A Guide to Improving Lawn Bowls Performance
Preparation:
To get the most from this article practice the techniques before you enter into competition, research and memorise them, obtain the knowledge, learn more about the bowling skills and practice them until they are automatic. The preparation keys are as follows;
- Be prepared: Read how things work beforehand; practice a couple of the techniques you feel most comfortable with then stay with them. For maximum effectiveness combine the lot in turn.
- Be patient: Recognise how fear works. One of its characteristics is restlessness, moving rapidly from one mental thought to another.
- Be positive: Concentrate on the solution, not whether the technique is working or not, that is something to evaluate after you’ve applied it for the desired length of time.
- Be practical: How much can you reasonably expect from one reading of an article? Expecting too much can be a stress in itself. There are six different cues discussed here; the majority of them are going to work for you once you recognise your fear problem.
Points of time:
In lawn bowls performance relates to the psychological responses from our emotions. Most bowlers are familiar with the three points of time; the past, present and future. That which we fear is only the negative expectation or assumption of what may happen in the future, what we don’t want to happen, and what is not happening in the present.
Fear:
To illustrate this point, here’s an example: On the last end of a singles game you need four shots to win, and by clever tactical play you find yourself four shots up with the head layout in such a dangerous position as to allow your opponent to play the last bowl with an easy “trail the jack shot” e.g. to reverse the winning situation by giving the opponent the opportunity of shots. Plus the fact to win you had to risk not placing a preventive back-wood! The chances are you’ll react and go right into fear. However, think about the two parts of fear. Sure, you are certainly experiencing the feeling of fear. There’s no question about that. However, think about what you are actually afraid of. Is it the player or is it the skill of the person playing that shot, which would lead to an unfortunate demise. Chances are, it’s the latter. It’s the possible negative outcome that’s terrifying. That’s the feeling part. However, the trail shot has not been played yet. Therefore, while the feeling of fear is real, what you fear is never real because it hasn’t happened yet!
Positive outcome:
If we are pushed to avoid consequences or what we don’t want to happen throughout the game, conversely we are pulled towards what we do want; pleasure. Since fear is the negative assumption of the outcome, try shifting your focus to the positive outcome or what you do want to manifest, instead of what you are looking to avoid.
Stop and think:
The key point here is this; our fears are just as real as our dreams! But as long as we give more thought to our emotional fears rather than our dreams, our fears will always seem as if they are more of a reality and in turn will get the better of us. If you stop and think about it for a moment, they are both visions and pictures of a future that we have constructed or visualised in our mind. Both our fears and dreams are created using the same tool e.g. imagination. Articulation:
The state of embarrassing perplexity is that most bowlers spend more time focusing on that which they fear rather than the goals or dreams they want to create. Let’s face it; we’re all pretty good at articulating what we don’t want to happen in our game yet neglect to come up with a vivid picture of what we do want or our goals and dreams.
Empowering:
If you know what you don’t want and don’t know what you do want, then, you are going to continually wind up directing your thoughts and energy towards fear. Your goals and dreams don’t even stand a chance! Instead, empower your bowling dreams and goals rather than your fears to be the driving force that moves you forward. Once you do this you will then be on the training path to achieve them.Learning:
Imagine what would be possible if you embrace fears and considered it to be one of your greatest teachers? If you resist fear or reach a point when you feel fear, then you can’t learn from it or even recognise any lessons that would contribute to your continued evolution. And if you aren’t learning from it, then you can’t look at the fear as something that can be reframed into a positive opportunity to grow and change.
Signs of fear:
Learning to recognise the signs of fear is the first step in overcoming it. Fear can be detected by yourself or others throughout the game e.g. tight muscles, nervous, cold hands or feet, fluttery stomach, shortness of breath, frequent urination, hands shaking, lower pulse rate, general feeling of weakness, slow to react to the tactical situation, an over aggressive attitude, insults, arguing, berating oneself, negative self talk, being voiceful, playing illogical driving shots, murmuring to oneself, or in extreme cases complete freezing up or paralysis.
Six cueing steps:
Take the time to think about how much of your game and your decisions are governed by fear? Start determining if the fear is actually a realistic threat or just your outright imagination. The next time you experience the reaction of fear take the following six cueing steps to manage the fear in your performance and make it your ally. This way you can update your relationship with fear and learn to respond to it in a healthier learning way rather than continually reaching to it the way you have. If you are experiencing the slightest amount of fear, learning and using the following cues will help to improve your game:
1. Knowledge: dispels fear, improves playing skills and tactics,
2. Controlling fear: lowers anxiety, improves skills and confidence,
3. Composure: hides fear and improves confidence,
4. Credibility: improves self-esteem and confidence,
5. Posture: indicates fear and what emotional state you are in,
6. Perfecting delivery skills: dispels fear and improves confidence. Self-esteem:
The six cues above are keys to successful performance in the competitive arena of lawn bowls. Our level of confidence, credibility and composure etc. plays an important role in how other bowlers perceive us. In order to have confidence, credibility or composure, we must first have high self-esteem. Our esteem can go up and down in relation to the way we think, our tactical knowledge and performing ability. Bowlers with fairly low self-esteem base their feelings on the game build up or during the playing situation of the game that is dramatically happening around them. If things are going well, then their esteem is high. If things are going poorly, their esteem will be low. Bowlers will be in a constant state of fluctuation if they base their esteem on what is happening around them.
