How to Create an Effective Practice Plan

Intended Audience: Introduction - all bowlers, all bowlers serious about improving

Lag Time

It has been some time since I've posted anything and with good reason. Unfortunately, over the last couple of months I've lost my mother, a father-in-law, a brother-in-law (I like my in-laws very much), two friends, and a co-worker. So much of my time has been devoted to these things that bowling took a back seat for awhile.

I also lost a friend and coach in Rolf Gauger. In light of my recent losses, I'd like to dedicate this article to his memory. I write this not to inform others of what they missed if they did not know Rolf, but in an effort that the many good things Rolf contributed to bowling are not forgotten. There are also some great tips and tricks he shared with me later on.

Rolf passed away unexpectedly due to a heart failure stemming from a heart infection on December 30th. Rolf was one of the most respected coaches in the western United States and most known for his Triax Spare System. He's also often quoted by other top coaches for his "force-it-to-fail" method. He wrote for a number of bowling publications including the Las Vegas Ten Pin Journal, the California Bowling News, and most recently, Bowling This Month magazine where he wrote a monthly article.

Rolf was my coach for a little more than a year while I resided in Phoenix, Arizona. We would often sit and talk, usually about bowling-related topics, outside of lessons. While I never worked with Rolf exclusively, every two-three weeks he would provide invaluable feedback, strategies, and excercises that helped me improve as a bowler. He had a way of making me feel like he was genuinely happy for my success and the success of "his bowlers". He often spoke of his grandson, Bill Machin, and he would become excited when Bill bowled well. Simply put, Rolf cared about bowlers.

Not only did Rolf help me with advanced techniques, he helped bowlers of all ages and skill levels. My lessons were usually between the lessons of other bowlers at a different skill and experience level. Rolf commented to me many times that he learned from his students more than his students learned from him. He claimed that was the key to his personal development and improvement as a coach. He definitely practiced the Steve Covey habit "Seek first to understand then be understood" of highly effective people. I can't imagine a better example for other coaches of any kind to follow.

I miss you Rolf and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Rest in peace, my friend.

Planning Effective Practice

I'm often asked by fellow bowlers "How do you practice?" or "How often do you pratice" or "How do you plan your practice session?" or "What is your practice strategy?". Rolf suggested the following process which can be used by any bowler at any level. I continue to use it and feel that any bowler who is serious about his/her improvement can use it.

Step 1: Identify Areas for Improvement

Everyone has a couple of areas in which they'd like to improve. For example, a bowler may need to be more balanced at the line, have a more consistent follow-through, use a shorter push-away, or a stronger release.

In this step, identify four to six areas and prioritize them. For ease of explanation, I'll use the four areas above and assume that they're listed in order of importance. For each area, you'll want to select one (1) and only one practice technique or positive corrective focus for each area. For example:

• Area: balance at the line, Focus: Slide foot in center of body
• Area: consistent follow-through, Focus: arm straight to target at shoulder-level
• Area: shorter push-away, Focus: Drop ball into swing
• Area: stronger release, Focus: Keep hand under ball until bottom of swing

The key takeaways here are a single focus for each area of improvement and a positive corrective focus. The single focus is important for the practice plan, which will become clearer in the next couple of steps. The positive corrective focus is what actually helps a bowler improve. Notice that there are no "don't" or "stop" or "shouldn't" words here. The focus needs to be on what you want to happen, not what you don't want to happen. That's an entire separate article on its own, but for the sake of completeness here, the reader just needs to understand that your body does what the brain tells it to do. If the brain is focused on "don't stand up straight" the body tends to ignore the "don't" and stands straighter. If hunching over is the goal, it is better for the brain to think "hunch over".

Step 2: Make your practice chart

All you need is a sheet of paper and a pencil. Write down your focuses from Step 1 in order of priority one per line. Then write your top priority item again on the bottom. In our example we write:

Slide foot in center of body
Arm straight to target at shoulder-level
Drop ball into swing
Keep hand under ball until bottom of swing
Slide foot in center of body

Make a column of boxes to the right of your focuses. There should be one column for every line. In our example, that would be 5 columns for 5 lines. In the top-left empty box, write "A". In the box to the right of it, write "A". In the boxes below these, write a "B". Then proceed to fill in the rest of the boxes in the following pattern:

Step 3: Label your practice sessions

On what days will you practice? On the chart created in step 2, write "Focus" above the focuses. Above each column to the right of the focuses (with the A's and B's), add one practice day, in order from left to right for the next days you will practice. For our example, assume that our practice sessions are every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and we will start our practice plan on January 1st. That means our practice schedule will be:

