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22 COACHING - THE TEACHERS DILEMMA
COACHING - THE TEACHERS DILEMMA
As this issue is part of an ESMBA mailshot, I am repeating this article, last printed a couple of years
ago. People have previously asked me why I have not done any coaching articles in the magazine, especially
as they knew I designed and ran coaching courses for several years. Coaching is perhaps the most difficult
thing to do in many sports. My weekend residential course operated for several years through the early to mid-
90's in Bournemouth, mostly with my late and very much missed friend Roy Stokes.
I have found over my 30 years of short mat bowling that a large number of people (like me), have short
attention spans. They only want tips that are an instant add water solution that will cure their difficulties in 10
seconds flat with no effort on their part. The odd person might be lucky enough to get away with something
like this but most people won’t.
I had a great deal of very positive feedback from all the courses but I always felt that I too learned some-
thing, the most important of which was "minds are like parachutes, they function best when they are open".
That is to say some people came with a relatively open mind and tried to change and thus rid themselves of
some of their bad habits. Others on the courses tried something once or twice and then dismissed it as not
working. A number of people fit into the latter category and apart from my lack of available writing time, this
above all else has put me off writing about coaching. Quite often there’s no gain without pain.

Bad habits are the easiest thing to acquire and the
Bad habits are the easiest thing to acquire and the
hardest thing to lose, if you can't work at it then don't read on!
hardest thing to lose, if you can't work at it then don't read on!
I make no excuses for waffling on at the beginning as the underlying ground rules about coaching are very
important. I have no patience with those who say they are serious about changing their game (assuming of
course they are struggling in the first place), and then are prepared to put little or no effort into curing their
problems. Those that gloss over this bit of any article usually gloss over the fundamentals as well. By the way,
every club has a know it all expert who's word is gospel, or at least they consider it should be. What they say
could be right of course but I have heard of some absolute rubbish being spouted by resident "experts". So
what makes me a so called expert? Well, I don't claim to be one, I'm just someone who has studied the sport
both indoors and out and especially the individual topics we will be covering. I've also absorbed knowledge
from "authoritative sources". All I've tried to do is to apply this to short mat bowls and not any other forms of
bowls, although many of the principles are the same for all codes.
What I will try to do in this and other articles on stance, delivery and other topics is to separate fact from
opinion. That is to say there are certain fundamentals that are true for most of us and there are other things
that are merely someone’s opinion, and I have as many of these as others do. I try to base mine on my personal
"knowledge" of my years of short mat bowling but you should remember that contrary to some opinions I’m
human and therefore fallible.
Holding a bowl - sounds simple enough but this is where some real problems begin. “Why have you
bought the bowls you are using?” is one of my first questions. The answers vary from “they were cheap/free”,
“they fitted my hand”, “Fred uses these and they are always on the jack for him - but not for me”. OK there
are many reasons why people choose their bowls but they almost always do this before assessing what they
actually need.
Where Short Mat is concerned a lot of retailer’s and so called experts start from completely the wrong
premise. It seems that many bowlers have been advised that the correct size of bowl is obtained by "sizing the
bowl" i.e. putting your thumb and forefinger / index finger around the circumference of a bowl. When they
meet then that's the right size for your hand - stuff and nonsense! And the same goes for the "sizer’s" that
some bowls manufacturers have supplied. This may be OK for outdoor bowls but NOT for short mat bowls.
Ideally you should sort your grip out BEFORE you purchase/obtain your bowls but we don't live in an
ideal world and I too bought my bowls before sorting out a grip. It helped considerably that I was already an
outdoor bowler, albeit in Crown Green bowls where the bowls are smaller than rink bowls.
Modern bowls are precision made to very exact tolerances but why bother I ask myself? Most of the
time all this wonderful computerised precision work is simply cocked up by someone’s grip/stance /delivery,
which is why these are areas that should be worked on quite hard. By the way, everyone cocks it up at times,
no matter how good they are, it’s just that the better players make less mistakes because they are more con-
sistent.