Video of yesterdays practice

[bpickell]

I need some advise... I got my but kicked on chameleon last week. And I know it's because I am not comfortable playing from the left side of the lane. So I spent a good amount of time practicing throwing from left to right... I guess I'm too afraid of throwing it in the ditch.. Which I did twice(I think) in this video. If you have 8 minutes of your life that you don't mind wasting please critique my form and give me some advise that might help me get better.. I'm kind of stagnant right now and just am not getting any better...

btw I'm not sure why I missed those easy spares.. I usually make those without any problems..

oh and those aren't gang signs that I'm flashing in the video they are just frame markers so I know where I'm at when editing the video.

Thanks in advance for any advise that you can give me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyIMx_BJLHg

[Rowdy]

Upper body straighter,deeper knee bend and get the trailing leg farther out to the left. Swing is nice and straight,don't change that. Very nice follow through,keep that. You might want to fool around with starting the ball down around your waist,but I don't know if that would mess up your timing or not. Try it in practice and see what happens. Is that the reason for holding it so high?

[bpickell]

I have been trying to not bend over so far (old habits are hard to break).
The reason I hold the ball so high is because I have a very slow ball speed... Somewhere around 14.5 if I hold it around waist level it slows down to about 11 and I barely have any backswing at all.

I have been working very hard at not muscling the ball and I know I still muscle it a little, but at waist level I really try to muscle it.

How does my timing look? I was told on another forum with a different video that I had early timing... I was thinking looking at this one that I looked a little late. I'm not sure.

[bluerrpilot]

Your timming is early. If your going to play deeper on the lane then your hips need to be more open and that leg farther left.

Honestly, try playing Chameleon further right. You shouldnt need to play that pattern deeper than the 3rd arrow for anything under 3 games.

[bpickell]

I was trying to play right, and I missed the head pin on every shot. When I did hit it I hit it Brooklyn. It was quite embarrassing to say the least. I wish I had video of it. Every ball I threw just made a left turn and hooked past the head pin. I started moving left to compensate then I started missing my target left and hitting Brooklyn again, or I would just throw it in the ditch.

I tried as far right as possible I started with going up the five board and hit the seven pin so I moved to the ten and hit the two pin moved to twelve and hit Brooklyn tried to move to fifteen and was just all over the place, which is why I was doing this practice session.

[jackhammer]

I agree w/ Rowdy on the advice. Your timing is off a little. Try to get the ball moving on 1st step. You are very upright in your shot. Try to stay down using your knee bend and your leg will come and balance (sweep around).

Your armswing looks pretty good but try to free it up. In your backswing you seem like you have a bend in the elbow. That will cause you to muscle your shot which is why you are off on your target.

[idlehourlegend]

I agree w/ Rowdy on the advice. Your timing is off a little. Try to get the ball moving on 1st step. You are very upright in your shot. Try to stay down using your knee bend and your leg will come and balance (sweep around).

Your armswing looks pretty good but try to free it up. In your backswing you seem like you have a bend in the elbow. That will cause you to muscle your shot which is why you are off on your target.

Jack, Rowdy and Blue have everything covered here. But are you positive that was the Chameleon? very hard to hit the 7 pin going down 5 on the chameleon for anyone.

[Flessan]

It seems to me that you were a bit off-balance at the point of release. Your front toe kept either twisting to the left or right (ergo, your shot missed left or right). Aforementioned advice on bending your knee and straightening your arm should help to solve that issue. As for starting your ball motion, one step earlier.. I don't know what to say, I used to take a 5-step approach like that, and as you were doing, I started the ball motion on the second step. Eventually I moved down to a 4 step approach and was better able to get into rhythm.

[Rowdy]

I was trying to play right, and I missed the head pin on every shot. When I did hit it I hit it Brooklyn. It was quite embarrassing to say the least. I wish I had video of it. Every ball I threw just made a left turn and hooked past the head pin. I started moving left to compensate then I started missing my target left and hitting Brooklyn again, or I would just throw it in the ditch.

I tried as far right as possible I started with going up the five board and hit the seven pin so I moved to the ten and hit the two pin moved to twelve and hit Brooklyn tried to move to fifteen and was just all over the place, which is why I was doing this practice session.

Once you get the upper body straighter the ball will react differently on the lane. It'll go longer and turn harder. That should help with keeping it on the right side of the headpin. Try it.

[bpickell]

I think my main problem with hitting the head pin last week was ball speed. There were some comments made at the league meeting prior to league starting that kind of got under my skin and rattled me the whole night so I think I was trying so hard to hit my line that my ball speed slowed down to under 11 maybe even 9 mph.. But still had the revs causing it to break in front of the head pin.

[DocDRC]

I do the same thing constantly, it looks to me like you're trying hard to muscle/force the ball outside that you end up pulling it. As a result of trying to power the ball at the line, this is also a part of what is pulling you off balance at the line. When you looked smooth and were balanced at the line (frame 5 or 6) you got the ball out even though you may not have got the reaction you wanted, your form looked good.

2 things I've done to try correcting are:
1) start the ball earlier (since I've got a 4-step I have a slow short first step to make sure my timing is "on")
2) practice a short backswing to learn where I could accelerate the ball through release with out coming around the side or overpowering the ball.

Of course I could be talking out my derriere but those'd be my observations.

[Rowdy]

I think my main problem with hitting the head pin last week was ball speed. There were some comments made at the league meeting prior to league starting that kind of got under my skin and rattled me the whole night so I think I was trying so hard to hit my line that my ball speed slowed down to under 11 maybe even 9 mph.. But still had the revs causing it to break in front of the head pin.

ELEVEN to NINE mph??? Dear God,Tinkerbell throws harder than that. Not by much,but it's still harder.

Straighten up the body and get some butt into the shot. That'll get the ball speed up.