Weight Control at Lawn Bowls according to Ralph Ellis

by Ralph Ellis

The following article concerning weight control in lawn bowling was written by Ralph Ellis one of the Canadian lawn bowls coaches. I think it may be of interested to many readers, particularly bowlers with five year’s experience or less. Weight control articles are among the most frequently referred to on the Greenbowler blog. 

“How do I control my weight?” David Anderson's reply was “There is no “magic solution in a bottle. You have to discover it on your own.”

David's answer was quite correct but after the session I told David Burrows that I objected to us not being more specific about the mechanics of weight control. David logically said that I should write an article about the mechanics and work with the coaching team. That is where this comes from.

How do lawn bowlers control their weight? The simple answer is that we do it exactly the same way that golfers, basketball players, baseball pitchers and quarterbacks do it. We feel it.

When LeBron James sinks a jumper fifteen feet away from the basket on the left side of the court, he does not measure where he is standing, check his angle and then makes the shot since by the time that he does all of that, there are two defenders there. By constant practice and natural ability, he knows what it feels like to release the ball from that distance and angle and he can tell you if it is going in or not long before it reaches the basket. The more of a natural athlete you are, the simpler this process is.

One of my more interesting coaching discussions about weight control was with Kevin Jones back at the WOBA in the 1980s. I asked him how he controlled his weight. Kevin replied, “I throw it harder or I throw it softer.” I laughed and said “Yes Kevin - but how do you throw it harder or softer? Do you keep your step and swing the same but vary your arm speed or do you keep your arm speed the same and vary your step and swing.” Kevin looked ticked off and said “What do you mean? I throw it harder or softer.” Kevin and I were speaking a different language.

The three most natural lawn bowlers that I have seen in my lifetime are Kevin Jones, Dave Houtby and John Haggo. Each of them steps up and instinctively throws the bowl with apparently little thought. This does not mean that each of them does not practice hard to produce the results that they have gotten. What it does mean is that natural athletes in any sport automatically gravitate towards automatically using feel to gauge distance and weight.

What happens if you are not a natural athlete? What happens if you are me? I never played any high school sports and aside from some talent in long-distance running, I never really displayed any inclination to sports at all. I did lawn bowl from 12 years old and I am by nature analytical.

The two big theories on weight control when I started playing in the 1970s were:

1) Ezra Wyeth – keep the step and swing the same and vary arm speed and

2) R.T. Harrison and the theory of elevation – keep the arm speed constant and vary the height of the stance, the length of the swing and step.

Wyeth's approach is simpler and quite frankly, probably the correct approach; however, I felt more comfortable with Harrison's views and based my delivery on it, including winning a Canadian Championship in pairs. It worked for me because I was younger and more athletic than I am now so the complexity of the movement was less of an issue.

On fast greens, I bent my knees and kept low to the ground.

On slow greens, I stood up straight and took a big back swing.

Complexity does create issues as you age and when I returned to bowling after a five-year hiatus at 54 years of age, I found that the old delivery did not work for me anymore.

Rod Carew was one of the great hitters in Major League Baseball. He had 4 different batting stances depending on what type of pitcher he was facing. He won four consecutive AL batting titles. How many players copied him? Virtually none. His stances worked for him but teaching it to other players is a nightmare. For athletes in almost all sports, simplicity is the key to success.

The more that you limit the number of variables, the better your odds are of having a repeatable, dependable delivery.

Wyeth's approach is very similar to the South African clinic style where players have the lead leg slightly in front; step and plant the lead leg along the grass line and then push the bowl up the green.

Why do we not see this simple delivery more in Canada? Because our greens are so slow with over 90% falling below 12 seconds, players have difficulty sending the bowl up the green with just arm strength and also need to add a large backswing and a long step on heavy greens. South African greens average 12 to 16 seconds, so a set, controllable delivery makes more sense in that environment. If you are going to have a simple delivery, that keeps the step and swing the same and relies on arm speed in Canada, you will have to devote some time to physical fitness. Yes, you may have to do push-ups and chin-ups to be able to reach a full-length jack on a 9 second green in Canada.

If you want to succeed in our sport, you will need to devote some time to fitness. Anyone who has a longer competitive career in our sport keeps in shape. There are rare exceptions to this rule but playing out of shape is not a way to get an advantage.

After you have the basic physical tools in place, how do you develop your sense of feel if it does not come naturally to you? Start by putting the jack away. Go out on the green. Relax and throw a bowl in the most comfortable manner for you. Pay attention to how it feels. Step up and do it again without worrying about distance or targets. You will quickly notice that most of your bowls are tending to fall in a similar distance. This is called “Natural Length” and it is the first step to discovering weight control.

