goes bad, you get down on yourself. It's good to remember the right things to do.”
That seems like a good plan!
Save
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Thinking and Personality Traits of Champions ' The Top Eight
There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. -Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion. The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities.
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.”
Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion
The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities. If you already possess any one of them, that's great. If you're not strong in an area, decide whether you could make a desired trait part of who you are.
- High motivation and commitment. In some ways we could begin and end here. Without this quality a bowler will stop training as soon as the going gets too rough. When you have true commitment, you have the world. You'll work through fatigue, injury, disappointment, momentary failure, self-doubt, or any other setback. Your intention is your four-wheel drive. If you have it, you just keep on going.
- Goal oriented. It has been said that you can't hit your target with your eyes closed. Great bowlers are up to something. They have a plan, and they follow through to make sure that it happens. Reaching for the stars is wonderful. Pick a star. Now pick a strategy to get to that star - and follow through.
- Optimism and positive expectations. This quality is an essential part of being able to see the upside, the learning, and the growth in every training and competition experience. Without this winning trait, there are so many pitfalls on the road to winning, and on the road to winning again, that lesser individuals cannot keep traveling.
It doesn't take much imagination to come up with all the things that can feel like setbacks in your body, in training, and in competing. Winners understand this. They act as if the bowling universe gives them exactly what they need in order to strengthen, learn, develop as a person, and become a champion. Losers tend to feel that life has ganged up on them. Are you a winner?
- The right kind of perfectionism. Typically, perfectionism can be crippling, with its overemphasis on doing everything exactly right. Certain kinds of perfectionism can cause overthinking, self-punishment, and a negative emotional life.
The winning kind of perfectionists still maintain high standards. Often they like to be well organized, but not always. Most important, they don't sweat mistakes or missed shots, and they don't mentally self-punish. This kind of winner does not get overly concerned about the judgments or criticisms of others. They know their own standards, and they know that the critics don't roll the ball - they themselves roll it.
Champions use perfectionism to drive their practice plans and practice shots. They suspend perfection demands once the competition lights come on, shifting into the mode of bringing maximum effort to shots.
- A striking ability to focus and concentrate. Way beyond most competitors, athletic champions can zero in on key performance elements. They are uncanny in their capacity to remain untouched by distractions.
A term for this trait might be called “quiet mind.” The bowler has one point of relaxed, clear focus. Time stands still. Nothing outside the moment at hand matters. And the critical point is this - champions stay awake and aware immediately after shots. This allows them to dispassionately sense and see what has happened and to make adjustments for the next shot.
- The ability to handle virtually any stressor that comes up during training or competition. Superiorly trained soldiers learn that all battle plans change once the enemy is engaged. They know that they will deal with situations as they occur and change.
Winners have a sense of confidence about their military-like capacity to adapt, improvise, and survive anything that comes their way. They keep anxiety at bay, have excellent levels of emotional control, and don't let any of the storms of bowling life overwhelm them. A winning trait is to be an athlete who's able to say, “I'm even better under pressure.” With the game on the line, a champion wants the ball in her hand.
- A winning personality that includes mental toughness. Mental toughness can be defined in many ways. Think of a long-distance runner, a boxer, or a veteran bowler. In any one of these cases, how would you define the athlete's toughness? Dealing with pain? Falling down and getting back up? Getting dominated by opponents and not giving in?
No matter what happens, the mentally tough just keep coming. They might not be the most gifted athletes in the world. But they're the ones with blood on their faces, mud in their hair, and tears streaking their cheeks . . . and still going on. Others might shake their heads in disbelief, but when the dust clears, the mentally tough are still standing.
- Intelligence quotient. Sports intelligence is a newly recognized aspect of a winning personality. A person can be a genius, or simply really smart in many things. She can be smart in math, reading, music, problem solving, or other areas. Being bowling smart means you have the ability to accurately analyze your own performance, create and innovate on the lanes, and be an astute student of the game. Bowlers who have sport intelligence can learn even more readily from instruction.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Tips for Spare Shooting
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in. -Napoleon. Spare shooting is an area in which it’s difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game.
“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”
Spare shooting is an area in which it's difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game. At advanced levels it should be no more difficult to hit a single-pin spare with a plastic ball than to throw chewing gum in a basket a few feet away. It's like a 30-inch (76 cm) putt for a professional golfer. Yet even at the professional level easy spares are missed at crucial times, and in collegiate tournaments they are missed at a surprisingly high rate.
Spare-Shooting Tip 1: Commit to Seeing Your Ball Cross the Arrows at Your Mark
I know this sounds easy, but if you check yourself you might be surprised at how often your head and eyes jerk up. The mental part of this is the mistaken investment in the outcome, leaping ahead of the need to stroke through your line.
Believe it or not, it's fairly rare for the average bowler to be able to accurately tell you what board his spare shot crossed at the arrows. Most can tell you what they targeted. Most can tell you what they intended to hit. But few players can resist casting their eyes up to see their results simultaneously with the ball leaving their hands.
Keeping your head and eyes steady serves many purposes. It gives you a large point of focus, so you need not think about all your mechanics. It helps you plant and stay down at the line. And, whether you make or miss your shot, you get accurate feedback about where, and how, you're rolling the ball. Once your ball crosses the mark, it's natural to raise your eyes to witness what happened, but wait for that natural motion to occur.
Spare-Shooting Tip 2: Confidence Involves the Head and the Gut
Don't roll a spare shot until you know the strategy you're using will work. The profound importance of believing in your spare line can't be overstated, particularly on combination spares and double wood. It's amazing how many bowlers acknowledge that they knew they were going to miss a spare before they rolled the ball - and they rolled it anyway!
You either believe in your line or you don't. If you question what you're about to do, one of two things will happen. Either you'll execute mechanically (and poorly), because your subconscious mind knows you have doubt. Or else you'll unconsciously overcorrect. You know that you should roll it over a certain mark, but you don't trust your arm swing, or believe in the line, so you fudge it somehow by rolling it where and how your gut thinks it will work. This shows a lack of trust in your own judgment from shot to shot. Play the spare shot that you know in your heart of hearts will work.
Spare-Shooting Tip 3: Make Sure the Traffic Light Is Green Before You Progress With Your Shot
Self-starting athletes have a kind of starter gun in their minds. A diver can intuitively feel when to initiate her first bounce. A gymnast senses when to spring onto the apparatus. A yes or a go or a now occurs in the mind. If you can't feel this signal in your head, your response should be, No, don't go!
Bowlers who practice visualization refer to seeing the ball path before they go. For straight spares, you want to visualize a path back to you from the pin. For hooking spares, visually work back from your break point. You must be able to feel and see things in your mind's eye. Without this, it's difficult to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.
It's said that true commitment involves surrender to a choice. If you're still fighting belief in your lane-play decision, you have not surrendered, which makes the go signal in your head a no-go, or a con job.
Spare-Shooting Tip 4: Value Your Best Effort More Than a Perfect Result
Imagine this scenario. You somehow leave the 2-4-5-8 bucket (unfair, I know - the universe must bear a grudge). As you prepare to roll your spare shot, you hear the click of a pistol hammer being drawn back. “Spare or die” says a familiar voice. Whose voice is it? Yours, of course.
Many athletes who are self-demanding perfectionists have a judge and executioner living in their unconscious mind. If you have extensive self-punishing thoughts or feelings following a miss, you know they are there.
“Extensive” means anything that lasts more than a few seconds. If there's self-punishing talk like, “You @#%!” after a bad shot or missed spare, a desire to avoid looking bad in front of others, or even a feeling of increased pressure because of the importance of the spare for total score, you might be flirting with “gun to the head” bowling.
If you're afraid to fall in this game you'll fall far more frequently. If you're willing to risk falling in order to fly, you have a shot at flying. The bottom line is that if you can't stand to miss, then the pressure you feel will make you shovel and steer instead of sweetly rolling the ball.
If you're going to be killed in your own mind for missing a spare, you're not free to bowl. Yes, you might roll your shot, but it probably won't have your signature on it. Your internal self-talk must be as supportive as you would say to an eight-year-old doubles partner. “Come on give it your best. I'm with you no matter what.” This kind of encouragement must occur consistently.
This is especially important after an errant shot. If you kick your own butt after a miss, you end up reinforcing your fears of the internal hangman on the next one. You must know you're going to be OK upfront, and then you're truly free to cut loose.
Spare-Shooting Tip 5: Feel It, Do It
It would be easier to execute spare shots if the pins would take a jab at you first. Then you could react, respond, and wipe them out. The problem is the pins are just sitting there. There's nothing to react to, so you must move into action on your own. A great way to do this is to start with brief visualization, and then add feel.
Oddly enough, despite the term, visualization is not just visual. You can picture your ball path and roll as a form of visualization. Feel is a way of imaging with the body. Some people do this by doing a practice swing with the ball before actually setting up and going. This is similar to golfers taking a practice swing, or gymnasts moving their bodies through imaginary routines before jumping onto the equipment. When you do this, your natural and trained skills can come into play.
Having a sense of how your body will feel when you execute a shot gives you an internal point of focus and a way to generate action in a sport that does not give you the luxury of reaction.
Spare-Shooting Tip 6: Let the General Run the Show
There's something about shooting spares that invites bowlers to get lost in the mechanics of rolling the ball. If you're thinking about all kinds of body parts, timing, and movement, you risk overriding your automatic setting with your manual transmission.
Imagine the general of an army issuing orders. There are two approaches to take. He can talk to every private, corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant in order to execute a plan. Or he can trust that his troops have been through boot camp. This means issuing one or two general orders and trusting they'll be carried out.
Issue one or two general orders and call it a plan.Typically, what works best is to have one physical key and one heart key. Your physical key coordinates your entire body - head, balance, soft hands, whatever. Your heart key surrenders full commitment to the shot.
Experiment with these spare-shooting tips to see which serve you best. Sometimes committing to one or two of them works better than trying to keep all five in mind.
It's a Wrap
Don't brood and moan over your spare shooting because you miss one here and there. This only causes all kinds of mental loading that's best avoided. We all make more than we miss. We all miss a big one now and then. Take the stress and drama out of your spare shooting. If you follow the tips, you'll hit most of your spares and can quit worrying about the few that you miss. This is way better than feeling you must strike every time to survive.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Making Spares with Bill O'Neill
From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It’s still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there. -Bill O’Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill O'Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Bill O'Neill
Making Spares With Bill O'Neill
Photo courtesy of PBA LLC.
Bill O'Neill has seen a lot in bowling. He's one of just a handful of players who has known the experience of being a collegiate national champion, a professional tour champion, and a gold medal winner in international competition as a member of Team USA.
Now a seasoned veteran, Bill was for a period considered by many to be the best bowler on tour who hadn't won a professional title. He had been in the finals a lot, “10 or 12 times,” but had never closed it out. That all changed in 2009 in Detroit, when he faced Ronnie Russell on the television final.
Bill had already defeated Walter Ray Williams Jr. in the round of eight to make the telecast. His first opponent was Hall of Famer Amleto Monacelli. The lanes were tough, and neither player scored well, with Bill shooting “170 something” to win. To prevail in the end, Bill knew that his whole game, especially his spare game, was going to have to be solid. “I just wanted to avoid splits. When the lanes are hard, you just have to believe in yourself. You're not going to shoot 240 or 250. You just have to trust yourself.” It seemed like a good plan, and it was. As in so many other venues, Bill O'Neill emerged a champion.
Bill O'Neill is so rock solid in his spare game that he's a clear and obvious choice for exploring mental tricks for making spares. Ironically, what Bill does and recommends is so simple that it doesn't qualify as being a trick. He starts with a preshot routine that does not vary. It's a way he creates familiarity and a sense that he has done this thousands of times before. “That's the idea of the preshot routine. Keep everything the same, strike shot or spare shot. That's why I take a deep breath - it gets me back to the place of mental calmness. I know that I've done this 100 times.”
“First I put my hand down and dry it off, get some air. I then wipe off my right shoe and my left shoe so there's nothing on my shoes. I wipe my ball off. It's part of my routine. I don't want to change it.” Added to that routine, Bill creates a sense of certainty for himself: “I get myself set. I kind of adjust myself, wiggle myself into a spot that feels right, look at my target, and go.”
“I try to make sure I take a big deep breath. I try to make sure that right before I step up on the approach I let out a big exhale and get it all out.” Most important, he believes in himself. “I trust that everything that I work on, and that my ability hasn't gone anywhere. No matter what the situation, everything is still equal. From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill recognizes that for many players, as they advance, the excitement and the nervousness can be part of the experience. You don't have to have ice in your veins to be a great spare shooter. And you must hold on to your preshot routine as part of your spare-shooting ritual. “When I step up there, I might think about just one thing. If you think about more, it's not good. Depending on how I'm bowling that moment, that one thing could change. Of course it's anxious, but you learn over time how to handle the anxiety. You have to train your body and your mind that everything is the same. You go through the same routine every time.”
