Train for Quality
Quality: Ongoing coaching, assessment and evaluation is the base that creates the foundation that produces consistent quality performances.
Base work:Too many lawn bowls players and coaches, I fear, do not spend enough time doing the base work that creates the foundation of skills but rather concentrate in game conditioning to ensure quality practice under pressure in game situations.
Innovations: In lawn bowls like many other sports, people are continually manufacturing game-like situations in which skills, techniques and tactics are not honed. Close examination in most cases reveal that they are seen as opportunities to provide the highest quality game experience not the individual performance of the bowler’s delivery skill. These manufactured innovations can be described as putting the cart before the horse because many bowlers have the game experience but not the individual skills to perform the required bowls shots. These situations during the game result in tactical moves being useless, particularly when the bowler’s delivery skills are a hit and miss affair.
Training: Learning is not something that occurs only in a game or game practice sessions before an event. It is the ongoing early training process of training drills that improves skills and practices which develop the awareness of tactics. All these things are part of the quest to become the best. Without the challenge of non-stop learning lawn bowlers and coaches stagnate and are often without direction.
Quality of performance: Clubs and bowling coaches should see their bowlers as athletes and train them to perform by analysing and evaluating the performance of their skills that improve the quality in all they do on the green. Training should be developed around analysing and evaluating the lawn bowler’s delivery skills such as draw shots, on shots, running shots and drives. To highlight but one segment named above e.g. analysing the draw shot playing over long, medium and short ends can be segmented as training drills as follows; draw to the jack , draw to the edge of the ditch, draw to the edge of the boundary, drawing around a bowl or head, drawing under a bowl or head. These drills can be laid out on a full green in a circuit formation by setting up one drill on each rink. Training drills improve performance skills, performance skills improve the tactics and tactics improve the quality of performance.
Correction and improvement: Analysing and evaluating the effective bowls of individual bowlers with a graph method will clearly indicate to the bowler the position of where each and every bowl has been delivered. This will also make clear their weak and strong points of their delivery skills e.g. the number of effective bowls, too short, too long, too wide and narrow bowls, all of which can be improved either by themselves or corrected by an accredited coach. Such areas of correction would or may involve:
- Focusing: The eyes control alignment, length, balance and concentration,
- Timing: This controls the length of delivery by coordinating the step and back-swing, breathing and the pendulum speed of the delivery arm,
- Follow-through: The follow-through controls the precision of the delivery by checking the eye, hand and aiming point alignment each time a jack or bowl is delivered.
Justification: Should no improvement take place within a reasonable period of time then bowlers should at least consider going to an accredited coach or again pointing out this problem to the coach with whom you work. If there is no improvement then you may be creating grounds for the selectors to change your team position, placing you to a lower playing grade or giving you recovery rest. “The bowl is on your hands”.
Filed Under: lawn bowls,lawn bowls coaching,gt for bowls,lawn bowling,Performance Lawn Bowls,Macka Jensen
