Your Private Bowling Corridor

bowlingball.com, Originally Posted: 10/6/13; Updated: 5/16/21

If you are a beginning bowler or someone in need of improving your footwork when walking to the foul line, let’s build your personal bowling corridor. That’s right, visualize a corridor, or a hallway, from where you stand on the approach extending up to the foul line.
This corridor would have the ceiling exactly one inch lower than your height when standing straight and tall. The hallway would also be one inch wider than both of your shoulders.
The objective is to give you a steering mechanism to guide your approach on a straight line path to the foul line. This path has little room to wander left or right and no room to raise your head and shoulder up and out of your bowling shot.
The hallway would require you to set up with your knees flexed lowering your body height at least one inch so you could not raise your head and shoulders and contact the ceiling of this corridor.
Of course, the visualization concept of this hallway allows for your bowling balance arm and your balance leg, the non-sliding leg, to both sweep out to the side extended away from your body to stabilize yourself while swinging and delivering your bowling ball.
If you are trying to learn a straight line walking path technique, this hallway concept will help you walk with each step moving toward the center of your body as would a tightrope performer or a gymnast on a balance beam. This is a technique having been taught for many decades of time and a proven system for bowlers to develop accuracy.

This notion of a bowling hallway can be moved laterally to the corners of the approach, and to points between the center of the approach, and the approach corners.
You can use this same concept when shooting spares requiring lateral moves on the approach.
There are many techniques coaches use to help bowlers build a good walking path to the foul line. Using the visualization of a bowling hallway to guide you forward is certainly one method which helps you improve your walking direction and balance.