As far as technique and strategy go, Bill O'Neill favors rolling straight at almost every spare, except for perhaps some combinations, such as a 2-8 spare. “I'm a guy who likes to shoot spares straight no matter what. Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm shooting straight at everything. You take all the variables out of play when you do that.”
Although a plastic ball might be the obvious choice for most straight spares, Bill no longer travels with one. To conserve his arsenal, he's worked on, and mastered, coming up the back of the ball to shoot his spares. “Because with overseas travel I could only take six balls, so I wanted to learn. I haven't noticed any negative effects of that.”
Bill emphasizes minimizing the mental interference that can be part of the spare-shooting process. He's leery about taking too much time to overthink things, or to consider being too perfect. “When I start hanging out up there too long, the hand sweats, and different things go through my mind. The over-analyzing of everything is bad. When you're competing, there's just no need to go out there and over-analyze.”
Bill's clear intention paves the way for him. “I'll get this eerie calmness that comes over me. I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Conversely, when you allow your mind to linger in other places, that doesn't play well. “When the doubt creeps in, you get out of rhythm and time. It doesn't always go 100 percent according to plan. The weakest part of my game is when I'm over-analyzing too much.”
Of those rare times when Bill or another professional misses an easy spare, he suggests some common human factors are part of it. He emphasizes the need to be completely present, but not perfect, when shooting spares. “There could be a lapse in concentration. Some people leave a ring 10-pin and are angry that they have to shoot it. Then they just go up, and they aren't even there. When it goes bad, you get down on yourself. It's good to remember the right things to do.”
That seems like a good plan!
Save
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Thinking and Personality Traits of Champions ' The Top Eight
There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. -Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion. The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities.
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.”
Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion
The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities. If you already possess any one of them, that's great. If you're not strong in an area, decide whether you could make a desired trait part of who you are.
- High motivation and commitment. In some ways we could begin and end here. Without this quality a bowler will stop training as soon as the going gets too rough. When you have true commitment, you have the world. You'll work through fatigue, injury, disappointment, momentary failure, self-doubt, or any other setback. Your intention is your four-wheel drive. If you have it, you just keep on going.
- Goal oriented. It has been said that you can't hit your target with your eyes closed. Great bowlers are up to something. They have a plan, and they follow through to make sure that it happens. Reaching for the stars is wonderful. Pick a star. Now pick a strategy to get to that star - and follow through.
- Optimism and positive expectations. This quality is an essential part of being able to see the upside, the learning, and the growth in every training and competition experience. Without this winning trait, there are so many pitfalls on the road to winning, and on the road to winning again, that lesser individuals cannot keep traveling.
It doesn't take much imagination to come up with all the things that can feel like setbacks in your body, in training, and in competing. Winners understand this. They act as if the bowling universe gives them exactly what they need in order to strengthen, learn, develop as a person, and become a champion. Losers tend to feel that life has ganged up on them. Are you a winner?
- The right kind of perfectionism. Typically, perfectionism can be crippling, with its overemphasis on doing everything exactly right. Certain kinds of perfectionism can cause overthinking, self-punishment, and a negative emotional life.
The winning kind of perfectionists still maintain high standards. Often they like to be well organized, but not always. Most important, they don't sweat mistakes or missed shots, and they don't mentally self-punish. This kind of winner does not get overly concerned about the judgments or criticisms of others. They know their own standards, and they know that the critics don't roll the ball - they themselves roll it.
Champions use perfectionism to drive their practice plans and practice shots. They suspend perfection demands once the competition lights come on, shifting into the mode of bringing maximum effort to shots.
- A striking ability to focus and concentrate. Way beyond most competitors, athletic champions can zero in on key performance elements. They are uncanny in their capacity to remain untouched by distractions.
A term for this trait might be called “quiet mind.” The bowler has one point of relaxed, clear focus. Time stands still. Nothing outside the moment at hand matters. And the critical point is this - champions stay awake and aware immediately after shots. This allows them to dispassionately sense and see what has happened and to make adjustments for the next shot.
- The ability to handle virtually any stressor that comes up during training or competition. Superiorly trained soldiers learn that all battle plans change once the enemy is engaged. They know that they will deal with situations as they occur and change.
Winners have a sense of confidence about their military-like capacity to adapt, improvise, and survive anything that comes their way. They keep anxiety at bay, have excellent levels of emotional control, and don't let any of the storms of bowling life overwhelm them. A winning trait is to be an athlete who's able to say, “I'm even better under pressure.” With the game on the line, a champion wants the ball in her hand.
- A winning personality that includes mental toughness. Mental toughness can be defined in many ways. Think of a long-distance runner, a boxer, or a veteran bowler. In any one of these cases, how would you define the athlete's toughness? Dealing with pain? Falling down and getting back up? Getting dominated by opponents and not giving in?
No matter what happens, the mentally tough just keep coming. They might not be the most gifted athletes in the world. But they're the ones with blood on their faces, mud in their hair, and tears streaking their cheeks . . . and still going on. Others might shake their heads in disbelief, but when the dust clears, the mentally tough are still standing.
- Intelligence quotient. Sports intelligence is a newly recognized aspect of a winning personality. A person can be a genius, or simply really smart in many things. She can be smart in math, reading, music, problem solving, or other areas. Being bowling smart means you have the ability to accurately analyze your own performance, create and innovate on the lanes, and be an astute student of the game. Bowlers who have sport intelligence can learn even more readily from instruction.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Tips for Spare Shooting
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in. -Napoleon. Spare shooting is an area in which it’s difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game.
“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”
Spare shooting is an area in which it's difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game. At advanced levels it should be no more difficult to hit a single-pin spare with a plastic ball than to throw chewing gum in a basket a few feet away. It's like a 30-inch (76 cm) putt for a professional golfer. Yet even at the professional level easy spares are missed at crucial times, and in collegiate tournaments they are missed at a surprisingly high rate.
Spare-Shooting Tip 1: Commit to Seeing Your Ball Cross the Arrows at Your Mark
I know this sounds easy, but if you check yourself you might be surprised at how often your head and eyes jerk up. The mental part of this is the mistaken investment in the outcome, leaping ahead of the need to stroke through your line.
Believe it or not, it's fairly rare for the average bowler to be able to accurately tell you what board his spare shot crossed at the arrows. Most can tell you what they targeted. Most can tell you what they intended to hit. But few players can resist casting their eyes up to see their results simultaneously with the ball leaving their hands.
Keeping your head and eyes steady serves many purposes. It gives you a large point of focus, so you need not think about all your mechanics. It helps you plant and stay down at the line. And, whether you make or miss your shot, you get accurate feedback about where, and how, you're rolling the ball. Once your ball crosses the mark, it's natural to raise your eyes to witness what happened, but wait for that natural motion to occur.
Spare-Shooting Tip 2: Confidence Involves the Head and the Gut
Don't roll a spare shot until you know the strategy you're using will work. The profound importance of believing in your spare line can't be overstated, particularly on combination spares and double wood. It's amazing how many bowlers acknowledge that they knew they were going to miss a spare before they rolled the ball - and they rolled it anyway!
You either believe in your line or you don't. If you question what you're about to do, one of two things will happen. Either you'll execute mechanically (and poorly), because your subconscious mind knows you have doubt. Or else you'll unconsciously overcorrect. You know that you should roll it over a certain mark, but you don't trust your arm swing, or believe in the line, so you fudge it somehow by rolling it where and how your gut thinks it will work. This shows a lack of trust in your own judgment from shot to shot. Play the spare shot that you know in your heart of hearts will work.
Spare-Shooting Tip 3: Make Sure the Traffic Light Is Green Before You Progress With Your Shot
Self-starting athletes have a kind of starter gun in their minds. A diver can intuitively feel when to initiate her first bounce. A gymnast senses when to spring onto the apparatus. A yes or a go or a now occurs in the mind. If you can't feel this signal in your head, your response should be, No, don't go!
Bowlers who practice visualization refer to seeing the ball path before they go. For straight spares, you want to visualize a path back to you from the pin. For hooking spares, visually work back from your break point. You must be able to feel and see things in your mind's eye. Without this, it's difficult to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.
It's said that true commitment involves surrender to a choice. If you're still fighting belief in your lane-play decision, you have not surrendered, which makes the go signal in your head a no-go, or a con job.
Spare-Shooting Tip 4: Value Your Best Effort More Than a Perfect Result
Imagine this scenario. You somehow leave the 2-4-5-8 bucket (unfair, I know - the universe must bear a grudge). As you prepare to roll your spare shot, you hear the click of a pistol hammer being drawn back. “Spare or die” says a familiar voice. Whose voice is it? Yours, of course.
Many athletes who are self-demanding perfectionists have a judge and executioner living in their unconscious mind. If you have extensive self-punishing thoughts or feelings following a miss, you know they are there.
“Extensive” means anything that lasts more than a few seconds. If there's self-punishing talk like, “You @#%!” after a bad shot or missed spare, a desire to avoid looking bad in front of others, or even a feeling of increased pressure because of the importance of the spare for total score, you might be flirting with “gun to the head” bowling.
If you're afraid to fall in this game you'll fall far more frequently. If you're willing to risk falling in order to fly, you have a shot at flying. The bottom line is that if you can't stand to miss, then the pressure you feel will make you shovel and steer instead of sweetly rolling the ball.
If you're going to be killed in your own mind for missing a spare, you're not free to bowl. Yes, you might roll your shot, but it probably won't have your signature on it. Your internal self-talk must be as supportive as you would say to an eight-year-old doubles partner. “Come on give it your best. I'm with you no matter what.” This kind of encouragement must occur consistently.
This is especially important after an errant shot. If you kick your own butt after a miss, you end up reinforcing your fears of the internal hangman on the next one. You must know you're going to be OK upfront, and then you're truly free to cut loose.
Spare-Shooting Tip 5: Feel It, Do It
It would be easier to execute spare shots if the pins would take a jab at you first. Then you could react, respond, and wipe them out. The problem is the pins are just sitting there. There's nothing to react to, so you must move into action on your own. A great way to do this is to start with brief visualization, and then add feel.
Oddly enough, despite the term, visualization is not just visual. You can picture your ball path and roll as a form of visualization. Feel is a way of imaging with the body. Some people do this by doing a practice swing with the ball before actually setting up and going. This is similar to golfers taking a practice swing, or gymnasts moving their bodies through imaginary routines before jumping onto the equipment. When you do this, your natural and trained skills can come into play.
Having a sense of how your body will feel when you execute a shot gives you an internal point of focus and a way to generate action in a sport that does not give you the luxury of reaction.
Spare-Shooting Tip 6: Let the General Run the Show
There's something about shooting spares that invites bowlers to get lost in the mechanics of rolling the ball. If you're thinking about all kinds of body parts, timing, and movement, you risk overriding your automatic setting with your manual transmission.
Imagine the general of an army issuing orders. There are two approaches to take. He can talk to every private, corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant in order to execute a plan. Or he can trust that his troops have been through boot camp. This means issuing one or two general orders and trusting they'll be carried out.
Issue one or two general orders and call it a plan.Typically, what works best is to have one physical key and one heart key. Your physical key coordinates your entire body - head, balance, soft hands, whatever. Your heart key surrenders full commitment to the shot.
Experiment with these spare-shooting tips to see which serve you best. Sometimes committing to one or two of them works better than trying to keep all five in mind.
It's a Wrap
Don't brood and moan over your spare shooting because you miss one here and there. This only causes all kinds of mental loading that's best avoided. We all make more than we miss. We all miss a big one now and then. Take the stress and drama out of your spare shooting. If you follow the tips, you'll hit most of your spares and can quit worrying about the few that you miss. This is way better than feeling you must strike every time to survive.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Making Spares with Bill O'Neill
From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It’s still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there. -Bill O’Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill O'Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Bill O'Neill
Making Spares With Bill O'Neill
Photo courtesy of PBA LLC.
Bill O'Neill has seen a lot in bowling. He's one of just a handful of players who has known the experience of being a collegiate national champion, a professional tour champion, and a gold medal winner in international competition as a member of Team USA.
Now a seasoned veteran, Bill was for a period considered by many to be the best bowler on tour who hadn't won a professional title. He had been in the finals a lot, “10 or 12 times,” but had never closed it out. That all changed in 2009 in Detroit, when he faced Ronnie Russell on the television final.
