Take a Big Enough Backswing so your Subconscious has a Smooth Choice

By the time you have at least 6 full years of lawn bowling experience, your subconscious can be given responsibility for controlling the weight in your lawn bowling delivery. As David Bryant suggests in a useful video tutorial: you choose an aim line to bowl down; you take a stare point on that line; and then you look back and forth between this stare point and the target position (usually the jack) until you feel comfortable with the visualized trajectory. Then you let your mind go blank and send the bowl over your stare point.

Now, even though I have been bowling for 13 years, I have been playing rubbish bowls for the first few weeks since coming to Valverde LBC in Almancil Portugal, where I am spending the winter months.

What was going wrong? Usually, the most common error I make is failing to get my stepping foot planted before my arm swing delivers my bowl.

No— that wasn’t the problem. Maybe I wasn’t careful and methodical enough drawing my bowling arm back along the extension of the aim line behind the mat. No— checking that didn’t solve things.

Analyzing my bowl results suggested that the problem was related mostly to weight. For too many shots I found myself pushing out the bowl and applying too much energy at the end.

Well, I have now found the answer. Often, my backswing wasn’t high enough to smoothly propel my bowl the required distance and my subconscious was trying to compensate for this by over-accelerating my swing somewhat, trying to ‘steer’ the bowl and destroying smoothness from the motion.

In contrast, my subconscious had no difficulty slowing my arm motion down when bowling to a short jack even though my higher backswing would have permitted me to easily deliver to jacks at any length.

P.S. When you have less than 6 years of experience playing lawn bowls I have found you need to consciously control those elements of your swing that affect length (backswing length, crouch degree, step length, etc.) because your subconscious does not have a big enough ‘training set’ to do it itself. 

Visualizing the Path of Your Lawn Bowl

 A number of years ago I attended a Canadian bowling delivery clinic and I asked Steve McKerihan, a perennial member of the Canadian Commonwealth team, whether he visualized the delivery before executing it. He told me, “Yes- but I visualize the delivery in reverse.”

What he meant was that he started with a picture of his bowl at rest in the location that was his target (usually right up against the jack) and then saw in his mind’s eye the bowl slowly move away from the jack and with gradually increasing speed back through its arcing path to his delivery hand on the mat.

Frankly, I had forgotten about this remark for quite a few years but recently realized that this ‘running the video backward’ can improve my visualization, particularly the last portion going into the head.

It is not enough to just get an impression of the possible arcing path of the incipient delivery; this last part of the course where the bowl enters the immediate vicinity of the jack must be part of it.

Imagining your bowl rolling along this complete path (whether forward or backward ) is how you teach your subconscious that this is what you want to do next.

Visualizing the complete path is best done standing up straight behind the mat. Holding the line and holding one’s stare point on it is done in the ready position which, depending upon individuality, may be a crouch. I have found that squatting just behind the mat helps me precisely pick a stare point.

When I release my bowl from my hand I immediately sense whether it is going to be a good shot. Why this feeling comes is still a personal mystery.

A Smooth Delivery and the Subconscious Control of Weight

I have found that after a lawn bowler has played for something like six seasons or more, his/her subconscious can be unleashed to consistently deliver the correct weight to reach any jack between the minimum and maximum distances so long as it is left to the subconscious instincts— that is- being ‘in the zone.’ This is in fact what is claimed in the teaching literature and that indeed is what I have found to be true.

The undeclared caveat, however, is that one’s delivery must be reproducibly executed and smooth. That means no dumping, no wobbling, and no loss of balance. Your subconscious,  according to its secret algorithm, is assuming that your delivery will be executed exactly according to form.

I have further found that the delivery technique wherein I draw my bowl back carefully along the extension of my aim line while counting “a thousand and one” followed by a smooth reproducible forward step with a slight flexing of my forward stepping knee so that my whole foot grounds itself on the count of “a thousand and two” followed unhurriedly by a smooth forward swing of my delivery arm that settles the bowl onto the green as I count “a thousand and three” gives me the best chance to deliver over and over according to the same form.

Now- in the setup for the delivery, it is important not to get away from visualizing the desired arc of your bowl on its path from mat to jack, because this is the data that your subconscious will mysteriously plug into its algorithm for producing the correct weight.

Notice that I intend you to be fully conscious about taking your bowl slowly and steadily back during the count of  “a thousand and one” but from there you should have a blank mind and just focus with tunnel vision intently on your stare point out on your aim line.

If you are anything like me, until you have played bowls for at least six years, you will consider this subconscious control idea to be some form of voodoo. It can’t possibly work, or so I thought. 

Well, it does work but your delivery action has to be smooth.

Interpreting What You Can See from the Mat

Above you can view a head of bowls with a long jack as seen from the mat (top) and then taken from just in front of the head (below). Using the rules in the table below you can quickly work out the disposition of the bowls without visiting the head. 

In order to bowl the proper length, you must be able to provide accurate information to your subconscious computer.  You need to tell it whether your last bowl was long or short and by how much. Particularly in singles, this must be done at least part of the time by an estimation done from the mat. You can't go back and forth to the head after every bowl! Even in non-singles games, some skips may not be competent to properly and concisely convey important information. Other skips may modify the truth to save your feelings or as part of their own strategy to correct your play. Such misinformation will only confuse your natural gift for making adjustments.

In lawn bowls, the jack may be placed anywhere from 21 meters to 29.5 meters in advance of the front edge of the mat. My eye level is 66 inches from the ground (I am six feet tall). Thus at 29.5 meters the angle between the horizontal and my line of sight is 3.25 degrees. When the jack is at 21 meters, the corresponding angle for me is 4.56 degrees. My bowls when lying flat have a height of about 4.25 inches and these bowls' diameter is 5 inches, so standing up each has a height of 5 inches.  A jack’s diameter is 2.5 inches. Doing the calculations I get the numbers in the table below.

	Completely see Jack behind Bowl	See half Jack behind Bowl	Completely see Bowl behind Jack	Completely see Bowl behind Bowl
Short Jack	Inches	Inches	Inches	Inches
	49.5	33.9	27.6	53.3
	Feet	Feet	Feet	Feet
	∿ 4	∿3	∿ 2	∿ 4.5
Long Jack	Inches	Inches	Inches	Inches
	71.1	49.1	40.3	74.8
	Feet	Feet	Feet	Feet
	∿ 6	∿4	∿3.5	∿6

It is worth noting that a bowl can be as much as two feet in front of the jack and still completely hide it, so even though the jack is covered a good draw can readily become the shot bowl.  Also, even if the jack is completely hidden as seen from the mat, there can be plenty of room to catch and trail the jack without touching the covering bowl.