Know Your Bowling Limitations

bowlingball.com, Originally Posted: 4/4/2013; Updated 5/9/2023

Are you finding yourself admiring your favorite pro bowler and want to emulate his or her style? Maybe you want to copy the style of a power player who is currently tearing up your league competition and just absolutely love how this bowler hooks the ball and makes the pins fly.

Just know that not everyone has the physical gifts or abilities to perform the same as others whom we admire. If you are trying to copy another bowler, you are likely not going to accomplish the task.

Not everyone can bowl like the professionals or hit a baseball like a major league batting star. What you can do, however, is build your own game and become as good as you are willing to work at becoming.

If you know your limitations athletically, it helps to accept that you may have to work with your own personal skills and seek to master them as opposed to copying someone’s style.

It is alright to take a tip from another bowler’s game and incorporate a key bowling basic into your own game, but trying to completely change your game will likely lead to no good end.

Instead, identify your own bowling strong points. Such as your steps when walking to the foul line or your swing tempo, or your delivery style, or perhaps merely your ability to retain good bowling balance while delivering your bowling ball.
Work with the skills you have and develop ways of improving the little things in the key areas of your game. Spend a little time making your own checklist of physical game keys which help you bowl your best. Find simple ways of improving on these important parts of your game when in practice and when in competition.

You may have to work harder on shooting spares than you normally do. Perhaps you need to learn more about making alignment adjustments when the lanes change, but never really have addressed this challenge before.

Maybe you merely need to bolster some physical approach keys to your game, such as improving the beginning of your arm swing and synchronizing your push-away with your initial step.


Maybe you are controlling your backswing by using too much arm tension and you need to loosen and speed things up a bit. If you are turning your bowling ball too early, you need to focus on correcting that issue.

The point is, although you might admire someone else’s game and successes, you cannot necessarily copy that bowler and enjoy similar success. You must believe in the gifts you have, be satisfied with realistic expectations, work on developing your own game, and dedicate purposeful practice time to your own bowling and to your general physical conditioning.

Everyone on earth can use a bit more time spent on physical fitness and eating a healthy diet. There simply are many step you can take to address your own game, your own life. It might surprise you that with a little organization and dedicated practice, you just may reach some secret and lofty goals you have envisioned. To thine own self be true.