‘Talking Tactically’

with Lachlan Tighe..... 

(a new weekly edition, commenced 12/9/2001, of thoughts, observations and commentaries on developments for bowls coaching and competition)

'WEIGHT WATCHING - DRILLS AND EXPERIMENTS'

(eighth edition, 31/10/2001)

Bill Boettger, the Canadian National Bowls coach, citing from his article said ‘…the next most important skill after technique is the ability to play with control weight …correct weight must be felt…you should know on release if that shot is light or heavy, and, by how much.’

A drill I have introduced for subtle pace variation is to place a set of 4 discs one yardstick apart from each disc on the rink up the other end and all visible from the mat. Then I have the squad member deliver their bowls consecutively to each separate disc thus requiring a pace variation of one yard/ metre. You can have them start either from the front or back disc and proceed accordingly front or rear of the set. And alternate after a series of attempts from backhand to forehand practice.

However, the importance of the training drill is in the (written) record measuring your average success after numerous attempts. An acceptable gauge of measure is for the bowl to end within a mat length of the targetted disc.

An exercise I experimented with was to line up all the squad alongside each other on the 2 metre mark and all had a disc located on the minimum length directly in front of where they stood as their target. Each bowler was told to ‘call’ out the anticipated outcome of their delivery after it left their hand whilst it was still travelling maybe before it had gone half way down the green, and, loud enough for me to hear the call and watch the result.

The purpose of the experiment was to force each bowler to verbally inform (me/ them) of the ‘feel of their weight’ for the projected length: my view is that people need to be able to ‘feel’ the (correct) weight they impart when delivering the bowl.

So, regardless of whether they got the desired weight / length/ line, their verbal information was telling us one source of information which was then compared to the outcome of where the bowl finished. If they called correctly, then I and they knew they ‘felt’ weight; if their call was vastly different to the end path of the delivered bowl, we had work to do with that bowler on their sense of ‘feel’.

Not everyone thrived on this experiment…. I was interested to see those members who regarded it as an ongoing challenge to their skill and knowledge.

Anyone with thoughts on this process is welcome to share their views as I would experiment with all sorts of approaches to improve the training and performance.

"Good Bowling"

"A Great Team ... defined for bowls and to apply to pairs, fours, sides of 16"

"Weight Watching - Drills and Experiments"

'Torpedo Toward Victory"