Cdolcejr
Getting Back to Normal
by
, 08-30-2021 at 12:29 PM (7263 Views)
It's been a long time since I've last thrown a ball in Fall/Winter League. March 11, 2020 to be exact. Right before everything got shut down by Covid. I didn't bowl the 2020-2021 season due to Covid. I started up again in May 2021 for Summer League and things didn't go quite as planned.
First off, there was a lot of change involved from when I last bowled to when I started up again 14 months later. I used to use the Storm Gadget wrist device. In October/November 2019, I had my span fixed on all of my equipment. Soon after, I began to struggle with wrist tendonitis/strain in my bowling hand that sometimes made it impossible to hold the ball, let alone throw it. I had a suspicion that the wrist device was part of the problem. Prior to getting my span fixed, I needed the wrist device just to hold onto the ball. Nevertheless, a benefit of quarantine was that I had time to heal. I know that if I wasn't forced to stop, I wouldn't have stopped bowling. Luckily, I'm now 100% healthy. I decided enough was enough and that it was time to use natural ability instead of a wrist device I really don't need- a thought that had been percolating for the last couple of years.
So I bowled a mixed summer league (4 person), with very mixed results. I averaged 196 for the summer which is well below my normal average of 215-220 pre-pandemic. It was also extremely humid this summer and the lanes were very strange. I also don't know if the same pattern was used for the lanes in the summer. That's how different from normal the lanes were. Enter the doubts. Was it the lanes? Was it me and the changes I made to my game (i.e. less revs)? Are my bowling balls dead? Is it my timing? All these things have been entering my mind during this slump. It's not like a sat at home while not bowling and did nothing. I dedicated my time off during the pandemic to working on my timing at home and getting into the best physical shape that I could. I accomplished those goals and honestly feel that it helped my game this summer, but the results just haven't been there and that's the most frustrating part.
On Weds, I start winter league again and hope to get back to form. I need to focus on being positive. I've put a lot of work in to improve my game. I figure that the results have to come sooner or later. Hopefully the lanes over the summer were playing tricks on me and the issue isn't bigger than that, but I'm prepared to figure it out what the issue is and work toward fixing it. Time will tell. I'm just happy to be back and bowling again.