Bill had already defeated Walter Ray Williams Jr. in the round of eight to make the telecast. His first opponent was Hall of Famer Amleto Monacelli. The lanes were tough, and neither player scored well, with Bill shooting “170 something” to win. To prevail in the end, Bill knew that his whole game, especially his spare game, was going to have to be solid. “I just wanted to avoid splits. When the lanes are hard, you just have to believe in yourself. You're not going to shoot 240 or 250. You just have to trust yourself.” It seemed like a good plan, and it was. As in so many other venues, Bill O'Neill emerged a champion.
Bill O'Neill is so rock solid in his spare game that he's a clear and obvious choice for exploring mental tricks for making spares. Ironically, what Bill does and recommends is so simple that it doesn't qualify as being a trick. He starts with a preshot routine that does not vary. It's a way he creates familiarity and a sense that he has done this thousands of times before. “That's the idea of the preshot routine. Keep everything the same, strike shot or spare shot. That's why I take a deep breath - it gets me back to the place of mental calmness. I know that I've done this 100 times.”
“First I put my hand down and dry it off, get some air. I then wipe off my right shoe and my left shoe so there's nothing on my shoes. I wipe my ball off. It's part of my routine. I don't want to change it.” Added to that routine, Bill creates a sense of certainty for himself: “I get myself set. I kind of adjust myself, wiggle myself into a spot that feels right, look at my target, and go.”
“I try to make sure I take a big deep breath. I try to make sure that right before I step up on the approach I let out a big exhale and get it all out.” Most important, he believes in himself. “I trust that everything that I work on, and that my ability hasn't gone anywhere. No matter what the situation, everything is still equal. From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill recognizes that for many players, as they advance, the excitement and the nervousness can be part of the experience. You don't have to have ice in your veins to be a great spare shooter. And you must hold on to your preshot routine as part of your spare-shooting ritual. “When I step up there, I might think about just one thing. If you think about more, it's not good. Depending on how I'm bowling that moment, that one thing could change. Of course it's anxious, but you learn over time how to handle the anxiety. You have to train your body and your mind that everything is the same. You go through the same routine every time.”
As far as technique and strategy go, Bill O'Neill favors rolling straight at almost every spare, except for perhaps some combinations, such as a 2-8 spare. “I'm a guy who likes to shoot spares straight no matter what. Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm shooting straight at everything. You take all the variables out of play when you do that.”
Although a plastic ball might be the obvious choice for most straight spares, Bill no longer travels with one. To conserve his arsenal, he's worked on, and mastered, coming up the back of the ball to shoot his spares. “Because with overseas travel I could only take six balls, so I wanted to learn. I haven't noticed any negative effects of that.”
Bill emphasizes minimizing the mental interference that can be part of the spare-shooting process. He's leery about taking too much time to overthink things, or to consider being too perfect. “When I start hanging out up there too long, the hand sweats, and different things go through my mind. The over-analyzing of everything is bad. When you're competing, there's just no need to go out there and over-analyze.”
Bill's clear intention paves the way for him. “I'll get this eerie calmness that comes over me. I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Conversely, when you allow your mind to linger in other places, that doesn't play well. “When the doubt creeps in, you get out of rhythm and time. It doesn't always go 100 percent according to plan. The weakest part of my game is when I'm over-analyzing too much.”
Of those rare times when Bill or another professional misses an easy spare, he suggests some common human factors are part of it. He emphasizes the need to be completely present, but not perfect, when shooting spares. “There could be a lapse in concentration. Some people leave a ring 10-pin and are angry that they have to shoot it. Then they just go up, and they aren't even there. When it goes bad, you get down on yourself. It's good to remember the right things to do.”
That seems like a good plan!
Save
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Thinking and Personality Traits of Champions ' The Top Eight
There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. -Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion. The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities.
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.”
Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion
The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities. If you already possess any one of them, that's great. If you're not strong in an area, decide whether you could make a desired trait part of who you are.
- High motivation and commitment. In some ways we could begin and end here. Without this quality a bowler will stop training as soon as the going gets too rough. When you have true commitment, you have the world. You'll work through fatigue, injury, disappointment, momentary failure, self-doubt, or any other setback. Your intention is your four-wheel drive. If you have it, you just keep on going.
- Goal oriented. It has been said that you can't hit your target with your eyes closed. Great bowlers are up to something. They have a plan, and they follow through to make sure that it happens. Reaching for the stars is wonderful. Pick a star. Now pick a strategy to get to that star - and follow through.
- Optimism and positive expectations. This quality is an essential part of being able to see the upside, the learning, and the growth in every training and competition experience. Without this winning trait, there are so many pitfalls on the road to winning, and on the road to winning again, that lesser individuals cannot keep traveling.
It doesn't take much imagination to come up with all the things that can feel like setbacks in your body, in training, and in competing. Winners understand this. They act as if the bowling universe gives them exactly what they need in order to strengthen, learn, develop as a person, and become a champion. Losers tend to feel that life has ganged up on them. Are you a winner?
- The right kind of perfectionism. Typically, perfectionism can be crippling, with its overemphasis on doing everything exactly right. Certain kinds of perfectionism can cause overthinking, self-punishment, and a negative emotional life.
The winning kind of perfectionists still maintain high standards. Often they like to be well organized, but not always. Most important, they don't sweat mistakes or missed shots, and they don't mentally self-punish. This kind of winner does not get overly concerned about the judgments or criticisms of others. They know their own standards, and they know that the critics don't roll the ball - they themselves roll it.
Champions use perfectionism to drive their practice plans and practice shots. They suspend perfection demands once the competition lights come on, shifting into the mode of bringing maximum effort to shots.
- A striking ability to focus and concentrate. Way beyond most competitors, athletic champions can zero in on key performance elements. They are uncanny in their capacity to remain untouched by distractions.
A term for this trait might be called “quiet mind.” The bowler has one point of relaxed, clear focus. Time stands still. Nothing outside the moment at hand matters. And the critical point is this - champions stay awake and aware immediately after shots. This allows them to dispassionately sense and see what has happened and to make adjustments for the next shot.
- The ability to handle virtually any stressor that comes up during training or competition. Superiorly trained soldiers learn that all battle plans change once the enemy is engaged. They know that they will deal with situations as they occur and change.
Winners have a sense of confidence about their military-like capacity to adapt, improvise, and survive anything that comes their way. They keep anxiety at bay, have excellent levels of emotional control, and don't let any of the storms of bowling life overwhelm them. A winning trait is to be an athlete who's able to say, “I'm even better under pressure.” With the game on the line, a champion wants the ball in her hand.
- A winning personality that includes mental toughness. Mental toughness can be defined in many ways. Think of a long-distance runner, a boxer, or a veteran bowler. In any one of these cases, how would you define the athlete's toughness? Dealing with pain? Falling down and getting back up? Getting dominated by opponents and not giving in?
No matter what happens, the mentally tough just keep coming. They might not be the most gifted athletes in the world. But they're the ones with blood on their faces, mud in their hair, and tears streaking their cheeks . . . and still going on. Others might shake their heads in disbelief, but when the dust clears, the mentally tough are still standing.
- Intelligence quotient. Sports intelligence is a newly recognized aspect of a winning personality. A person can be a genius, or simply really smart in many things. She can be smart in math, reading, music, problem solving, or other areas. Being bowling smart means you have the ability to accurately analyze your own performance, create and innovate on the lanes, and be an astute student of the game. Bowlers who have sport intelligence can learn even more readily from instruction.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Tips for Spare Shooting
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in. -Napoleon. Spare shooting is an area in which it’s difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game.
“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”
Spare shooting is an area in which it's difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game. At advanced levels it should be no more difficult to hit a single-pin spare with a plastic ball than to throw chewing gum in a basket a few feet away. It's like a 30-inch (76 cm) putt for a professional golfer. Yet even at the professional level easy spares are missed at crucial times, and in collegiate tournaments they are missed at a surprisingly high rate.
Spare-Shooting Tip 1: Commit to Seeing Your Ball Cross the Arrows at Your Mark
I know this sounds easy, but if you check yourself you might be surprised at how often your head and eyes jerk up. The mental part of this is the mistaken investment in the outcome, leaping ahead of the need to stroke through your line.
Believe it or not, it's fairly rare for the average bowler to be able to accurately tell you what board his spare shot crossed at the arrows. Most can tell you what they targeted. Most can tell you what they intended to hit. But few players can resist casting their eyes up to see their results simultaneously with the ball leaving their hands.
Keeping your head and eyes steady serves many purposes. It gives you a large point of focus, so you need not think about all your mechanics. It helps you plant and stay down at the line. And, whether you make or miss your shot, you get accurate feedback about where, and how, you're rolling the ball. Once your ball crosses the mark, it's natural to raise your eyes to witness what happened, but wait for that natural motion to occur.
Spare-Shooting Tip 2: Confidence Involves the Head and the Gut
Don't roll a spare shot until you know the strategy you're using will work. The profound importance of believing in your spare line can't be overstated, particularly on combination spares and double wood. It's amazing how many bowlers acknowledge that they knew they were going to miss a spare before they rolled the ball - and they rolled it anyway!
You either believe in your line or you don't. If you question what you're about to do, one of two things will happen. Either you'll execute mechanically (and poorly), because your subconscious mind knows you have doubt. Or else you'll unconsciously overcorrect. You know that you should roll it over a certain mark, but you don't trust your arm swing, or believe in the line, so you fudge it somehow by rolling it where and how your gut thinks it will work. This shows a lack of trust in your own judgment from shot to shot. Play the spare shot that you know in your heart of hearts will work.
Spare-Shooting Tip 3: Make Sure the Traffic Light Is Green Before You Progress With Your Shot
Self-starting athletes have a kind of starter gun in their minds. A diver can intuitively feel when to initiate her first bounce. A gymnast senses when to spring onto the apparatus. A yes or a go or a now occurs in the mind. If you can't feel this signal in your head, your response should be, No, don't go!
Bowlers who practice visualization refer to seeing the ball path before they go. For straight spares, you want to visualize a path back to you from the pin. For hooking spares, visually work back from your break point. You must be able to feel and see things in your mind's eye. Without this, it's difficult to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.
It's said that true commitment involves surrender to a choice. If you're still fighting belief in your lane-play decision, you have not surrendered, which makes the go signal in your head a no-go, or a con job.
Spare-Shooting Tip 4: Value Your Best Effort More Than a Perfect Result
Imagine this scenario. You somehow leave the 2-4-5-8 bucket (unfair, I know - the universe must bear a grudge). As you prepare to roll your spare shot, you hear the click of a pistol hammer being drawn back. “Spare or die” says a familiar voice. Whose voice is it? Yours, of course.
Many athletes who are self-demanding perfectionists have a judge and executioner living in their unconscious mind. If you have extensive self-punishing thoughts or feelings following a miss, you know they are there.
“Extensive” means anything that lasts more than a few seconds. If there's self-punishing talk like, “You @#%!” after a bad shot or missed spare, a desire to avoid looking bad in front of others, or even a feeling of increased pressure because of the importance of the spare for total score, you might be flirting with “gun to the head” bowling.
If you're afraid to fall in this game you'll fall far more frequently. If you're willing to risk falling in order to fly, you have a shot at flying. The bottom line is that if you can't stand to miss, then the pressure you feel will make you shovel and steer instead of sweetly rolling the ball.
If you're going to be killed in your own mind for missing a spare, you're not free to bowl. Yes, you might roll your shot, but it probably won't have your signature on it. Your internal self-talk must be as supportive as you would say to an eight-year-old doubles partner. “Come on give it your best. I'm with you no matter what.” This kind of encouragement must occur consistently.
This is especially important after an errant shot. If you kick your own butt after a miss, you end up reinforcing your fears of the internal hangman on the next one. You must know you're going to be OK upfront, and then you're truly free to cut loose.
Spare-Shooting Tip 5: Feel It, Do It
It would be easier to execute spare shots if the pins would take a jab at you first. Then you could react, respond, and wipe them out. The problem is the pins are just sitting there. There's nothing to react to, so you must move into action on your own. A great way to do this is to start with brief visualization, and then add feel.
Oddly enough, despite the term, visualization is not just visual. You can picture your ball path and roll as a form of visualization. Feel is a way of imaging with the body. Some people do this by doing a practice swing with the ball before actually setting up and going. This is similar to golfers taking a practice swing, or gymnasts moving their bodies through imaginary routines before jumping onto the equipment. When you do this, your natural and trained skills can come into play.
Having a sense of how your body will feel when you execute a shot gives you an internal point of focus and a way to generate action in a sport that does not give you the luxury of reaction.
