Yeah, the footwork was what he had me work on in our first session. He made no mention of the bend at the waist either then or last week, when he had me work on release.

What trekguy suggested will probably help a lot. I am worried about loft. In the version of bowling I came from, loft = very bad idea, and outright illegal if it's 10 feet or more. Hook = very bad idea. The muscle memory I spent 15 years practicing helped me avoid both of those. Unfortunately, those things don't translate to tenpin, and I'm at a loss for what I should do instead.

Mike, I don't think its just the upper body lean that is causing you to not hook the ball until 50 feet down the lane. Rushing to the line is also affecting that. Because you are throwing the ball so fast you are just sending it through the break point as opposed to throwing it too the break point. Right now the ball is just going so fast that it has no time to react to the friction, as you work more and more you will gain more leverage on the ball (with better body angle) and more hook down the lane.

Try the stand up drill, and see if you can get slowed down. It will feel like you're starting from scratch but that's ok. You have natural timing, and that will sort itself out. IMO, the release is the last thing to work on.

I don't think you need a drill cuz I'm 100% with Jim about posture being 90% of your problem.

He said to stand straighter in the approach and sink into the slide, well...it's easily done just by lightly pulling and pushing your shoulders (lats pull, traps push) down and into your back slightly--immediately, your chest'll be out, head and hands come up, and ta da! Your torso is now perpendicular to the floor. Now, soften knees and the weight will move from the toes to mid/back of the foot. Don't put all the weight into the heels. Just enough.

Jim taught me that if you start your torso like that in the approach, you'll finish the same way with head looking up and out in front of you, shoulders down away from the ears.

Once you do that, I'm betting dollars to donuts that this'll slow you down, too. Only makes sense that if you start forward, you're only going to go quicker.

Anyway, look at the timing on you! I'd kill for natural timing like you. Pair this with better posture, and you'll be seeing huge improvements immediately.

Thanks again, all of you. I'll try it in warmup in league tomorrow night and if I can grasp it right away, I'll stick w/it for the night. It'll definitely get some work when I practice Sunday morning. (Won't get to do it Friday bc my new home for Friday night practice is turning itself into a comedy club for the night.) I think I'm leaving the video camera at work this time for Sunday. It'll return to the lanes w/me soon, but I want to get some work in on this first.

As I was saying earlier about your ball speed. You are coming up to the line way to fast. Your basically throwing a straight ball right now but hey, keep your head up and keep on working on it. I understand the vast difference between candlepin and 10 pin bowling. Last time I went candlepin I shot a 68 and it messed up my 10 pin game for at least a week. Haha

Who is the comedian, if you say Rich Vos I am going to LMAO.

I would look into getting a new coach if I was you. A good coach rarely ever works on foot work speed, as this is the end result of posture, too far forward = too much speed, too upright = not enough speed. Your coach should have picked up on your bad posture right away, unless it is a candle pin coach and doesn't know 10 pins that well.

It's some guy who's apparently been on Comedy Central a few times but whom I've never heard of. Wish I could remember his name.

No candlepins here, Jim, so that's not the problem. Since all of you have pointed out what you have, the thought of a new coach has occurred to me more than once, too. Looks like I need to ask around some more.

Yes, you will be surprised with the lack of knowledge some coaches have. The coach I had at first never saw anything too majorly wrong. Then I found a new coach when I joined my high school team. Not even 5 minutes and she noticed a lot of problems my other "Coach" failed to find.

OK, so I made myself stand up on every shot in league tonight. I let loose w/quite a few double-dribbles from dropping the ball smack on the foul line, maybe 6 each in the first 2 games. Managed to cut that to 1 in game 3, which not incidentally was quite a bit better than the other 2.

All of you were right about how this would feel. Alien. It feels alien to me -- it flies in the face of everything I did in candlepin. Only one way to get around that, right?