Feel good about yourself:
A major key to maintain a high self-esteem is to build a solid foundation within ourselves so that no matter what is happening around us we feel good about, our playing ability and who we are at any given moment. No matter how our day went we can say “We did a good job”. No matter what another bowler did or did not say, did or did not do to us, we can feel good about our ability and who we are.
Credibility:
Another element in maintaining high self-esteem is to continually learn to perfect your playing skills. Think back to the first time you delivered a bowl. You probably didn’t have a very high level of confidence, nor did you have the kind of composure as someone who has been playing for several years. To top it all off, your credibility as a player was not at an all time high. Even though there are some bowlers who may have thought they had credibility, chances are other bowlers could see right through them. It was with practice and continued learning that they became a credible player. You gain credibility when you precisely perform the skill.
Confidence:
In lawn bowls many bowlers won’t even attempt to learn something new for fear of failure. Unless you are willing to try something and not succeed the first, second, third and even the fourth time you will not gain the level of credibility you are truly capable of. Some bowlers “fail” dozens of times at something before they “succeed”. The more you are willing to risk, the more skills you will gain and the higher your level of confidence will be. You only obtain confidence when you consistently perform and perfect the skill under the guidance of the coachComposure:
Training for composure must be done on three levels. They are; developing the tools and the ability to use them while under pressure. The tools are tactics, shot perfection and the functioning of a game plan. The ability to use these tools is the proper measure of composure and concentration. Composure, “think, outer pace-inner calm”, is vital for bowlers in reading the game and solving the tactical problems. Concentration is the ability to focus on a specific problem for as long as necessary. Finally, all of this must be done in realistic situations, under the correct amount of pressure. In the game, composure is a serene state of mind.
Winning mentality:
An important step in developing composure is to lower the anxiety level. A relaxed and confident bowler is a composed bowler. But when they play in fear they tense up which produces the fight or flight syndrome. Neither of these responses is positive. Self-confidence and concentration drops as the bowler becomes preoccupied with his own emotional problems. Games provide the opportunity to confront stressful realistic situations in the correct proportions and the repetition of training creates a winning mentality. When coupled with the correct coaching a frame of mind can be built in the critical moments and be monitored.
Learning skills:
Think back to a job you started or a project you worked on where you didn’t have a lot of knowledge. Your skill level was not developed for the task. You may have been extremely frustrated and your self-esteem was rather low. You probably struggled for some time, and yet once you made the effort to learn the skills, you felt better about yourself. By learning the skills and using it tactically you had more confidence. By having more confidence, you gained more composure. Having more composure gave you even more credibility. The three seem to go hand in hand. When we have confidence it appears as if we have credibility. And when we have credibility our composure is more apparent.
Posture & Breathing:
The third aspect is a physiological power base. This has to do with the way bowlers carry themselves. How you carry yourself either gives you confidence or takes it away. There is an actual chemical reaction in the body based on how we carry ourselves. Also our thinking patterns change based on how we hold our bodies and our breathing, we are more alert to what is going on around us. Another factor to consider is that the way you present yourself physically has a great deal to do with whether other bowlers perceive you as someone who is credible or not.
Walk the talk:
It may be difficult to combine all these factors to present yourself as someone who is confident, credible and composed. In some situations you may have to “fake it, until you make it”, which means performing the task at hand as if you really know what you are doing. When it comes to your credibility you want to definitely have consistency in playing skills and the tactical knowledge required. Perhaps the time where you may have to bluff a bit until it becomes comfortable is when you walk into a club full of profile bowlers. Just think of these key words “Walk the Talk”. Walk in as if you have a lot of confidence and talk in a positive manner. If this is done then there is a good chance other bowlers will believe that to be true about you.
Instinctive action:
With training, the six cues relating to fear as previously mentioned become instinctive action during play and are patterns of responses or reactions to certain kind of emotions. Instinct provides a response to external stimuli, such as our senses; seeing, hearing, touch, smell and taste which move internal organs or the body into physical action unless overridden by intelligence and experience, which is creative and more versatile. Fight or flight is overridden by being mentally cool, calm and collective in moments of fear.
Filed Under: lawn bowls,lawn bowls coaching,gt for bowls,lawn bowling,Performance Lawn Bowls,Macka Jensen