Spare-Shooting Tip 6: Let the General Run the Show
There's something about shooting spares that invites bowlers to get lost in the mechanics of rolling the ball. If you're thinking about all kinds of body parts, timing, and movement, you risk overriding your automatic setting with your manual transmission.
Imagine the general of an army issuing orders. There are two approaches to take. He can talk to every private, corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant in order to execute a plan. Or he can trust that his troops have been through boot camp. This means issuing one or two general orders and trusting they'll be carried out.
Issue one or two general orders and call it a plan.Typically, what works best is to have one physical key and one heart key. Your physical key coordinates your entire body - head, balance, soft hands, whatever. Your heart key surrenders full commitment to the shot.
Experiment with these spare-shooting tips to see which serve you best. Sometimes committing to one or two of them works better than trying to keep all five in mind.
It's a Wrap
Don't brood and moan over your spare shooting because you miss one here and there. This only causes all kinds of mental loading that's best avoided. We all make more than we miss. We all miss a big one now and then. Take the stress and drama out of your spare shooting. If you follow the tips, you'll hit most of your spares and can quit worrying about the few that you miss. This is way better than feeling you must strike every time to survive.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Making Spares with Bill O'Neill
From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It’s still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there. -Bill O’Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill O'Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Bill O'Neill
Making Spares With Bill O'Neill
Photo courtesy of PBA LLC.
Bill O'Neill has seen a lot in bowling. He's one of just a handful of players who has known the experience of being a collegiate national champion, a professional tour champion, and a gold medal winner in international competition as a member of Team USA.
Now a seasoned veteran, Bill was for a period considered by many to be the best bowler on tour who hadn't won a professional title. He had been in the finals a lot, “10 or 12 times,” but had never closed it out. That all changed in 2009 in Detroit, when he faced Ronnie Russell on the television final.
Bill had already defeated Walter Ray Williams Jr. in the round of eight to make the telecast. His first opponent was Hall of Famer Amleto Monacelli. The lanes were tough, and neither player scored well, with Bill shooting “170 something” to win. To prevail in the end, Bill knew that his whole game, especially his spare game, was going to have to be solid. “I just wanted to avoid splits. When the lanes are hard, you just have to believe in yourself. You're not going to shoot 240 or 250. You just have to trust yourself.” It seemed like a good plan, and it was. As in so many other venues, Bill O'Neill emerged a champion.
Bill O'Neill is so rock solid in his spare game that he's a clear and obvious choice for exploring mental tricks for making spares. Ironically, what Bill does and recommends is so simple that it doesn't qualify as being a trick. He starts with a preshot routine that does not vary. It's a way he creates familiarity and a sense that he has done this thousands of times before. “That's the idea of the preshot routine. Keep everything the same, strike shot or spare shot. That's why I take a deep breath - it gets me back to the place of mental calmness. I know that I've done this 100 times.”
“First I put my hand down and dry it off, get some air. I then wipe off my right shoe and my left shoe so there's nothing on my shoes. I wipe my ball off. It's part of my routine. I don't want to change it.” Added to that routine, Bill creates a sense of certainty for himself: “I get myself set. I kind of adjust myself, wiggle myself into a spot that feels right, look at my target, and go.”
“I try to make sure I take a big deep breath. I try to make sure that right before I step up on the approach I let out a big exhale and get it all out.” Most important, he believes in himself. “I trust that everything that I work on, and that my ability hasn't gone anywhere. No matter what the situation, everything is still equal. From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill recognizes that for many players, as they advance, the excitement and the nervousness can be part of the experience. You don't have to have ice in your veins to be a great spare shooter. And you must hold on to your preshot routine as part of your spare-shooting ritual. “When I step up there, I might think about just one thing. If you think about more, it's not good. Depending on how I'm bowling that moment, that one thing could change. Of course it's anxious, but you learn over time how to handle the anxiety. You have to train your body and your mind that everything is the same. You go through the same routine every time.”
As far as technique and strategy go, Bill O'Neill favors rolling straight at almost every spare, except for perhaps some combinations, such as a 2-8 spare. “I'm a guy who likes to shoot spares straight no matter what. Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm shooting straight at everything. You take all the variables out of play when you do that.”
Although a plastic ball might be the obvious choice for most straight spares, Bill no longer travels with one. To conserve his arsenal, he's worked on, and mastered, coming up the back of the ball to shoot his spares. “Because with overseas travel I could only take six balls, so I wanted to learn. I haven't noticed any negative effects of that.”
Bill emphasizes minimizing the mental interference that can be part of the spare-shooting process. He's leery about taking too much time to overthink things, or to consider being too perfect. “When I start hanging out up there too long, the hand sweats, and different things go through my mind. The over-analyzing of everything is bad. When you're competing, there's just no need to go out there and over-analyze.”
Bill's clear intention paves the way for him. “I'll get this eerie calmness that comes over me. I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Conversely, when you allow your mind to linger in other places, that doesn't play well. “When the doubt creeps in, you get out of rhythm and time. It doesn't always go 100 percent according to plan. The weakest part of my game is when I'm over-analyzing too much.”
Of those rare times when Bill or another professional misses an easy spare, he suggests some common human factors are part of it. He emphasizes the need to be completely present, but not perfect, when shooting spares. “There could be a lapse in concentration. Some people leave a ring 10-pin and are angry that they have to shoot it. Then they just go up, and they aren't even there. When it goes bad, you get down on yourself. It's good to remember the right things to do.”
That seems like a good plan!
Save
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Thinking and Personality Traits of Champions ' The Top Eight
There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. -Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion. The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities.
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.”
Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion
The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities. If you already possess any one of them, that's great. If you're not strong in an area, decide whether you could make a desired trait part of who you are.
- High motivation and commitment. In some ways we could begin and end here. Without this quality a bowler will stop training as soon as the going gets too rough. When you have true commitment, you have the world. You'll work through fatigue, injury, disappointment, momentary failure, self-doubt, or any other setback. Your intention is your four-wheel drive. If you have it, you just keep on going.
- Goal oriented. It has been said that you can't hit your target with your eyes closed. Great bowlers are up to something. They have a plan, and they follow through to make sure that it happens. Reaching for the stars is wonderful. Pick a star. Now pick a strategy to get to that star - and follow through.
- Optimism and positive expectations. This quality is an essential part of being able to see the upside, the learning, and the growth in every training and competition experience. Without this winning trait, there are so many pitfalls on the road to winning, and on the road to winning again, that lesser individuals cannot keep traveling.
It doesn't take much imagination to come up with all the things that can feel like setbacks in your body, in training, and in competing. Winners understand this. They act as if the bowling universe gives them exactly what they need in order to strengthen, learn, develop as a person, and become a champion. Losers tend to feel that life has ganged up on them. Are you a winner?
- The right kind of perfectionism. Typically, perfectionism can be crippling, with its overemphasis on doing everything exactly right. Certain kinds of perfectionism can cause overthinking, self-punishment, and a negative emotional life.
The winning kind of perfectionists still maintain high standards. Often they like to be well organized, but not always. Most important, they don't sweat mistakes or missed shots, and they don't mentally self-punish. This kind of winner does not get overly concerned about the judgments or criticisms of others. They know their own standards, and they know that the critics don't roll the ball - they themselves roll it.
Champions use perfectionism to drive their practice plans and practice shots. They suspend perfection demands once the competition lights come on, shifting into the mode of bringing maximum effort to shots.
- A striking ability to focus and concentrate. Way beyond most competitors, athletic champions can zero in on key performance elements. They are uncanny in their capacity to remain untouched by distractions.
A term for this trait might be called “quiet mind.” The bowler has one point of relaxed, clear focus. Time stands still. Nothing outside the moment at hand matters. And the critical point is this - champions stay awake and aware immediately after shots. This allows them to dispassionately sense and see what has happened and to make adjustments for the next shot.
- The ability to handle virtually any stressor that comes up during training or competition. Superiorly trained soldiers learn that all battle plans change once the enemy is engaged. They know that they will deal with situations as they occur and change.
Winners have a sense of confidence about their military-like capacity to adapt, improvise, and survive anything that comes their way. They keep anxiety at bay, have excellent levels of emotional control, and don't let any of the storms of bowling life overwhelm them. A winning trait is to be an athlete who's able to say, “I'm even better under pressure.” With the game on the line, a champion wants the ball in her hand.
- A winning personality that includes mental toughness. Mental toughness can be defined in many ways. Think of a long-distance runner, a boxer, or a veteran bowler. In any one of these cases, how would you define the athlete's toughness? Dealing with pain? Falling down and getting back up? Getting dominated by opponents and not giving in?
No matter what happens, the mentally tough just keep coming. They might not be the most gifted athletes in the world. But they're the ones with blood on their faces, mud in their hair, and tears streaking their cheeks . . . and still going on. Others might shake their heads in disbelief, but when the dust clears, the mentally tough are still standing.
- Intelligence quotient. Sports intelligence is a newly recognized aspect of a winning personality. A person can be a genius, or simply really smart in many things. She can be smart in math, reading, music, problem solving, or other areas. Being bowling smart means you have the ability to accurately analyze your own performance, create and innovate on the lanes, and be an astute student of the game. Bowlers who have sport intelligence can learn even more readily from instruction.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Tips for Spare Shooting
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in. -Napoleon. Spare shooting is an area in which it’s difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game.
“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”
Spare shooting is an area in which it's difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game. At advanced levels it should be no more difficult to hit a single-pin spare with a plastic ball than to throw chewing gum in a basket a few feet away. It's like a 30-inch (76 cm) putt for a professional golfer. Yet even at the professional level easy spares are missed at crucial times, and in collegiate tournaments they are missed at a surprisingly high rate.
Spare-Shooting Tip 1: Commit to Seeing Your Ball Cross the Arrows at Your Mark
I know this sounds easy, but if you check yourself you might be surprised at how often your head and eyes jerk up. The mental part of this is the mistaken investment in the outcome, leaping ahead of the need to stroke through your line.
Believe it or not, it's fairly rare for the average bowler to be able to accurately tell you what board his spare shot crossed at the arrows. Most can tell you what they targeted. Most can tell you what they intended to hit. But few players can resist casting their eyes up to see their results simultaneously with the ball leaving their hands.
Keeping your head and eyes steady serves many purposes. It gives you a large point of focus, so you need not think about all your mechanics. It helps you plant and stay down at the line. And, whether you make or miss your shot, you get accurate feedback about where, and how, you're rolling the ball. Once your ball crosses the mark, it's natural to raise your eyes to witness what happened, but wait for that natural motion to occur.
Spare-Shooting Tip 2: Confidence Involves the Head and the Gut
Don't roll a spare shot until you know the strategy you're using will work. The profound importance of believing in your spare line can't be overstated, particularly on combination spares and double wood. It's amazing how many bowlers acknowledge that they knew they were going to miss a spare before they rolled the ball - and they rolled it anyway!
You either believe in your line or you don't. If you question what you're about to do, one of two things will happen. Either you'll execute mechanically (and poorly), because your subconscious mind knows you have doubt. Or else you'll unconsciously overcorrect. You know that you should roll it over a certain mark, but you don't trust your arm swing, or believe in the line, so you fudge it somehow by rolling it where and how your gut thinks it will work. This shows a lack of trust in your own judgment from shot to shot. Play the spare shot that you know in your heart of hearts will work.
Spare-Shooting Tip 3: Make Sure the Traffic Light Is Green Before You Progress With Your Shot
Self-starting athletes have a kind of starter gun in their minds. A diver can intuitively feel when to initiate her first bounce. A gymnast senses when to spring onto the apparatus. A yes or a go or a now occurs in the mind. If you can't feel this signal in your head, your response should be, No, don't go!
Bowlers who practice visualization refer to seeing the ball path before they go. For straight spares, you want to visualize a path back to you from the pin. For hooking spares, visually work back from your break point. You must be able to feel and see things in your mind's eye. Without this, it's difficult to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.
It's said that true commitment involves surrender to a choice. If you're still fighting belief in your lane-play decision, you have not surrendered, which makes the go signal in your head a no-go, or a con job.
Spare-Shooting Tip 4: Value Your Best Effort More Than a Perfect Result
Imagine this scenario. You somehow leave the 2-4-5-8 bucket (unfair, I know - the universe must bear a grudge). As you prepare to roll your spare shot, you hear the click of a pistol hammer being drawn back. “Spare or die” says a familiar voice. Whose voice is it? Yours, of course.
Many athletes who are self-demanding perfectionists have a judge and executioner living in their unconscious mind. If you have extensive self-punishing thoughts or feelings following a miss, you know they are there.
“Extensive” means anything that lasts more than a few seconds. If there's self-punishing talk like, “You @#%!” after a bad shot or missed spare, a desire to avoid looking bad in front of others, or even a feeling of increased pressure because of the importance of the spare for total score, you might be flirting with “gun to the head” bowling.
