Tips for an Effective Practice Routine
There are nine good tips on how to create an effective practice routine:
1. Pick a good time to practice
2. Set goals for your practice sessions
3. Be aware of how you learn best
4. Make sure all of your equipment fits properly
5. Try to simulate the competitive arena
6. Practice your mental game
7. Keep records
8. NO MORE THAN 3 NEW PHYSICAL SKILLS DURING A GIVEN PRACTICE
9. Finish your practice session with at least five minutes of bowling for the feel and fun of it
Pick a good time to practice. Don't rush into a bowling center knowing you have twenty minutes to throw as many shots as you can before leagues start. Find a time when you can really work on your practice plan. Keep an open mind and relax. Although this is not competition, confusion can still snowball into anxiety and frustration during practice. As for how often to practice, put that into your schedule, too. Set aside three to five practice sessions a week on the lanes. Remember, you don't always have to be at the bowling center to practice! Remember to use mental imagery techniques when you can't be at the center. Those can be done anywhere! Always have an exact plan of what you are going to work on and how long you will work on each topic.
The next step in creating a successful practice plan is setting goals. Without goals, it is hard to feel that you accomplished anything during a practice session. Sit down and look at the practice matrix and decide which task you would like to work on during a particular session. Before you even get to the bowling center, write down in detail what you are going to work on.
After practice, you can then gauge whether or not you had a productive session or not. Just throwing ball after ball with no goal is not practice. Setting goals is a must in practice and competition. If you don't know what you want to accomplish, you never will accomplish it, or be aware if you did or did not.
You also need to be aware of how you learn best. Some learn by watching, some learn by hearing, some learn by doing, and some learn by feeling. All are important, but try to focus on the way you learn best and make sure to tell your coach this! If you're not sure which way you learn best, try each of them out. Have your coach, or bowling companion, help you. When you know how you learn best, practice and learning will become much easier. You may prefer to learn by feeling, by listening or by watching or a combination of the three. You get the idea. Pay close attention to yourself and you will soon understand your personal process.
Make sure all of your equipment fits your hand properly before you begin. Check the tape and bevel in each ball before you begin to make sure everything is comfortable. You can always add or take out tape as the practice session goes on. The first order of business is how does the thumb fit? If it is too tight remove a piece of tape. If it is too loose, add a piece of tape, or maybe two or three pieces. Make sure you do not have to squeeze the ball to hold on to it. A loose thumb hole makes you squeeze and this tight grip will also tighten your forearm and shoulder muscles. This creates a tight, controlled swing and a drag on the thumb. If your ball fits properly, you can relax your hand at release or snap your fingers a little harder. This allows you to choose how to play the lanes at a given moment. When your equipment fits correctly, it is one less thing to worry about when practicing and especially in competition.
Simulate the competitive arena. Once you have attained certain skills, you can test them in a competition-like atmosphere. Have a fellow bowler or your coach help you set up an atmosphere that is similar to the intense surroundings of a competition. This way, you will be more confident when you step into the competitive arena.
Get a group of your peers, other bowlers, together for practice. Set up a small tournament of a block of games followed by head-to-head match play. Although there may be no money or prestige in the outcome, it is the process you should be working on in practice. Feel what it's like to compete for the sake of pure competition. This will allow you to practice your quickness of adjusting and mental techniques just as you would in a real competition. You must practice your mental game as well as your physical game. Use mental imagery to practice new skills or simulate competition atmospheres. This will help you become better prepared and be successful. This is the type of practice that can be done at the bowling center and also at home or at any time, any place.
Now that you have goals, how can you tell if you are obtaining them as you planned? Keep records! Monitoring your practice through notes or videotapes is essential in evaluating your progress in reaching your practice goals. Once you've recorded the information from your practice session, compare it to the standards you have set for yourself in practice. Recording your progress every practice session also creates a routine. When it comes to mastering any task, having a plan or routine is a must.
Be sure to add no more than 3 new physical skills in a practice session. New skill development takes strong concentration and is best accomplished when your mind has a single focus. You will have the best results if you take each new skill one at a time and focus on it for a 5-15 minute time frame. Once you have spent the time on skill number one, go to new skill number two. Again, spend 5-15 minutes focusing on this skill by itself. If you have a third new skill, treat it with the same importance. After you have completed the "new skill" training portion of your practice, you can then move on to whatever goals you have for practice.
Finally, it is important that at the end of a practice session you bowl for the feel and fun of it. Clear your mind of any conscious thoughts of physical skills. Let your mind be still, see your ball go down the lane and watch the pins fly and make any adjustments needed. Just react to what you see. This last step is important because it trains you to let go of all the thoughts in your head. Most players when asked about a great performance will tell you that they weren't thinking much, if at all. So, remember to allow yourself to practice letting go of your thoughts and bowl for the feel and fun of it.
(This information is an excerpt from the book, "Advanced Adjustments" by Fred Borden and Jeri Edwards)
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