Technique LIFESTYLE AND BOWLING TECHNIQUES TO MAKE YOU A BETTER BOWLER /// APRIL 2011


MIND GAMES


SPORT IS 100 percent mental. The other 100 percent is physical. No, that is not a


passage from a book of Yogi Berra quotes. Sport is 100 percent physical in that you are moving objects. It’s also 100 percent mental because, even at the most basic levels of sport, the physical act requires awareness and focus. Let’s say a person is


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At the highest levels in bowling, where stars like Liz Johnson (above) reside, the mental game is even more important.


10 USBOWLER APRIL 2011


picking up a bowling ball for the first time. We teach them how to put the ball in their hand and instruct them to get the thumb


out of the ball before the fingers. The act of throwing the ball may look purely physical, but the bowler has been told to be aware of something. It’s a mental process that translates into a physi- cal act. Until you can move an object en- tirely with your mind, you can’t separate the physical and the mental. That said, at the


highest levels in bowl- ing the mental game is even more important. Every competitor has the skill-set to make any shot at any time. That’s why bowling


By Dr. Dean Hinitz


THE MENTAL APPROACH TO BOWLING IS CRITICAL


fans across the coun- try were so astounded recently when Mika Koivuniemi, one of the game’s most ac- curate bowlers, missed a 10 pin spare in the final frame of the PBA U.S. Open, costing him the title. (See ac- companying video.)


How could that possibly happen? “It was my nerves, I guess,” Mika said later. “I was thinking about the wrong things.” Mika has been


around awhile and is one of the greatest bowlers of his era. And his assessment of the


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