If you're afraid to fall in this game you'll fall far more frequently. If you're willing to risk falling in order to fly, you have a shot at flying. The bottom line is that if you can't stand to miss, then the pressure you feel will make you shovel and steer instead of sweetly rolling the ball.
If you're going to be killed in your own mind for missing a spare, you're not free to bowl. Yes, you might roll your shot, but it probably won't have your signature on it. Your internal self-talk must be as supportive as you would say to an eight-year-old doubles partner. “Come on give it your best. I'm with you no matter what.” This kind of encouragement must occur consistently.
This is especially important after an errant shot. If you kick your own butt after a miss, you end up reinforcing your fears of the internal hangman on the next one. You must know you're going to be OK upfront, and then you're truly free to cut loose.
Spare-Shooting Tip 5: Feel It, Do It
It would be easier to execute spare shots if the pins would take a jab at you first. Then you could react, respond, and wipe them out. The problem is the pins are just sitting there. There's nothing to react to, so you must move into action on your own. A great way to do this is to start with brief visualization, and then add feel.
Oddly enough, despite the term, visualization is not just visual. You can picture your ball path and roll as a form of visualization. Feel is a way of imaging with the body. Some people do this by doing a practice swing with the ball before actually setting up and going. This is similar to golfers taking a practice swing, or gymnasts moving their bodies through imaginary routines before jumping onto the equipment. When you do this, your natural and trained skills can come into play.
Having a sense of how your body will feel when you execute a shot gives you an internal point of focus and a way to generate action in a sport that does not give you the luxury of reaction.
Spare-Shooting Tip 6: Let the General Run the Show
There's something about shooting spares that invites bowlers to get lost in the mechanics of rolling the ball. If you're thinking about all kinds of body parts, timing, and movement, you risk overriding your automatic setting with your manual transmission.
Imagine the general of an army issuing orders. There are two approaches to take. He can talk to every private, corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant in order to execute a plan. Or he can trust that his troops have been through boot camp. This means issuing one or two general orders and trusting they'll be carried out.
Issue one or two general orders and call it a plan.Typically, what works best is to have one physical key and one heart key. Your physical key coordinates your entire body - head, balance, soft hands, whatever. Your heart key surrenders full commitment to the shot.
Experiment with these spare-shooting tips to see which serve you best. Sometimes committing to one or two of them works better than trying to keep all five in mind.
It's a Wrap
Don't brood and moan over your spare shooting because you miss one here and there. This only causes all kinds of mental loading that's best avoided. We all make more than we miss. We all miss a big one now and then. Take the stress and drama out of your spare shooting. If you follow the tips, you'll hit most of your spares and can quit worrying about the few that you miss. This is way better than feeling you must strike every time to survive.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Making Spares with Bill O'Neill
From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It’s still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there. -Bill O’Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill O'Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Bill O'Neill
Making Spares With Bill O'Neill
Photo courtesy of PBA LLC.
Bill O'Neill has seen a lot in bowling. He's one of just a handful of players who has known the experience of being a collegiate national champion, a professional tour champion, and a gold medal winner in international competition as a member of Team USA.
Now a seasoned veteran, Bill was for a period considered by many to be the best bowler on tour who hadn't won a professional title. He had been in the finals a lot, “10 or 12 times,” but had never closed it out. That all changed in 2009 in Detroit, when he faced Ronnie Russell on the television final.
Bill had already defeated Walter Ray Williams Jr. in the round of eight to make the telecast. His first opponent was Hall of Famer Amleto Monacelli. The lanes were tough, and neither player scored well, with Bill shooting “170 something” to win. To prevail in the end, Bill knew that his whole game, especially his spare game, was going to have to be solid. “I just wanted to avoid splits. When the lanes are hard, you just have to believe in yourself. You're not going to shoot 240 or 250. You just have to trust yourself.” It seemed like a good plan, and it was. As in so many other venues, Bill O'Neill emerged a champion.
Bill O'Neill is so rock solid in his spare game that he's a clear and obvious choice for exploring mental tricks for making spares. Ironically, what Bill does and recommends is so simple that it doesn't qualify as being a trick. He starts with a preshot routine that does not vary. It's a way he creates familiarity and a sense that he has done this thousands of times before. “That's the idea of the preshot routine. Keep everything the same, strike shot or spare shot. That's why I take a deep breath - it gets me back to the place of mental calmness. I know that I've done this 100 times.”
“First I put my hand down and dry it off, get some air. I then wipe off my right shoe and my left shoe so there's nothing on my shoes. I wipe my ball off. It's part of my routine. I don't want to change it.” Added to that routine, Bill creates a sense of certainty for himself: “I get myself set. I kind of adjust myself, wiggle myself into a spot that feels right, look at my target, and go.”
“I try to make sure I take a big deep breath. I try to make sure that right before I step up on the approach I let out a big exhale and get it all out.” Most important, he believes in himself. “I trust that everything that I work on, and that my ability hasn't gone anywhere. No matter what the situation, everything is still equal. From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill recognizes that for many players, as they advance, the excitement and the nervousness can be part of the experience. You don't have to have ice in your veins to be a great spare shooter. And you must hold on to your preshot routine as part of your spare-shooting ritual. “When I step up there, I might think about just one thing. If you think about more, it's not good. Depending on how I'm bowling that moment, that one thing could change. Of course it's anxious, but you learn over time how to handle the anxiety. You have to train your body and your mind that everything is the same. You go through the same routine every time.”
As far as technique and strategy go, Bill O'Neill favors rolling straight at almost every spare, except for perhaps some combinations, such as a 2-8 spare. “I'm a guy who likes to shoot spares straight no matter what. Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm shooting straight at everything. You take all the variables out of play when you do that.”
Although a plastic ball might be the obvious choice for most straight spares, Bill no longer travels with one. To conserve his arsenal, he's worked on, and mastered, coming up the back of the ball to shoot his spares. “Because with overseas travel I could only take six balls, so I wanted to learn. I haven't noticed any negative effects of that.”
Bill emphasizes minimizing the mental interference that can be part of the spare-shooting process. He's leery about taking too much time to overthink things, or to consider being too perfect. “When I start hanging out up there too long, the hand sweats, and different things go through my mind. The over-analyzing of everything is bad. When you're competing, there's just no need to go out there and over-analyze.”
Bill's clear intention paves the way for him. “I'll get this eerie calmness that comes over me. I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Conversely, when you allow your mind to linger in other places, that doesn't play well. “When the doubt creeps in, you get out of rhythm and time. It doesn't always go 100 percent according to plan. The weakest part of my game is when I'm over-analyzing too much.”
Of those rare times when Bill or another professional misses an easy spare, he suggests some common human factors are part of it. He emphasizes the need to be completely present, but not perfect, when shooting spares. “There could be a lapse in concentration. Some people leave a ring 10-pin and are angry that they have to shoot it. Then they just go up, and they aren't even there. When it goes bad, you get down on yourself. It's good to remember the right things to do.”
That seems like a good plan!
Save
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Thinking and Personality Traits of Champions ' The Top Eight
There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. -Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion. The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities.
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.”
Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion
The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities. If you already possess any one of them, that's great. If you're not strong in an area, decide whether you could make a desired trait part of who you are.
- High motivation and commitment. In some ways we could begin and end here. Without this quality a bowler will stop training as soon as the going gets too rough. When you have true commitment, you have the world. You'll work through fatigue, injury, disappointment, momentary failure, self-doubt, or any other setback. Your intention is your four-wheel drive. If you have it, you just keep on going.
- Goal oriented. It has been said that you can't hit your target with your eyes closed. Great bowlers are up to something. They have a plan, and they follow through to make sure that it happens. Reaching for the stars is wonderful. Pick a star. Now pick a strategy to get to that star - and follow through.
- Optimism and positive expectations. This quality is an essential part of being able to see the upside, the learning, and the growth in every training and competition experience. Without this winning trait, there are so many pitfalls on the road to winning, and on the road to winning again, that lesser individuals cannot keep traveling.
It doesn't take much imagination to come up with all the things that can feel like setbacks in your body, in training, and in competing. Winners understand this. They act as if the bowling universe gives them exactly what they need in order to strengthen, learn, develop as a person, and become a champion. Losers tend to feel that life has ganged up on them. Are you a winner?
- The right kind of perfectionism. Typically, perfectionism can be crippling, with its overemphasis on doing everything exactly right. Certain kinds of perfectionism can cause overthinking, self-punishment, and a negative emotional life.
The winning kind of perfectionists still maintain high standards. Often they like to be well organized, but not always. Most important, they don't sweat mistakes or missed shots, and they don't mentally self-punish. This kind of winner does not get overly concerned about the judgments or criticisms of others. They know their own standards, and they know that the critics don't roll the ball - they themselves roll it.
Champions use perfectionism to drive their practice plans and practice shots. They suspend perfection demands once the competition lights come on, shifting into the mode of bringing maximum effort to shots.
- A striking ability to focus and concentrate. Way beyond most competitors, athletic champions can zero in on key performance elements. They are uncanny in their capacity to remain untouched by distractions.
A term for this trait might be called “quiet mind.” The bowler has one point of relaxed, clear focus. Time stands still. Nothing outside the moment at hand matters. And the critical point is this - champions stay awake and aware immediately after shots. This allows them to dispassionately sense and see what has happened and to make adjustments for the next shot.
- The ability to handle virtually any stressor that comes up during training or competition. Superiorly trained soldiers learn that all battle plans change once the enemy is engaged. They know that they will deal with situations as they occur and change.
Winners have a sense of confidence about their military-like capacity to adapt, improvise, and survive anything that comes their way. They keep anxiety at bay, have excellent levels of emotional control, and don't let any of the storms of bowling life overwhelm them. A winning trait is to be an athlete who's able to say, “I'm even better under pressure.” With the game on the line, a champion wants the ball in her hand.
- A winning personality that includes mental toughness. Mental toughness can be defined in many ways. Think of a long-distance runner, a boxer, or a veteran bowler. In any one of these cases, how would you define the athlete's toughness? Dealing with pain? Falling down and getting back up? Getting dominated by opponents and not giving in?
No matter what happens, the mentally tough just keep coming. They might not be the most gifted athletes in the world. But they're the ones with blood on their faces, mud in their hair, and tears streaking their cheeks . . . and still going on. Others might shake their heads in disbelief, but when the dust clears, the mentally tough are still standing.
- Intelligence quotient. Sports intelligence is a newly recognized aspect of a winning personality. A person can be a genius, or simply really smart in many things. She can be smart in math, reading, music, problem solving, or other areas. Being bowling smart means you have the ability to accurately analyze your own performance, create and innovate on the lanes, and be an astute student of the game. Bowlers who have sport intelligence can learn even more readily from instruction.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Tips for Spare Shooting
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in. -Napoleon. Spare shooting is an area in which it’s difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game.
“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”
Spare shooting is an area in which it's difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game. At advanced levels it should be no more difficult to hit a single-pin spare with a plastic ball than to throw chewing gum in a basket a few feet away. It's like a 30-inch (76 cm) putt for a professional golfer. Yet even at the professional level easy spares are missed at crucial times, and in collegiate tournaments they are missed at a surprisingly high rate.
Spare-Shooting Tip 1: Commit to Seeing Your Ball Cross the Arrows at Your Mark
I know this sounds easy, but if you check yourself you might be surprised at how often your head and eyes jerk up. The mental part of this is the mistaken investment in the outcome, leaping ahead of the need to stroke through your line.
Believe it or not, it's fairly rare for the average bowler to be able to accurately tell you what board his spare shot crossed at the arrows. Most can tell you what they targeted. Most can tell you what they intended to hit. But few players can resist casting their eyes up to see their results simultaneously with the ball leaving their hands.
Keeping your head and eyes steady serves many purposes. It gives you a large point of focus, so you need not think about all your mechanics. It helps you plant and stay down at the line. And, whether you make or miss your shot, you get accurate feedback about where, and how, you're rolling the ball. Once your ball crosses the mark, it's natural to raise your eyes to witness what happened, but wait for that natural motion to occur.
Spare-Shooting Tip 2: Confidence Involves the Head and the Gut
Don't roll a spare shot until you know the strategy you're using will work. The profound importance of believing in your spare line can't be overstated, particularly on combination spares and double wood. It's amazing how many bowlers acknowledge that they knew they were going to miss a spare before they rolled the ball - and they rolled it anyway!