• Monday, January 1st
• Wednesday, January 3rd
• Friday, January 5th
• Monday, January 8th
• Wednesday, January 10th

We would label our chart as follows:


Step 4: Putting it all together

Great, we have a chart. Now what? How do we use it? The A's in the chart represent the first half of a practice session. The B's in the chart represent the second half of a practice session. If our practice session is 60 minutes long, we end up with the following practice plan:

Monday, January 1st:

• 30 minutes - focus on keeping our slide foot in the center of our body
• 30 minutes - focus on keeping our arm straight to the target to shoulder level during our follow through

Wednesday, January 3rd:

• 30 minutes - focus on keeping our slide foot in the center of our body
• 30 minutes - focus on keeping our arm straight to the target to shoulder level during our follow through

On Friday, January 5th:

• 30 minutes - focus on keeping our arm straight to the target to shoulder level during our follow through
• 30 minutes - focus on dropping the ball into the swing

On Monday, January 8th:

• 30 minutes - focus on dropping the ball into the swing
• 30 minutes - focus on keeping the hand under the ball until it reaches the bottom of the swing

On Wednesday, January 10th:

• 30 minutes - focus on keeping the hand under the ball until it reaches the bottom of the swing
• 30 minutes - focus on keeping our slide foot in the center of our body

Step 5: Review and Revise

As other areas of improvement are identified or other/more efficent positive corrective focuses are needed, repeat steps 1-4 above on a new chart or append them to the bottom of your chart and extend the chart to the right using the same "AB" pattern.

The Why: Understanding the Methodology

This may seem like overkill, but once you've made a couple of charts, it is a quick and easy process. The reader should be asking "why does it work". There are subtle points at work when you use the method exactly as described.

Most importantly we've made a plan with clearly defined steps and a timeline. We've ensured that nothing that needs improvement will be missed and items of higher priority will be improved sooner than later.

Improvement is quicker when focusing on one thing at a time. Focus is the key to success. Did you notice that there is no mention of number of games or scores? That is intentional. The length of a game, in terms of the number of shots thrown, varies. Time on a clock does not. It is important to dedicate a set amount of time to improving if you are serious about getting better. Score does not matter in practice. I can't stress this enough. The critic may say "If you're truly improving your balance at the line your score will go up". That is true for your league and tournament bowling. If you are focused on one physical correction to the exclusion of all else, it is the quickest way to improve physical execution. Improving physical execution is the quickest way to improve your scores. During practice, if your focus is complete, you will do or not do other things that affect score. For example, lane adjustments. If you're focused on, let's say, dropping the ball into your swing, you won't be thinking about adjusting to changing lane conditions. That will make your score during practice lower, but that has no bearing on dropping the ball into your swing. If you're thinking about score, you are not practicing, you are not focused on dropping the ball into the swing. You're focused on scoring.

Division of practice sessions into explicitly timed halves decreases (overall) the time it takes to improve by reducing mental fatigue and boredom. I use 1 hour practice sessions in our example on purpose. Focusing on a single action for any length of time is hard work and mentally tiring, but hard work in practice is how a bowler gets better. For many people, it can also get boring thinking about only one thing for a period of time. Mental fatigue and boredom are counter-productive to improvement. As such, each bowler must identify his/her own "attention span" and adjust practice session length accordingly. Being able to switch focus from one item to another half-way through the practice session helps combat mental fatigue and boredom. Determine your optimum practice session time and adjust accordingly.

Practice makes permanent. We span an area of improvement across at least two practice sessions for the same reason school teachers "review" information that has already been taught: reinforcement.

We can easily measure and improve our level of commitment to improving. In our example, we identified four areas for improvement. It took a 10 days to work on improving all four using what would be an aggressive practice schedule (3 times a week) for the average bowler. This is where always drawing out the graph as described is important. How badly a bowler wants to improve, the bowler's level of commitment to improving, can be measured by the number of items on the graph and how quickly those items will be practiced. If you're serious about becomming a better bowler, consider the graph a contract with yourself for improvement and stick to your commitment.

I hope you'll find this practice plan useful. Rolf believed in and I'm definitely his disciple when it comes to a strict practice regimen.

Related Information:

Bowl.com Article on Rolf
Let's Go Bowling - story on Rolf about halfway down
Susie Minshew mentions the "Force it to Fail" method in lane adjustments
Steve Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People