How to Master Your Bowling Footwork techniques and What to avoid?

To throw a perfect shot, you need to walk up to the foul line and then release the ball on the lane. Therefore, a certain footwork is required to get your ball rolling. If you want to have consistency in your shots, you need to develop a consistent footwork that syncs perfectly with your armswing. Understanding the fundamentals of bowling footwork starts with a sound bowling approach. Today, I have come up with the best bowling footwork tips to guide you through.  So if you are looking for some answers, stay tuned to find out!

What are the basic rules for proper footwork timing and position in Bowling?

Here’s how you do it.

Master In Your Approach

To master your footwork, you don’t actually have to put lots of focus into timing. If you know how to control the size and tempo of your steps, your timing will automatically be right. Just use the natural length of your walk for consistent footwork. When you’re positioning yourself at the stance, keep your shoulders and head steady and if possible, be motionless. When you wake up to the foul line, do not make a sudden scoot-down motion with your upper body.

Keep Slow and Steady

The pace of steps during the approach is ideally recommended as slow, but not too slow. Keep your heel-to-toe action on point when you lead yourself into the slide phase. Try to keep your steps fairly uniform in terms of length. This will help you keep your balance. Use a good pair of bowling shoes to ensure even and smooth sliding from the momentum built from your first steps.

Proper Balancing

From stance to releasing the ball, it is important to have good body balance. For that, you need to maintain an even tempo. To create your momentum, you don’t have to worry a lot because your ball swing will take care of it. 

Flex Your knees

4. To keep things nice and flawless, try to have a slight knee flex on the first three steps. When we walk, we don’t really bend or flex our knees, do we?  But it is important in bowling as it makes sliding your feet easy. The big muscles of your non-sliding leg add balance and stability and develop power and leverage when you transfer the momentum from the first three steps.

Remain Straight

The key to perfect footwork is walking straight lines. When you let go of the ball from your hand, maintain a good arm swing with the follow-through, and by that accuracy will be achieved. Now you have to keep a few things in your mind in terms of positioning. Remain straight as much as possible. Try to end on the same board during sliding where your shoe was positioned originally at the stance. 

How can you improve your footwork in bowling?

Here’s how you can make your footwork even better. For that, we are going to talk about three different components of the footwork

1. Step Size

The first thing we are going to talk about is the size of your steps. So how big should the steps be? According to most bowling experts, you can develop a little bit better momentum with a 5-step approach compared to a 4-step one. And if you do a 5-step approach, that first step is really just in order to get your body in motion. So most of the time, this step is gonna be relatively small. 

Now, after that first step is completed, the second and third steps of a 5-step approach are usually going to be close to a normal-size stride for you. If you happen to take a 4-step approach, the first two steps are going to be natural strides. Part of the reason that the second and third steps of the 5-step approach and the first and second of the 4-step approach are the size that is important. If those steps get too small, you will have less time. It will be like robbing yourself of the time to get the ball in position. Plus, it can create a timing issue that you don’t want. 

The second to last step aka the step before you slide is referred to as a Power Step. Now, believe it or not, the power step is determined by your timing. If the swing time is a bit late, that power step will end up being a bit larger and maybe a little bit slower. If you get the ball into the string kind of quickly and have a quicker, earlier timing, that power step will be shorter and quicker. That’s something your body will do for you. You don’t have to work on that yourself.

And then comes the final step. Well, for most of us that is technically not a step. Rather it’s just sliding. The main important thing there is to make sure you have enough room to have a slide and for most of us that ends up being about four, maybe five feet. If you’re really close to the foul line, you may end up stepping or planting just because you don’t have room to slide. 

2. Tempo

Now, the second component of footwork we will talk about is the overall tempo. One of the misconceptions is that you want really slow footwork. But that’s just wrong and bad advice. I often hear coaches tell beginners when they don’t score well to slow down their feet. Don’t listen to that. Keep in mind, bowling is a sport, and for that, you want athletic fluid motion. So when we talk about tempo, we don’t say run from the start. What you want is to build into that momentum. So, you start nice and easy and gradually build momentum. 

Yes, your feet are gonna react to the upper body. Therefore, your footwork tempo is really a function of your timing. If you tend to get the ball swing a bit later, the overall tempo will be a bit slower. The quicker you can get your ball into the swing, the earlier the timing, and the quicker the feet will go to match your upper body is creating. So unless you have super late swing timing, the overall tempo of your footwork will be quicker than a normal walk.

3. Fluidity

So the final component of a perfect footwork is the overall fluidity. To have good fluidity in your footwork, you have to have good heel to toe step. Sometimes when people slide their steps, they will come to a more distinct stop on each step and it can make the footwork more choppy and actually slow it down a little bit. We certainly don’t want any steps that go toe and then heel because that will be a really slow step and make your step less fluid.

What Should you avoid for footwork position in Bowling?

Now that I have talked about all the Dos, here are all the Don’ts of good footwork in bowling.

1. If it ever feels like you are bouncing, don’t just ignore it. To prevent that, do not lunge or race with your steps. 

2. If you don’t keep your upper body stable, you are gonna have some problems. Try to avoid thrusting it back or forward during your approach as you will lose balance and your ball delivery.

3. Do not make your bowling steps hurried or faster than your regular walking pace. Some bowlers think that faster steps will promote more ball speed, but that doesn’t actually help at all. Also, do not speed up your slide steps. 

4. Remember not push to off speedily from the step before you slide your feet. This will create a thrusting action at the foul line and as a result, your ball delivery will be a bit sooner.

5. When you don’t maintain a tempo and make the first step quick, and then slow down during the middle steps, and then suddenly speed up on your last step, you are going to get your feet on the foul line. This is not going to work well, I’m telling you.

6. Do you often have no knee flex and then jump into your final sliding step? Then I believe you rush to bend from the waist and you stretch your step for a foul and forced ball delivery.

Conclusion

Understanding bowling footwork tips will make your life easier. Not only it will enable a better bowling experience, but also prevent you from potential injuries. Plus, the accuracy you will get is going to be top-notch. So learn to perfect your bowling footwork while there is still time. The guideline I have put down will help you hopefully. Also, I highly recommend investing in a  a good pair of bowling shoes. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out to me. I will get back to you in a bit. Or, you can get professional instruction from a certified coach to help you with these things. Till then, good luck and see you soon, my fellow bowlers!