Most people when relaxed can duplicate one particular length again and again and this is their favorite length. Some people have more than one natural length. I have four. These are the same lengths that I throw again and again in competition.

Step one is duplication. Teach yourself how to throw the same length repeatedly. You may discover that you have more than one favorite length just as I do. Practice duplicating these lengths.

Step two is adjustment. Take your natural length(s) and start adding or subtracting weight from them paying attention to what it feels like each time that you add or drop weight. What you will notice over time is that you can tell if your bowl is heavy or light within a second of it leaving your hand. I have often told people after I deliver that my bowl is two feet heavy or one foot short just after delivering it.

Pay attention to your bad bowls as well as you good ones. That short bowl that you threw in a game may be the length of the next jack toss.

Gradually, even if you are not a natural athlete, you can teach yourself what different weights feel like and what the adjustment from these set weights feels like as well.

This is the “Magic Solution”. Teaching yourself feel.

There are some other factors to keep in mind. You want your delivery to be as smooth and fluid as possible. The enemies of weight control are:

·         sudden jerking of the arm at the end of the swing

·         standing up too fast as you release your bowl

·         dropping the bowl instead of releasing it on the ground and

·         chasing your bowl or leaning into your delivery to add weight.

On this last point, you will say “What about all of those champion Scottish bowlers who keep chasing their bowls?”

You can chase your bowl if you either chase it the same way each time or if you only chase your bowl after it is fully delivered and on its way.

Overall your delivery should look the same each time without any jerkiness or extra motion.

I will also mention that keeping the step constant is critical for maintaining your grass line and release point. Try delivering a bowl but take a different length step each time. You will quickly notice that your grass line is changing constantly. A constant step not only helps with weight control, but it also keeps your bowls on the line that you intended.

Anyone who has played against me can tell you that I am a 30% better player when I throw the jack. This is because I get my weight for my first bowl from the jack toss. I will do a second article on how to do this but, in essence, to throw a bowl the same distance as a jack, it has to be thrown anywhere from six feet to nine feet heavier than the jack to reach the same point. I will not get into the mathematics of this in this article but it is the next step to becoming a great lead or singles player.

Now that you have the magic solution, what will you do with it? Go out and practice, practice, practice. In most sports, the ratio of hours practiced to games is about four or five to one. This is a good starting point for developing your game. See you on the greens.

Local Bowls Culture in Portugal

So far I find that the issue of who will take the mat in the opening end is always decided by choosing ‘big’ or ‘little’ from the roll of a bowl. In Canada and Australia, more often there is a coin toss.  Furthermore, the winner here always seems to take the mat. There is no spoken choice; it is just assumed by both sides. This may be because I am playing with people who are all playing on their home green, so they may simply know the grass and want to be first onto the jack. The observation so far is only based on behaviour at the Vilamoura and Valverde LBCs.

Nevertheless, it is startlingly different from practice in Canada where the winner of the usual coin toss almost always gives the mat away and chooses to have skip’s last bowl in the end. The feeling in Canada is also that there is an advantage in seeing the opposition’s opening delivery before having to grass your own bowl.

In the matter of collecting the bowls after an end, practice is not uniform between Valverde and Vilamoura. At Valverde they put out and use rakes like in Canada. At Vilamoura players help to kick the bowls back behind the mat placement.

Lawn Bowls at Valverde LBC Portugal

My wife, Tish, and I bowled yesterday at the Valverde lawn bowls club in southern Portugal. The green is a dense grass cut nice and short with no discolorations or bare spots. If you took a picture from eye level looking down, you would not be able to tell whether it was a rug or grass. All the grass blades are packed tight standing straight up.  Even at 10:30AM it is nearly dry. I did not use my bowls cloth after the first few ends.

The game was open triples on two rinks and open pairs on two rinks; however, every six ends the teams, the team positions, the opponents and the rinks were changed. Everyone had their own score card and the individual best plus/minuses won cash prizes after three rounds. An interesting variant was that in the first two ends of the first mini-game the maximum score was 1. In this way no trial ends were needed. This format is played at Valverde every Friday and it affords the maximum opportunity for everybody to meet on the green.  I played skip twice and lead once. I was +5 on the day. My performance in the first match which we lost with me skipping put me out of the money. Consistency is everything in bowls!