You either believe in your line or you don't. If you question what you're about to do, one of two things will happen. Either you'll execute mechanically (and poorly), because your subconscious mind knows you have doubt. Or else you'll unconsciously overcorrect. You know that you should roll it over a certain mark, but you don't trust your arm swing, or believe in the line, so you fudge it somehow by rolling it where and how your gut thinks it will work. This shows a lack of trust in your own judgment from shot to shot. Play the spare shot that you know in your heart of hearts will work.
Spare-Shooting Tip 3: Make Sure the Traffic Light Is Green Before You Progress With Your Shot
Self-starting athletes have a kind of starter gun in their minds. A diver can intuitively feel when to initiate her first bounce. A gymnast senses when to spring onto the apparatus. A yes or a go or a now occurs in the mind. If you can't feel this signal in your head, your response should be, No, don't go!
Bowlers who practice visualization refer to seeing the ball path before they go. For straight spares, you want to visualize a path back to you from the pin. For hooking spares, visually work back from your break point. You must be able to feel and see things in your mind's eye. Without this, it's difficult to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.
It's said that true commitment involves surrender to a choice. If you're still fighting belief in your lane-play decision, you have not surrendered, which makes the go signal in your head a no-go, or a con job.
Spare-Shooting Tip 4: Value Your Best Effort More Than a Perfect Result
Imagine this scenario. You somehow leave the 2-4-5-8 bucket (unfair, I know - the universe must bear a grudge). As you prepare to roll your spare shot, you hear the click of a pistol hammer being drawn back. “Spare or die” says a familiar voice. Whose voice is it? Yours, of course.
Many athletes who are self-demanding perfectionists have a judge and executioner living in their unconscious mind. If you have extensive self-punishing thoughts or feelings following a miss, you know they are there.
“Extensive” means anything that lasts more than a few seconds. If there's self-punishing talk like, “You @#%!” after a bad shot or missed spare, a desire to avoid looking bad in front of others, or even a feeling of increased pressure because of the importance of the spare for total score, you might be flirting with “gun to the head” bowling.
If you're afraid to fall in this game you'll fall far more frequently. If you're willing to risk falling in order to fly, you have a shot at flying. The bottom line is that if you can't stand to miss, then the pressure you feel will make you shovel and steer instead of sweetly rolling the ball.
If you're going to be killed in your own mind for missing a spare, you're not free to bowl. Yes, you might roll your shot, but it probably won't have your signature on it. Your internal self-talk must be as supportive as you would say to an eight-year-old doubles partner. “Come on give it your best. I'm with you no matter what.” This kind of encouragement must occur consistently.
This is especially important after an errant shot. If you kick your own butt after a miss, you end up reinforcing your fears of the internal hangman on the next one. You must know you're going to be OK upfront, and then you're truly free to cut loose.
Spare-Shooting Tip 5: Feel It, Do It
It would be easier to execute spare shots if the pins would take a jab at you first. Then you could react, respond, and wipe them out. The problem is the pins are just sitting there. There's nothing to react to, so you must move into action on your own. A great way to do this is to start with brief visualization, and then add feel.
Oddly enough, despite the term, visualization is not just visual. You can picture your ball path and roll as a form of visualization. Feel is a way of imaging with the body. Some people do this by doing a practice swing with the ball before actually setting up and going. This is similar to golfers taking a practice swing, or gymnasts moving their bodies through imaginary routines before jumping onto the equipment. When you do this, your natural and trained skills can come into play.
Having a sense of how your body will feel when you execute a shot gives you an internal point of focus and a way to generate action in a sport that does not give you the luxury of reaction.
Spare-Shooting Tip 6: Let the General Run the Show
There's something about shooting spares that invites bowlers to get lost in the mechanics of rolling the ball. If you're thinking about all kinds of body parts, timing, and movement, you risk overriding your automatic setting with your manual transmission.
Imagine the general of an army issuing orders. There are two approaches to take. He can talk to every private, corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant in order to execute a plan. Or he can trust that his troops have been through boot camp. This means issuing one or two general orders and trusting they'll be carried out.
Issue one or two general orders and call it a plan.Typically, what works best is to have one physical key and one heart key. Your physical key coordinates your entire body - head, balance, soft hands, whatever. Your heart key surrenders full commitment to the shot.
Experiment with these spare-shooting tips to see which serve you best. Sometimes committing to one or two of them works better than trying to keep all five in mind.
It's a Wrap
Don't brood and moan over your spare shooting because you miss one here and there. This only causes all kinds of mental loading that's best avoided. We all make more than we miss. We all miss a big one now and then. Take the stress and drama out of your spare shooting. If you follow the tips, you'll hit most of your spares and can quit worrying about the few that you miss. This is way better than feeling you must strike every time to survive.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Making Spares with Bill O'Neill
From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It’s still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there. -Bill O’Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill O'Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Bill O'Neill
Making Spares With Bill O'Neill
Photo courtesy of PBA LLC.
Bill O'Neill has seen a lot in bowling. He's one of just a handful of players who has known the experience of being a collegiate national champion, a professional tour champion, and a gold medal winner in international competition as a member of Team USA.
Now a seasoned veteran, Bill was for a period considered by many to be the best bowler on tour who hadn't won a professional title. He had been in the finals a lot, “10 or 12 times,” but had never closed it out. That all changed in 2009 in Detroit, when he faced Ronnie Russell on the television final.
Bill had already defeated Walter Ray Williams Jr. in the round of eight to make the telecast. His first opponent was Hall of Famer Amleto Monacelli. The lanes were tough, and neither player scored well, with Bill shooting “170 something” to win. To prevail in the end, Bill knew that his whole game, especially his spare game, was going to have to be solid. “I just wanted to avoid splits. When the lanes are hard, you just have to believe in yourself. You're not going to shoot 240 or 250. You just have to trust yourself.” It seemed like a good plan, and it was. As in so many other venues, Bill O'Neill emerged a champion.
Bill O'Neill is so rock solid in his spare game that he's a clear and obvious choice for exploring mental tricks for making spares. Ironically, what Bill does and recommends is so simple that it doesn't qualify as being a trick. He starts with a preshot routine that does not vary. It's a way he creates familiarity and a sense that he has done this thousands of times before. “That's the idea of the preshot routine. Keep everything the same, strike shot or spare shot. That's why I take a deep breath - it gets me back to the place of mental calmness. I know that I've done this 100 times.”
“First I put my hand down and dry it off, get some air. I then wipe off my right shoe and my left shoe so there's nothing on my shoes. I wipe my ball off. It's part of my routine. I don't want to change it.” Added to that routine, Bill creates a sense of certainty for himself: “I get myself set. I kind of adjust myself, wiggle myself into a spot that feels right, look at my target, and go.”
“I try to make sure I take a big deep breath. I try to make sure that right before I step up on the approach I let out a big exhale and get it all out.” Most important, he believes in himself. “I trust that everything that I work on, and that my ability hasn't gone anywhere. No matter what the situation, everything is still equal. From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill recognizes that for many players, as they advance, the excitement and the nervousness can be part of the experience. You don't have to have ice in your veins to be a great spare shooter. And you must hold on to your preshot routine as part of your spare-shooting ritual. “When I step up there, I might think about just one thing. If you think about more, it's not good. Depending on how I'm bowling that moment, that one thing could change. Of course it's anxious, but you learn over time how to handle the anxiety. You have to train your body and your mind that everything is the same. You go through the same routine every time.”
As far as technique and strategy go, Bill O'Neill favors rolling straight at almost every spare, except for perhaps some combinations, such as a 2-8 spare. “I'm a guy who likes to shoot spares straight no matter what. Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm shooting straight at everything. You take all the variables out of play when you do that.”
Although a plastic ball might be the obvious choice for most straight spares, Bill no longer travels with one. To conserve his arsenal, he's worked on, and mastered, coming up the back of the ball to shoot his spares. “Because with overseas travel I could only take six balls, so I wanted to learn. I haven't noticed any negative effects of that.”
Bill emphasizes minimizing the mental interference that can be part of the spare-shooting process. He's leery about taking too much time to overthink things, or to consider being too perfect. “When I start hanging out up there too long, the hand sweats, and different things go through my mind. The over-analyzing of everything is bad. When you're competing, there's just no need to go out there and over-analyze.”
Bill's clear intention paves the way for him. “I'll get this eerie calmness that comes over me. I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Conversely, when you allow your mind to linger in other places, that doesn't play well. “When the doubt creeps in, you get out of rhythm and time. It doesn't always go 100 percent according to plan. The weakest part of my game is when I'm over-analyzing too much.”
Of those rare times when Bill or another professional misses an easy spare, he suggests some common human factors are part of it. He emphasizes the need to be completely present, but not perfect, when shooting spares. “There could be a lapse in concentration. Some people leave a ring 10-pin and are angry that they have to shoot it. Then they just go up, and they aren't even there. When it goes bad, you get down on yourself. It's good to remember the right things to do.”
That seems like a good plan!
Save
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Thinking and Personality Traits of Champions ' The Top Eight
There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. -Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion. The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities.
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.”
Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion
The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities. If you already possess any one of them, that's great. If you're not strong in an area, decide whether you could make a desired trait part of who you are.
- High motivation and commitment. In some ways we could begin and end here. Without this quality a bowler will stop training as soon as the going gets too rough. When you have true commitment, you have the world. You'll work through fatigue, injury, disappointment, momentary failure, self-doubt, or any other setback. Your intention is your four-wheel drive. If you have it, you just keep on going.
- Goal oriented. It has been said that you can't hit your target with your eyes closed. Great bowlers are up to something. They have a plan, and they follow through to make sure that it happens. Reaching for the stars is wonderful. Pick a star. Now pick a strategy to get to that star - and follow through.
- Optimism and positive expectations. This quality is an essential part of being able to see the upside, the learning, and the growth in every training and competition experience. Without this winning trait, there are so many pitfalls on the road to winning, and on the road to winning again, that lesser individuals cannot keep traveling.
It doesn't take much imagination to come up with all the things that can feel like setbacks in your body, in training, and in competing. Winners understand this. They act as if the bowling universe gives them exactly what they need in order to strengthen, learn, develop as a person, and become a champion. Losers tend to feel that life has ganged up on them. Are you a winner?
- The right kind of perfectionism. Typically, perfectionism can be crippling, with its overemphasis on doing everything exactly right. Certain kinds of perfectionism can cause overthinking, self-punishment, and a negative emotional life.
The winning kind of perfectionists still maintain high standards. Often they like to be well organized, but not always. Most important, they don't sweat mistakes or missed shots, and they don't mentally self-punish. This kind of winner does not get overly concerned about the judgments or criticisms of others. They know their own standards, and they know that the critics don't roll the ball - they themselves roll it.
Champions use perfectionism to drive their practice plans and practice shots. They suspend perfection demands once the competition lights come on, shifting into the mode of bringing maximum effort to shots.
- A striking ability to focus and concentrate. Way beyond most competitors, athletic champions can zero in on key performance elements. They are uncanny in their capacity to remain untouched by distractions.
A term for this trait might be called “quiet mind.” The bowler has one point of relaxed, clear focus. Time stands still. Nothing outside the moment at hand matters. And the critical point is this - champions stay awake and aware immediately after shots. This allows them to dispassionately sense and see what has happened and to make adjustments for the next shot.
- The ability to handle virtually any stressor that comes up during training or competition. Superiorly trained soldiers learn that all battle plans change once the enemy is engaged. They know that they will deal with situations as they occur and change.
Winners have a sense of confidence about their military-like capacity to adapt, improvise, and survive anything that comes their way. They keep anxiety at bay, have excellent levels of emotional control, and don't let any of the storms of bowling life overwhelm them. A winning trait is to be an athlete who's able to say, “I'm even better under pressure.” With the game on the line, a champion wants the ball in her hand.
- A winning personality that includes mental toughness. Mental toughness can be defined in many ways. Think of a long-distance runner, a boxer, or a veteran bowler. In any one of these cases, how would you define the athlete's toughness? Dealing with pain? Falling down and getting back up? Getting dominated by opponents and not giving in?
No matter what happens, the mentally tough just keep coming. They might not be the most gifted athletes in the world. But they're the ones with blood on their faces, mud in their hair, and tears streaking their cheeks . . . and still going on. Others might shake their heads in disbelief, but when the dust clears, the mentally tough are still standing.
- Intelligence quotient. Sports intelligence is a newly recognized aspect of a winning personality. A person can be a genius, or simply really smart in many things. She can be smart in math, reading, music, problem solving, or other areas. Being bowling smart means you have the ability to accurately analyze your own performance, create and innovate on the lanes, and be an astute student of the game. Bowlers who have sport intelligence can learn even more readily from instruction.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Tips for Spare Shooting
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in. -Napoleon. Spare shooting is an area in which it’s difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game.
