Page 28 - Winter 2013

Page 28:Layout 1 09/02/2014 10:35 Page 1

COACHING
28 COACHING

THE TEACHERS DILEMMA
THE TEACHERS DILEMMA

After several requests I have repeated this article, last printed a couple of years ago, and I have extended it to include
the claw grip. 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 something,
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
Bad habits are the easiest thing to
acquire and the hardest thing to lose, if
acquire and the hardest thing to lose, if

you can't work at it then don't read on!
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 strug-
gling 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 may 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 opin-
ion. 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 bowls 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
may 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, its just that the better players make less mistakes because they are more consistent.