Practice With Your Bowling Teammates

bowlingball.com, Originally Posted: 10/7/2020, Updated 4/18/2024

Practice with your bowling teammates. Find time where your teammates can join you for a group practice session. There are benefits to working together to improve your collective performances.

Hold a brief meeting before actually bowling practice games. Discuss a variety of team concerns, such as typical league lane conditions. You can share opinions and thoughts about changes in the lanes as a typical weekly three game series progresses.

If one or more teammates struggle lining up in the fresh oil, perhaps you can discuss strategies between your group to help each other overcome that tendency. The same is true in the 2nd and 3rd games as lanes change due to breakdown and oil carrydown develops.

Another point of discussion is spare shooting. If one or more teammates seem to struggle with given spares or combinations, talk about that and share ideas for improvement unselfishly. Share strategies among yourselves as to how spare shooting can be improved, so collectively your team cuts down the number of open frames per weekly performance.

Difficult spares are left because of missing the pocket. Not only is it key to getting lined up quickly in the first game, it is important that your team agrees how to make individual adjustments as lanes change.

One team member might be best at changing angles of attack while another prefers ball speed adjustments or hand position adjustments. Another teammate might be a bowling ball "jockey” who prefers to change equipment as opposed to making physical game adjustments.

If your team communicates individual preferences and explains why each member embraces a given adjustment, perhaps it will open a new line of communication between everyone.

Once you feel your team has discussed any and all relevant matters, practice bowling a three game set on a pair of lanes in the order your team's lineup used during competition. Watch each teammate carefully finishing each frame before the next steps up to bowl.

Comment to one another what each of you feel is your strength and where you might find problems.

When each of you feels it is an “all for one and one for all” effort, it is easy to relax and perform. If each teammate makes just three more quality strike ball deliveries per series and misses only one less spare on average per session, your team performance will rise and you will likely enjoy a greater degree of team success.


It might be useful to invite an experienced bowling instructor to watch each of you bowl for one hour of time and share ideas how each of you can improve and why. More importantly, the coach can offer physical game alterations as needed so each teammate understands what the other is focusing on and can help one another in the future.

You can share the expense between your teammates so the cost of hiring an instructor for one hour of time is shared equally. This strategy can work so long as everyone buys into an open-minded team approach to working together for a common cause.

If you have loners on your team it might be best to practice without these members, but invite them to join you nonetheless. It may surprise you to learn why members stay to themselves during competition. By opening that particular line of communication, you might find you can improve team morale and spirit.

One final idea is to invest in team uniforms - team bowling shirts at the very least. When team bowling was at its peak in the late 1950’s and 1960’s, it was commonplace to see every team in every league dress as a team. Being part of a proactive team can be very rewarding and a great deal of fun. Give it a try. Hold a meeting with your teammates and take the first step by proposing a team practice session. What have you got to lose?