Understanding Your Lawn Bowls Delivery: Offseason Tips from Lawn Bowls Coach

Time To Reset

Most seasons and very long, physically and mentally. Me for example, play Tuesday pennant, Saturday pennant and train on Thursdays. In Melbourne, the season goes for 14 weeks with a 4 week break over the Christmas. Add to that the 4-5 week pre-seasons games, plus finals, you're looking at potentially playing for 20 weeks.

With the 4 weeks break over the Christmas period which usually includes and Tournament or two, that's almost 1/2 a year of being enveloped in Lawn Bowls. On top of all of that, I play a lot of Regional Games and Tournaments on a Sunday.

When the season comes to and end, that's when I like to switch off. I might have a tournament here and there, but generally I stop bowling. This gives my body and mind a chance to rest and recuperate.

SETTING GOALS

Now that you've had time to rest, the initial thinking sets in. It's all about setting goals for yourself for the upcoming season. What is it that you want to achieve this year?

I'm a firm believer in setting goals. They may be small, they may be big, but without goals, you really have no "purpose" for what is coming in the future. Even players at the top of their game set goals for the next month, 3 months and 12 months. Goals give everybody something to aim for.

Your goals can be big or small. Small goals could be:

• Play in at least 2 tournaments

• Win a game in the Club Singles

• As a team, make the Finals.

Larger goals could be:

• Win at least 2 tournaments

• Win the Club Singles

• As a team, win the Pennant Championship.

Elite goals could be:

• Win the Regional / State Singles Championship.

• Put a team together to win the Regional / State Pairs Championship.

• Make the Finals of a National Championship.

As you can see, individual goals can be similar, but just thought about at differing levels depending on your skill level. So how do we go about achieving those goals.

IMPROVING YOUR LAWN BOWLS DELIVERY SKILLS

Like any sporting athlete, the skills required to play the sport can always be improved on and that takes hard work. I've got a saying, "You don't get any better sitting on your backside at home".

What you need to decide and spend some time thinking about, is how much work are you willing to put in? How long do you need to spend to get your improvements deep seeded into your muscle memory before the season starts.

As an example, I made some fundamental changes this year to my delivery. I knew I had a long road ahead to get those changes right before it became second nature. Our pre-season for club pennant starts in mid-late September. I knew I needed a couple of months to get my delivery changes right.

I started bowling again in mid-July which I knew would give me 2 months to get everything settled. I planned to bowl on Wednesdays and Thursdays spending hours on different things, but mainly concentrating on my delivery fundamentals. During that time, I planned (and succeeded) in putting down around 300 bowls a week.

My delivery now is not perfect, but it feels 100% better than when I started out in July. So how did I come up with the changes I needed?

CHANGING YOUR DELIVERY

With the help of the latest software, I was able to breakdown how my delivery was looking and make changes accordingly. With the help of an ex-Australian player, fundamental changes were made which made my delivery smoother and more repeatable than how my delivery was coming out last season.

Analysing The Lawn Bowls Delivery

A Lawn Bowls delivery is very much like a golf swing. There are 4-5 fundamental things to get right, then another 3-4 minor things to get right. The 4-5 fundamental things make up 80% of your delivery. If you have them right, then you'll be bowling pretty well.

It's the next 3-4 minor changes that can take you from being a good bowler to being a really good bowler.

With the help of this software, I was able to take a snapshot of my then, normal delivery. From there, I was able to breakdown some of the fundamental problems that were occurring. I then had the help of a very experienced player who showed me a newer way to make my delivery smoother and more fluent.

Once I'd practiced that for a month, then I noticed something didn't feel right the bowl coming out of my hand. I then set the software and cameras up to take another snapshot of what was happening. The delivery was fluent, but then my hands were twisting on release.

The software, along with the 9-10 checkpoints, allowed me to breakdown everything in ultra-slow motion. With the 2-3 snapshots I have taken, I've been able to work on only a couple of things at a time. If you try to fix 3-4 things at a time, your mind gets too scrambled trying to get it all right.

This is where the systems at The Lawn Bowls Coach can help you. Each individual can choose a plan to suit their needs, have their delivery analysed, receive video feedback showing where things can be improved, then go and work on the things that have been analysed. After a month or so, the delivery can be analysed again to show the improvements and then feedback can be given again on the next stage of improvement.

So if you need some help working on your delivery, The Lawn Bowls Coach is ready to help you improve your delivery, which in turn improves you overall game by giving you the confidence to know that when you put a bowl down, it's going to be where you want it more often than not.

Then, you can chase those goals and achieve them!