Developing a Spare System

Welcome to the National Bowling Academy, I'm Eric Vermilyea and today I'd like to speak to you about one of the most important parts of the game, spares. I have a little system I've developed over the years that kind of helps you start to narrow down how to shoot spares, how to line up, keeping it as simple as possible to maximize your single pin conversions. It starts off with just taking a plastic spare ball. I always prefer people to use plastic balls instead of their reactive resin ball, greater margin of error and even if you watch the pros, the best in the world on TV, most of them opt for a spare ball. So just start off with a plastic ball that goes straight and develop a spare release.

Something that just releases the ball on an end over end manner that goes pretty straight where the thumb kind of leads the fingers, reach down towards the target, do nothing fancy to it, throw the ball straight. From there, all you simply have to do is align your feet on the approach to a specific target on the lane to pick up the ten pin. That's the one we always start with. We'll have you start off at any point in the lane that you think will work, you aim at the middle arrow, you throw at the 10 pin. If you miss it left, you miss it right or you pick it up, it works out just fine to start with.

From there, we make adjustments until we do figure out that exact starting position on the approach to hit the fourth arrow and pick up the 10 pin. Once you do that, we just move your feet a few boards to the side, you have your six pin alignment, couple more boards you have your three pin alignment and then you do the exact same on the other side of the lane for the seventh pin. In the next few minutes we'll show you how to accomplish this. Okay so, the first thing to take note of when you're aligning it spares is how your foot actually aligns to the board. So for this one we'd like Pat to actually stand on the 20th board.

So the 20th board here would be at the big guys, the one right in the middle of the lane. This one, basically you want to align the board right in the middle of your foot when you say you're standing on that certain board. So right here, you see Pat's foot is right behind the big dot. So this is what we would call a standing on a 20th board and this is kind of the alignment terminology we'll use throughout the rest of this clip. Okay now, to shoot that 10 pin we had Pat start on board 35 with this foot.

This is where we started, his first spare attempt while looking at fourth arrow, he hit fourth arrow on this alignment and the ball ended up a little bit left of his target. So in order to get that ball towards the 10 pin he had to move his feet a couple of boards further left. So he moved two boards to the 37th board and then it's still saying with that fourth arrow alignment he was able to pick up that 10 pin. So this was kind of our starting point at the right side spares. So from there to pick up the subsequent six pin, moved his feet two boards to the right.

So let's put him back on board at 35 with this alignment here for 35 still trying to hit that fourth arrow, he was able to pick up a six pin. So here we have the 10 pin and the six pin out of the way. From this one we just moved two more boards to the right onto the 33rd board and again, staying with that same spare release, the same plastic ball on that same fourth arrow alignment, this also picked up the three thin as well as the nine pin so that's right behind the three pin. So with just this simple technique for the right side spares he now has a 10 foot alignment, a six pin alignment and an alignment that'll work for the three and the nine pins. Now going over to the seven pin side we stuck with that same fourth arrow alignment but then we started off on the 15th board.

That's the third dot in from the right. His first shot ended up left of target, went in the left gutter. So from here, we needed to move his feet a little bit to the left in order to change that angle so his ball will end up at the at the seven pin. So from here we've moved over three boards to the left onto the 18th board. So from the 18th board starting position, still looking at that fourth arrow with the spare ball spare release this converted to the seven pin.

So this is our starting point now for the left side spares. From here, moved his feet two more boards to the left which put them onto the 20th board and with this 20th board starting possession and that fourth arrow alignment this picked up the four pin. From here, we just kept on going in that same two board increments, slid two more boards to the left to the 22nd board. And with this 22nd board starting position, fourth arrow alignment, still spare release, spare ball, this picked up the two pin as well as the eight pin. So again, using that same system for the left side spares as the right side spares.

Finding our starting point for the seven pin, two board increments, we're able to cover the seven pin, the four pin as well as the two and the eight. All right, folks and there you go. In just a few short minutes, why taking some good notes, aligning yourself on the approach, a little bit of trial and error. You can develop a system where you can pick up all your single pen spares just based on moving your feet, keeping your alignment the same delivering that plastic ball as straight as you can end over end. Again, by just changing your alignment, taking good notes, you can increase your average.