It's bowlingknowledge.info

there is a highlight in the middle of the page on thumbless bowling.

Mark Roth is still bowling though, he bowled in the tournament in Connecticut this past year, and he also won 30+ more times than miller too.

Imho thumbless bowling is like trying to take a short cut, sometimes it pays off and sometimes you get burnt. The difference is when you get burnt it will be your wrist, elbow or shoulder tendons burning. You have a limited number of shots to throw using a thumbless style so make the most of them and keep your hand behind the ball and stop turning it early. Keep your elbow pointed toward your target.

Your leg kick looks fine it is in line with your target line.

No no no. You are using very bad language here - it should be censored from the boards. Words words that imply muscles directing the path of a pro's arm swing are incorrect. Gravity and physics make the ball do what it does.



Open and cupped.

Double

I finally got it. Yeah, very cool.

I saved it on my computer for now. If I'm able to get a good feel for the wrist next summer, maybe I'll try two-handed the following summer.

To be fair, Mike Miller is still bowling too. I saw an article on him pranking tour rookies a while back, so as recently as a few years ago he was still a tour professional.

(Also, bowling back then was just coming out of an era where there was a wider variety in technique, including a thumbless HOFer, Jim Godman.)

But yes, the joke is about Roth and how desperate they were to push him off the stage, even though he'd already established himself as a HOF-caliber player.


IMHO the reason you see so much thumbless bowling is that it allows you to throw a decent strike shot with ill-fitting (and cheap) equipment. That's kind of a big deal for bowlers who come into the game without a sponsor.

My take on the injury argument is, it's nice that there's this muscle-free style available where you can dial down the stress to your body and keep bowling into your 70s and 80s, but I don't see why muscled bowling is more of an injury risk than throwing a baseball--frankly, the bowling motion seems much more natural. If you cut the stress points from your swing and avoid racking up the abuse, you should be fine for as long as your strength holds up.


"Keep" is inappropriate here, since I've yet to point my elbow at the target since I started bowling. Except for my follow through at the very end, the straight path of the ball is the result of a combination of short arcs, neither of which follows the target line.

I'm experimenting with the closed shoulder, and on that shot I'll happily take your advice and try to aim with my elbow.


Thanks, good to know.

This is what felt right, but that's not always the proper indicator, obviously.

It looks that way from the front, which had me twisting my shoulder into a pretzel trying to imitate it. From behind, though, you can see that his shoulder is still tucked in.

It's not easy to see the angles because he's bent over, but as far as I can tell, Rash is turned on his legs rather than twisting his spine. Instead of abandoning his target as he moves left and then reacquiring it, it looks to me like he starts out addressing the lanes diagonally at his 'finishing angle', and the ball moves directly back and forward at that angle while his legs move in almost a strafing motion so that his (already locked in) line matches up with his target.


OK, so if little Johnny asks how Rash uses gravity and physics to make the ball change direction a foot over his head, how are we supposed to explain that? Should we tell him the stork puts it there?

How in the world can you think that his shoulders are not open. They're WIDE open.

Question 1: Where are his feet pointing?


Question 2" Where is his chest pointing?

That should pretty much settle it.

EDIT: And I agree with CG - You're throwing around words like you don't understand what they mean.

If you can't see that Sean Rash's shoulders are open, you don't understand what an open shoulder is in bowling. It means your shoulders are not square to your target line nor with the rest of your body. Your bowling shoulder is more behind the head/trunk of the body. Even while bent over you can see that the trunk of his body is twisted, the ripples in his shirt show that. Now considering Rash plays inside and extreme inside angles he does set it up with his legs being pointed toward the target line but his shoulders still open up in the swing.

As for gravity/physics changing the direction of the ball. He allows a 16 lb ball to swing freely which opens the shoulders up, and the swing can only go so high depending on how high he sets the ball up in his stance, physics, and then as it reaches the height of the back swing he allows gravity to bring the ball down and as the ball swings freely forward it closes his shoulders up, meaning square with his target line and with the rest of his body.

When I hear "open shoulder" I think of something very specific--a shoulder that's unlocked like it is when you hold your hand to the side of your body. If you bowl with that shoulder unlocked, like Brian Himmler or Steve Hoskins (or me, in that picture above), that makes you an "open shoulder bowler".

If the shoulder is tucked in like it does when you swing your arm directly behind you, that to me means it's "closed shoulder", regardless of where your feet or chest are.


If that's not the commonly-accepted way to use the word, then you're right, I don't understand what CG is saying.