A point of contention arose during one of the mini-games. My lead delivered a bowl that came to rest leaning in a standing position against the jack. I told my skip opposite that I was nominating that bowl as a toucher since I wouldn’t dare try to mark it because it could fall and push away the jack. As we changed positions and the skips were going to the mat, the opposing lead said that this was not correct nomination. When I said that it was, she declared “Perhaps according to your rules” or something to that effect.

No harm was done to me although I apologized to the opposing skip saying that I was afraid I had upset her. Anyway the rule from Crystal Mark Third Edition of the Laws of World Bowls reads:

15.2 If, in the opinion of either skip or opponent or the marker, a toucher comes to rest in a position in which marking it would be likely to move the bowl or alter the head, the bowl must not be marked but nominated as a toucher instead.

15.3 If, before the next delivered bowl comes to rest or, in the case of the last bowl of an end, before a period of 30 seconds that applies under law 23.1, a bowl is neither marked nor nominated, it is no longer a toucher.

This club is owned by its members and they say, justifiably, that it is the friendliest bowling club. A club member was immediately into the parking lot to greet us and show us around when we first found the place and the secretary of the club had even helped to find us suitable accommodation when we contacted her over the internet before we left for Portugal!

Here they do use rakes to collect the bowls. The bowls available for visitors are of more recent vintage than those on offer at Vilamoura LBC and they are carefully arranged according to size while those at Vilamoura were totally haphazard. The Valverde bowls for the most part have grips while Vilamoura’s mostly do not.

Valverde has a restaurant right next to it where I expect food and drinks would be available. When we arrived this was closed since January is a slow month for tourists. Vilamoura has a bar in the tiny club house with plenty of tables and chairs on the patio next to one of the two greens. Vilamoura has more parking and that parking is more accessible.

Both these clubs are thoroughly English. While on the greens you will not think you are in a foreign language country. If you are leaving winter behind for several months I suspect Portugal is better value than the southern United States. I will say more after I give the USA a winter trial some other year. 

First Club Game at Vilamoura LBC

Tuesday January 13^th I played my first game since the end of the playing season in Canada. Twenty three club members and I showed upon by 1:30PM so that we were able to play three rinks of fours. I played lead and a reasonable number of my bowls survived to contribute to the score. I had practiced for a couple of hours on two previous days so I was able to at least be behind the jack most of the time when I wasn’t right on it. My team had the second best performance on the day and each team member got to choose a bottle of wine. I took a Portuguese red on the theory that the local organizers would make a better choice than my own random selection from the store.  I had a few glasses at supper and was not disappointed!

In the game the similarities with Canada were:

·         There is no center line

·         Most bowlers automatically place the mat at the two meter line

·         The green  was  about the same speed

·         There are no practice ends

·         Participants are very friendly and welcoming

The differences were:

·         The bowls are kicked back to a position behind the mat

·         It is assumed that the mat is going to be placed at 2 meters by          the team

·         Participants do not faithfully were their name tags

·         Participants do wear their club shirts

·         except for one set all the bowls used were black

·         most of the sets of bowls were Taylor Lignoids but they didn’t        play any wider than my Vector VS play on grass at home; that          is my aim point was usually around the boundary marker

·         the match was 18 ends (but the air temperature was only 16 C)

A very thankful difference from Canada was that the clubhouse did have a bar so we were able to have some lubricated socializing after the match!

Advantages a Triples Team Could Have

Beside the skills of the team members as individuals, what advantages can one triples team have over another in lawn bowls?

In the opening end, each team member delivers an opening bowl, under circumstances where (s)he does not know the amount of grass to give for a draw shot. The lead can get no advice, but the other team members need to be able to convert information from those deliveries to arrive at an aim line useful for their own shots. Therefore, team members must know their partners’ bowls. For example, if the lead reports that on the left side (s)he needs to aim at the boundary mark, the second should know that, for his(her) bowls, that translates into aiming, for example, two feet wide of the boundary marker. Or if only the vice has bowled the wide side in one of the directions, the skip needs to be able to interpret the information that the vice gained aiming on that side. The object is to provide to each team member whatever useful information another team member possesses; but, in a form that is adjusted for any differences between their bowls and/or their handedness.

A second area of potential advantage is in communication between the head and the mat. This is done by signaling, since calling out invariably proves inadequate over this distance, as we all have experienced. Signals should enable the person at the head to direct, and the person on the mat to ask questions. For some signals it matters little if they are obvious to opponents. For others, the signal’s meaning must be opaque to the opponents. Signals cannot meet every need. In complex situations, when the rules allow, the bowler should be called to the head to confer with the skip.