“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”
Spare shooting is an area in which it's difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game. At advanced levels it should be no more difficult to hit a single-pin spare with a plastic ball than to throw chewing gum in a basket a few feet away. It's like a 30-inch (76 cm) putt for a professional golfer. Yet even at the professional level easy spares are missed at crucial times, and in collegiate tournaments they are missed at a surprisingly high rate.
Spare-Shooting Tip 1: Commit to Seeing Your Ball Cross the Arrows at Your Mark
I know this sounds easy, but if you check yourself you might be surprised at how often your head and eyes jerk up. The mental part of this is the mistaken investment in the outcome, leaping ahead of the need to stroke through your line.
Believe it or not, it's fairly rare for the average bowler to be able to accurately tell you what board his spare shot crossed at the arrows. Most can tell you what they targeted. Most can tell you what they intended to hit. But few players can resist casting their eyes up to see their results simultaneously with the ball leaving their hands.
Keeping your head and eyes steady serves many purposes. It gives you a large point of focus, so you need not think about all your mechanics. It helps you plant and stay down at the line. And, whether you make or miss your shot, you get accurate feedback about where, and how, you're rolling the ball. Once your ball crosses the mark, it's natural to raise your eyes to witness what happened, but wait for that natural motion to occur.
Spare-Shooting Tip 2: Confidence Involves the Head and the Gut
Don't roll a spare shot until you know the strategy you're using will work. The profound importance of believing in your spare line can't be overstated, particularly on combination spares and double wood. It's amazing how many bowlers acknowledge that they knew they were going to miss a spare before they rolled the ball - and they rolled it anyway!
You either believe in your line or you don't. If you question what you're about to do, one of two things will happen. Either you'll execute mechanically (and poorly), because your subconscious mind knows you have doubt. Or else you'll unconsciously overcorrect. You know that you should roll it over a certain mark, but you don't trust your arm swing, or believe in the line, so you fudge it somehow by rolling it where and how your gut thinks it will work. This shows a lack of trust in your own judgment from shot to shot. Play the spare shot that you know in your heart of hearts will work.
Spare-Shooting Tip 3: Make Sure the Traffic Light Is Green Before You Progress With Your Shot
Self-starting athletes have a kind of starter gun in their minds. A diver can intuitively feel when to initiate her first bounce. A gymnast senses when to spring onto the apparatus. A yes or a go or a now occurs in the mind. If you can't feel this signal in your head, your response should be, No, don't go!
Bowlers who practice visualization refer to seeing the ball path before they go. For straight spares, you want to visualize a path back to you from the pin. For hooking spares, visually work back from your break point. You must be able to feel and see things in your mind's eye. Without this, it's difficult to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.
It's said that true commitment involves surrender to a choice. If you're still fighting belief in your lane-play decision, you have not surrendered, which makes the go signal in your head a no-go, or a con job.
Spare-Shooting Tip 4: Value Your Best Effort More Than a Perfect Result
Imagine this scenario. You somehow leave the 2-4-5-8 bucket (unfair, I know - the universe must bear a grudge). As you prepare to roll your spare shot, you hear the click of a pistol hammer being drawn back. “Spare or die” says a familiar voice. Whose voice is it? Yours, of course.
Many athletes who are self-demanding perfectionists have a judge and executioner living in their unconscious mind. If you have extensive self-punishing thoughts or feelings following a miss, you know they are there.
“Extensive” means anything that lasts more than a few seconds. If there's self-punishing talk like, “You @#%!” after a bad shot or missed spare, a desire to avoid looking bad in front of others, or even a feeling of increased pressure because of the importance of the spare for total score, you might be flirting with “gun to the head” bowling.
If you're afraid to fall in this game you'll fall far more frequently. If you're willing to risk falling in order to fly, you have a shot at flying. The bottom line is that if you can't stand to miss, then the pressure you feel will make you shovel and steer instead of sweetly rolling the ball.
If you're going to be killed in your own mind for missing a spare, you're not free to bowl. Yes, you might roll your shot, but it probably won't have your signature on it. Your internal self-talk must be as supportive as you would say to an eight-year-old doubles partner. “Come on give it your best. I'm with you no matter what.” This kind of encouragement must occur consistently.
This is especially important after an errant shot. If you kick your own butt after a miss, you end up reinforcing your fears of the internal hangman on the next one. You must know you're going to be OK upfront, and then you're truly free to cut loose.
Spare-Shooting Tip 5: Feel It, Do It
It would be easier to execute spare shots if the pins would take a jab at you first. Then you could react, respond, and wipe them out. The problem is the pins are just sitting there. There's nothing to react to, so you must move into action on your own. A great way to do this is to start with brief visualization, and then add feel.
Oddly enough, despite the term, visualization is not just visual. You can picture your ball path and roll as a form of visualization. Feel is a way of imaging with the body. Some people do this by doing a practice swing with the ball before actually setting up and going. This is similar to golfers taking a practice swing, or gymnasts moving their bodies through imaginary routines before jumping onto the equipment. When you do this, your natural and trained skills can come into play.
Having a sense of how your body will feel when you execute a shot gives you an internal point of focus and a way to generate action in a sport that does not give you the luxury of reaction.
Spare-Shooting Tip 6: Let the General Run the Show
There's something about shooting spares that invites bowlers to get lost in the mechanics of rolling the ball. If you're thinking about all kinds of body parts, timing, and movement, you risk overriding your automatic setting with your manual transmission.
Imagine the general of an army issuing orders. There are two approaches to take. He can talk to every private, corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant in order to execute a plan. Or he can trust that his troops have been through boot camp. This means issuing one or two general orders and trusting they'll be carried out.
Issue one or two general orders and call it a plan.Typically, what works best is to have one physical key and one heart key. Your physical key coordinates your entire body - head, balance, soft hands, whatever. Your heart key surrenders full commitment to the shot.
Experiment with these spare-shooting tips to see which serve you best. Sometimes committing to one or two of them works better than trying to keep all five in mind.
It's a Wrap
Don't brood and moan over your spare shooting because you miss one here and there. This only causes all kinds of mental loading that's best avoided. We all make more than we miss. We all miss a big one now and then. Take the stress and drama out of your spare shooting. If you follow the tips, you'll hit most of your spares and can quit worrying about the few that you miss. This is way better than feeling you must strike every time to survive.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Making Spares with Bill O'Neill
From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It’s still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there. -Bill O’Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill O'Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Bill O'Neill
Making Spares With Bill O'Neill
Photo courtesy of PBA LLC.
Bill O'Neill has seen a lot in bowling. He's one of just a handful of players who has known the experience of being a collegiate national champion, a professional tour champion, and a gold medal winner in international competition as a member of Team USA.
Now a seasoned veteran, Bill was for a period considered by many to be the best bowler on tour who hadn't won a professional title. He had been in the finals a lot, “10 or 12 times,” but had never closed it out. That all changed in 2009 in Detroit, when he faced Ronnie Russell on the television final.
Bill had already defeated Walter Ray Williams Jr. in the round of eight to make the telecast. His first opponent was Hall of Famer Amleto Monacelli. The lanes were tough, and neither player scored well, with Bill shooting “170 something” to win. To prevail in the end, Bill knew that his whole game, especially his spare game, was going to have to be solid. “I just wanted to avoid splits. When the lanes are hard, you just have to believe in yourself. You're not going to shoot 240 or 250. You just have to trust yourself.” It seemed like a good plan, and it was. As in so many other venues, Bill O'Neill emerged a champion.
Bill O'Neill is so rock solid in his spare game that he's a clear and obvious choice for exploring mental tricks for making spares. Ironically, what Bill does and recommends is so simple that it doesn't qualify as being a trick. He starts with a preshot routine that does not vary. It's a way he creates familiarity and a sense that he has done this thousands of times before. “That's the idea of the preshot routine. Keep everything the same, strike shot or spare shot. That's why I take a deep breath - it gets me back to the place of mental calmness. I know that I've done this 100 times.”
“First I put my hand down and dry it off, get some air. I then wipe off my right shoe and my left shoe so there's nothing on my shoes. I wipe my ball off. It's part of my routine. I don't want to change it.” Added to that routine, Bill creates a sense of certainty for himself: “I get myself set. I kind of adjust myself, wiggle myself into a spot that feels right, look at my target, and go.”
“I try to make sure I take a big deep breath. I try to make sure that right before I step up on the approach I let out a big exhale and get it all out.” Most important, he believes in himself. “I trust that everything that I work on, and that my ability hasn't gone anywhere. No matter what the situation, everything is still equal. From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill recognizes that for many players, as they advance, the excitement and the nervousness can be part of the experience. You don't have to have ice in your veins to be a great spare shooter. And you must hold on to your preshot routine as part of your spare-shooting ritual. “When I step up there, I might think about just one thing. If you think about more, it's not good. Depending on how I'm bowling that moment, that one thing could change. Of course it's anxious, but you learn over time how to handle the anxiety. You have to train your body and your mind that everything is the same. You go through the same routine every time.”
As far as technique and strategy go, Bill O'Neill favors rolling straight at almost every spare, except for perhaps some combinations, such as a 2-8 spare. “I'm a guy who likes to shoot spares straight no matter what. Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm shooting straight at everything. You take all the variables out of play when you do that.”
Although a plastic ball might be the obvious choice for most straight spares, Bill no longer travels with one. To conserve his arsenal, he's worked on, and mastered, coming up the back of the ball to shoot his spares. “Because with overseas travel I could only take six balls, so I wanted to learn. I haven't noticed any negative effects of that.”
Bill emphasizes minimizing the mental interference that can be part of the spare-shooting process. He's leery about taking too much time to overthink things, or to consider being too perfect. “When I start hanging out up there too long, the hand sweats, and different things go through my mind. The over-analyzing of everything is bad. When you're competing, there's just no need to go out there and over-analyze.”
Bill's clear intention paves the way for him. “I'll get this eerie calmness that comes over me. I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Conversely, when you allow your mind to linger in other places, that doesn't play well. “When the doubt creeps in, you get out of rhythm and time. It doesn't always go 100 percent according to plan. The weakest part of my game is when I'm over-analyzing too much.”
Of those rare times when Bill or another professional misses an easy spare, he suggests some common human factors are part of it. He emphasizes the need to be completely present, but not perfect, when shooting spares. “There could be a lapse in concentration. Some people leave a ring 10-pin and are angry that they have to shoot it. Then they just go up, and they aren't even there. When it goes bad, you get down on yourself. It's good to remember the right things to do.”
That seems like a good plan!
Save
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Thinking and Personality Traits of Champions ' The Top Eight
There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. -Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion. The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities.
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.”
Derek Jeter, five-time baseball World Series champion
The following list might be considered eight of the top traits for winning personalities. If you already possess any one of them, that's great. If you're not strong in an area, decide whether you could make a desired trait part of who you are.
- High motivation and commitment. In some ways we could begin and end here. Without this quality a bowler will stop training as soon as the going gets too rough. When you have true commitment, you have the world. You'll work through fatigue, injury, disappointment, momentary failure, self-doubt, or any other setback. Your intention is your four-wheel drive. If you have it, you just keep on going.
- Goal oriented. It has been said that you can't hit your target with your eyes closed. Great bowlers are up to something. They have a plan, and they follow through to make sure that it happens. Reaching for the stars is wonderful. Pick a star. Now pick a strategy to get to that star - and follow through.
- Optimism and positive expectations. This quality is an essential part of being able to see the upside, the learning, and the growth in every training and competition experience. Without this winning trait, there are so many pitfalls on the road to winning, and on the road to winning again, that lesser individuals cannot keep traveling.
It doesn't take much imagination to come up with all the things that can feel like setbacks in your body, in training, and in competing. Winners understand this. They act as if the bowling universe gives them exactly what they need in order to strengthen, learn, develop as a person, and become a champion. Losers tend to feel that life has ganged up on them. Are you a winner?
- The right kind of perfectionism. Typically, perfectionism can be crippling, with its overemphasis on doing everything exactly right. Certain kinds of perfectionism can cause overthinking, self-punishment, and a negative emotional life.
The winning kind of perfectionists still maintain high standards. Often they like to be well organized, but not always. Most important, they don't sweat mistakes or missed shots, and they don't mentally self-punish. This kind of winner does not get overly concerned about the judgments or criticisms of others. They know their own standards, and they know that the critics don't roll the ball - they themselves roll it.
Champions use perfectionism to drive their practice plans and practice shots. They suspend perfection demands once the competition lights come on, shifting into the mode of bringing maximum effort to shots.
- A striking ability to focus and concentrate. Way beyond most competitors, athletic champions can zero in on key performance elements. They are uncanny in their capacity to remain untouched by distractions.
A term for this trait might be called “quiet mind.” The bowler has one point of relaxed, clear focus. Time stands still. Nothing outside the moment at hand matters. And the critical point is this - champions stay awake and aware immediately after shots. This allows them to dispassionately sense and see what has happened and to make adjustments for the next shot.
- The ability to handle virtually any stressor that comes up during training or competition. Superiorly trained soldiers learn that all battle plans change once the enemy is engaged. They know that they will deal with situations as they occur and change.
Winners have a sense of confidence about their military-like capacity to adapt, improvise, and survive anything that comes their way. They keep anxiety at bay, have excellent levels of emotional control, and don't let any of the storms of bowling life overwhelm them. A winning trait is to be an athlete who's able to say, “I'm even better under pressure.” With the game on the line, a champion wants the ball in her hand.
- A winning personality that includes mental toughness. Mental toughness can be defined in many ways. Think of a long-distance runner, a boxer, or a veteran bowler. In any one of these cases, how would you define the athlete's toughness? Dealing with pain? Falling down and getting back up? Getting dominated by opponents and not giving in?
No matter what happens, the mentally tough just keep coming. They might not be the most gifted athletes in the world. But they're the ones with blood on their faces, mud in their hair, and tears streaking their cheeks . . . and still going on. Others might shake their heads in disbelief, but when the dust clears, the mentally tough are still standing.
- Intelligence quotient. Sports intelligence is a newly recognized aspect of a winning personality. A person can be a genius, or simply really smart in many things. She can be smart in math, reading, music, problem solving, or other areas. Being bowling smart means you have the ability to accurately analyze your own performance, create and innovate on the lanes, and be an astute student of the game. Bowlers who have sport intelligence can learn even more readily from instruction.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Tips for Spare Shooting
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in. -Napoleon. Spare shooting is an area in which it’s difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game.
“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”
Spare shooting is an area in which it's difficult to distinguish between mental and physical aspects of the game. At advanced levels it should be no more difficult to hit a single-pin spare with a plastic ball than to throw chewing gum in a basket a few feet away. It's like a 30-inch (76 cm) putt for a professional golfer. Yet even at the professional level easy spares are missed at crucial times, and in collegiate tournaments they are missed at a surprisingly high rate.
Spare-Shooting Tip 1: Commit to Seeing Your Ball Cross the Arrows at Your Mark
I know this sounds easy, but if you check yourself you might be surprised at how often your head and eyes jerk up. The mental part of this is the mistaken investment in the outcome, leaping ahead of the need to stroke through your line.
Believe it or not, it's fairly rare for the average bowler to be able to accurately tell you what board his spare shot crossed at the arrows. Most can tell you what they targeted. Most can tell you what they intended to hit. But few players can resist casting their eyes up to see their results simultaneously with the ball leaving their hands.
Keeping your head and eyes steady serves many purposes. It gives you a large point of focus, so you need not think about all your mechanics. It helps you plant and stay down at the line. And, whether you make or miss your shot, you get accurate feedback about where, and how, you're rolling the ball. Once your ball crosses the mark, it's natural to raise your eyes to witness what happened, but wait for that natural motion to occur.
Spare-Shooting Tip 2: Confidence Involves the Head and the Gut
Don't roll a spare shot until you know the strategy you're using will work. The profound importance of believing in your spare line can't be overstated, particularly on combination spares and double wood. It's amazing how many bowlers acknowledge that they knew they were going to miss a spare before they rolled the ball - and they rolled it anyway!
You either believe in your line or you don't. If you question what you're about to do, one of two things will happen. Either you'll execute mechanically (and poorly), because your subconscious mind knows you have doubt. Or else you'll unconsciously overcorrect. You know that you should roll it over a certain mark, but you don't trust your arm swing, or believe in the line, so you fudge it somehow by rolling it where and how your gut thinks it will work. This shows a lack of trust in your own judgment from shot to shot. Play the spare shot that you know in your heart of hearts will work.
Spare-Shooting Tip 3: Make Sure the Traffic Light Is Green Before You Progress With Your Shot
Self-starting athletes have a kind of starter gun in their minds. A diver can intuitively feel when to initiate her first bounce. A gymnast senses when to spring onto the apparatus. A yes or a go or a now occurs in the mind. If you can't feel this signal in your head, your response should be, No, don't go!
Bowlers who practice visualization refer to seeing the ball path before they go. For straight spares, you want to visualize a path back to you from the pin. For hooking spares, visually work back from your break point. You must be able to feel and see things in your mind's eye. Without this, it's difficult to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.
It's said that true commitment involves surrender to a choice. If you're still fighting belief in your lane-play decision, you have not surrendered, which makes the go signal in your head a no-go, or a con job.
Spare-Shooting Tip 4: Value Your Best Effort More Than a Perfect Result
Imagine this scenario. You somehow leave the 2-4-5-8 bucket (unfair, I know - the universe must bear a grudge). As you prepare to roll your spare shot, you hear the click of a pistol hammer being drawn back. “Spare or die” says a familiar voice. Whose voice is it? Yours, of course.
Many athletes who are self-demanding perfectionists have a judge and executioner living in their unconscious mind. If you have extensive self-punishing thoughts or feelings following a miss, you know they are there.
“Extensive” means anything that lasts more than a few seconds. If there's self-punishing talk like, “You @#%!” after a bad shot or missed spare, a desire to avoid looking bad in front of others, or even a feeling of increased pressure because of the importance of the spare for total score, you might be flirting with “gun to the head” bowling.
If you're afraid to fall in this game you'll fall far more frequently. If you're willing to risk falling in order to fly, you have a shot at flying. The bottom line is that if you can't stand to miss, then the pressure you feel will make you shovel and steer instead of sweetly rolling the ball.
If you're going to be killed in your own mind for missing a spare, you're not free to bowl. Yes, you might roll your shot, but it probably won't have your signature on it. Your internal self-talk must be as supportive as you would say to an eight-year-old doubles partner. “Come on give it your best. I'm with you no matter what.” This kind of encouragement must occur consistently.
This is especially important after an errant shot. If you kick your own butt after a miss, you end up reinforcing your fears of the internal hangman on the next one. You must know you're going to be OK upfront, and then you're truly free to cut loose.
Spare-Shooting Tip 5: Feel It, Do It
It would be easier to execute spare shots if the pins would take a jab at you first. Then you could react, respond, and wipe them out. The problem is the pins are just sitting there. There's nothing to react to, so you must move into action on your own. A great way to do this is to start with brief visualization, and then add feel.
Oddly enough, despite the term, visualization is not just visual. You can picture your ball path and roll as a form of visualization. Feel is a way of imaging with the body. Some people do this by doing a practice swing with the ball before actually setting up and going. This is similar to golfers taking a practice swing, or gymnasts moving their bodies through imaginary routines before jumping onto the equipment. When you do this, your natural and trained skills can come into play.
Having a sense of how your body will feel when you execute a shot gives you an internal point of focus and a way to generate action in a sport that does not give you the luxury of reaction.
Spare-Shooting Tip 6: Let the General Run the Show
There's something about shooting spares that invites bowlers to get lost in the mechanics of rolling the ball. If you're thinking about all kinds of body parts, timing, and movement, you risk overriding your automatic setting with your manual transmission.
Imagine the general of an army issuing orders. There are two approaches to take. He can talk to every private, corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant in order to execute a plan. Or he can trust that his troops have been through boot camp. This means issuing one or two general orders and trusting they'll be carried out.
Issue one or two general orders and call it a plan.Typically, what works best is to have one physical key and one heart key. Your physical key coordinates your entire body - head, balance, soft hands, whatever. Your heart key surrenders full commitment to the shot.
Experiment with these spare-shooting tips to see which serve you best. Sometimes committing to one or two of them works better than trying to keep all five in mind.
It's a Wrap
Don't brood and moan over your spare shooting because you miss one here and there. This only causes all kinds of mental loading that's best avoided. We all make more than we miss. We all miss a big one now and then. Take the stress and drama out of your spare shooting. If you follow the tips, you'll hit most of your spares and can quit worrying about the few that you miss. This is way better than feeling you must strike every time to survive.
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Making Spares with Bill O'Neill
From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It’s still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there. -Bill O’Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill O'Neill, seven-time PBA champion, U.S. Open champion, international gold medalist, three-time collegiate player of the year
“I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Bill O'Neill
Making Spares With Bill O'Neill
Photo courtesy of PBA LLC.
Bill O'Neill has seen a lot in bowling. He's one of just a handful of players who has known the experience of being a collegiate national champion, a professional tour champion, and a gold medal winner in international competition as a member of Team USA.
Now a seasoned veteran, Bill was for a period considered by many to be the best bowler on tour who hadn't won a professional title. He had been in the finals a lot, “10 or 12 times,” but had never closed it out. That all changed in 2009 in Detroit, when he faced Ronnie Russell on the television final.
Bill had already defeated Walter Ray Williams Jr. in the round of eight to make the telecast. His first opponent was Hall of Famer Amleto Monacelli. The lanes were tough, and neither player scored well, with Bill shooting “170 something” to win. To prevail in the end, Bill knew that his whole game, especially his spare game, was going to have to be solid. “I just wanted to avoid splits. When the lanes are hard, you just have to believe in yourself. You're not going to shoot 240 or 250. You just have to trust yourself.” It seemed like a good plan, and it was. As in so many other venues, Bill O'Neill emerged a champion.
Bill O'Neill is so rock solid in his spare game that he's a clear and obvious choice for exploring mental tricks for making spares. Ironically, what Bill does and recommends is so simple that it doesn't qualify as being a trick. He starts with a preshot routine that does not vary. It's a way he creates familiarity and a sense that he has done this thousands of times before. “That's the idea of the preshot routine. Keep everything the same, strike shot or spare shot. That's why I take a deep breath - it gets me back to the place of mental calmness. I know that I've done this 100 times.”
“First I put my hand down and dry it off, get some air. I then wipe off my right shoe and my left shoe so there's nothing on my shoes. I wipe my ball off. It's part of my routine. I don't want to change it.” Added to that routine, Bill creates a sense of certainty for himself: “I get myself set. I kind of adjust myself, wiggle myself into a spot that feels right, look at my target, and go.”
“I try to make sure I take a big deep breath. I try to make sure that right before I step up on the approach I let out a big exhale and get it all out.” Most important, he believes in himself. “I trust that everything that I work on, and that my ability hasn't gone anywhere. No matter what the situation, everything is still equal. From the pro level to the extreme amateur, keep it simple. It's still the same game that you knew it was when you got up there.”
Bill recognizes that for many players, as they advance, the excitement and the nervousness can be part of the experience. You don't have to have ice in your veins to be a great spare shooter. And you must hold on to your preshot routine as part of your spare-shooting ritual. “When I step up there, I might think about just one thing. If you think about more, it's not good. Depending on how I'm bowling that moment, that one thing could change. Of course it's anxious, but you learn over time how to handle the anxiety. You have to train your body and your mind that everything is the same. You go through the same routine every time.”
As far as technique and strategy go, Bill O'Neill favors rolling straight at almost every spare, except for perhaps some combinations, such as a 2-8 spare. “I'm a guy who likes to shoot spares straight no matter what. Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm shooting straight at everything. You take all the variables out of play when you do that.”
Although a plastic ball might be the obvious choice for most straight spares, Bill no longer travels with one. To conserve his arsenal, he's worked on, and mastered, coming up the back of the ball to shoot his spares. “Because with overseas travel I could only take six balls, so I wanted to learn. I haven't noticed any negative effects of that.”
Bill emphasizes minimizing the mental interference that can be part of the spare-shooting process. He's leery about taking too much time to overthink things, or to consider being too perfect. “When I start hanging out up there too long, the hand sweats, and different things go through my mind. The over-analyzing of everything is bad. When you're competing, there's just no need to go out there and over-analyze.”
Bill's clear intention paves the way for him. “I'll get this eerie calmness that comes over me. I just know that I'm going to do what I came to do. You have to be that way in order to be successful.”
Conversely, when you allow your mind to linger in other places, that doesn't play well. “When the doubt creeps in, you get out of rhythm and time. It doesn't always go 100 percent according to plan. The weakest part of my game is when I'm over-analyzing too much.”
Of those rare times when Bill or another professional misses an easy spare, he suggests some common human factors are part of it. He emphasizes the need to be completely present, but not perfect, when shooting spares. “There could be a lapse in concentration. Some people leave a ring 10-pin and are angry that they have to shoot it. Then they just go up, and they aren't even there. When it goes bad, you get down on yourself. It's good to remember the right things to do.”
That seems like a good plan!
Save
Learn more about Bowling Psychology.
Related Books
