Thumb Timing by Susie Minshew

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Thumb Timing
by Susie Minshew | October 8, 2014
A thumbhole is pretty much just a complicating factor in our game. In
fact, if I consider challenging lane conditions,
tough crosses, or other difficulties in bowling, I’d still pick the
thumbhole as the most annoying.
One solution, of course, is not to use your thumb for gripping purposes
like Chuck Lande, Mike Miller, or Jason
Belmonte. That certainly takes care of any issues. Another effective
method for dealing with thumbhole fit annoyances
is to use interchangeable thumbs.
I think that interchangeable thumbs are almost as significant a
development in bowling as adding the
10th pin! Yes, I know, that seems pretty dramatic. Well, there is way
too much drama in sticking in thumbholes,
delay of game penalties while folks search for their tape applicator,
the tape itself, put tape in, take the tape out, store
the gross used tape on the console, and other thumbhole taping irritants.
Interchangeable thumb molds make most of that go away. There are still
the rare occurrences when folks struggle to
get the mold out, but it doesn’t happen very frequently. Problems with
interchangeable thumbs are unremarkable, in
my opinion, compared to the issues with traditional thumbholes. More on
that later….
If your thumb gets out of the ball at the right time with a quick, clean
exit, you can put lots of stuff on the ball. If that
exit is too early, too late, or just drags a bit getting out of the
hole, bad things happen. When the ball fits you properly,
it lets go of you! You don’t have to relax to let go or squeeze to hold on.
So what is good thumb timing?
Well, it’s your thumb coming out of the ball at the “right” time. In
order to put good motion on the ball, your thumb
must come out of its hole before the fingers come out of theirs. And not
only that, how long is “before”? A
nanosecond? half a second? two seconds? That may sound like a real duh
but it can be difficult to do consistently.
The longer the time between when your fingers come out of the ball and
when your thumb comes out, the more “stuff”
you can put on the ball. Or you could say, the longer your fingers are
in the ball without the thumb being in it, the more
stuff you can put on a shot. So, the coordination of a quick, clean
thumb exit followed by a synchronous finger exit is a
no pain, no injury, and repeatable way to deliver a powerful shot. Fit
is the chief way to assure repeatability.
You already know you can’t out-bowl a poor fit. There are three
important parameters when it comes to ball fit: pitch,
span, and hole size. Experienced ball artists, sometimes known as Pro
Shop Dude/ettes, usually feel they can give
away a little bit in hole size if the pitch and span are correct.
Pitch demystified
All holes can be drilled in your ball in two directions at once. Imagine
the ball is the earth and you are going to drill into
it. From wherever you are, you could drill the hole at an angle that
goes toward the South Pole AND toward Russia.
That’s two directions at once: east-west, laterally, horizontally (all
mean same thing in this regard) and north-south or
vertically. That’s all pitch is – the angle the hole is drilled in the ball.
This stuff used to drive me crazy. I didn’t understand it and couldn’t
find anyone who spoke enough kindergarten to
1 / 3
explain it to me. So, here’s what I found out that works with my simple
mind. If I hold my hand out with the palm
down, forward pitch is toward my palm and reverse pitch is away from the
palm. That’s true whether I’m drilling
a thumbhole or a finger hole.
Forward pitch in my fingers would mean that my fingertips are curled–
going toward the palm. Reverse pitch in the
fingers would mean my fingertips were pointed away from my palm. With
the thumbhole, forward pitch would mean
the hole was drilled toward my palm and reverse meant it wasn’t.
Finally, I get it!
Universal truths
The tighter the thumbhole, the faster you get out of it
It might not make much sense that a tight thumbhole will provide a
quick, clean exit, but it absolutely does. When you
can’t squeeze the ball, your thumb will come right out of the hole,
allowing for exquisite thumb timing.
Too much reverse pitch will also let your thumb fly out of the ball.
However, that type of quick exit doesn’t allow you to
put anything on the ball. It’s off your hand before you have time to do
anything! Reverse pitch itself is not a bad thing
but too much reverse is very common and definitely a problem. When the
cause of your thumb exiting the ball is a
correct fit, you get to do wonderful stuff to the ball at the bottom of
the swing, creating a quality REPEATABLE motion.
When that quick exit happens because of reverse pitch, you’ll be
grabbing it in the downswing or grabbing it at the
bottom of the swing to keep it from falling off too soon or some other
weird mistimed thing. What’s worse?
Grabbing it or missing the moment to grab it? The truth is that any
grabbing is bad. The bottom line is that a
tight thumbhole is a way good thing to have!
Reverse pitch allows for a fast exit and forward pitch delays it.
Often it will feel like you have a good fit and yet the ball falls off
your hand, going into instead of onto the lane – bad
idea unless you’re trying to kill your roll. That bonk can happen for a
few reasons: the hole is too big, you didn’t put
your thumb all the way in the hole, your span is too long, or you could
have too much reverse pitch. If you have too
much reverse, you can’t hold on to the ball long enough to create proper
thumb timing.
When there is too much reverse in the thumb, you have to squeeze the
ball to hang on to it. When you squeeze, you’re
going to either stick in the hole or drag your thumb out late. No one
wants to put the ball through the ceiling tiles! So,
off you go to get the Pro Shop Dude/ette to open up the thumbhole
because you’re sticking in it.
The bigger the hole, of course, the more room you have. The more room
you have, the more you need to squeeze or
knuckle the ball. The more you squeeze it, the bigger the hole needs to
be. It’s a vicious circle. When the hole is the
right size, however, you not only don’t need to knuckle it, you can’t.
If you’ve had reverse in the thumbhole for awhile, you might want to
reduce it gradually to improve your release
dramatically. To reduce your reverse pitch in a manageable way, try
moving your thumb pitch more forward in
sixteenth or eighth inch increments. This gradual adjustment can make
the change much easier. You may not even
notice although you’ll definitely see a difference in ball motion and
callus reduction. It’s possible your span may need to
be shortened with this adjustment.
Forward pitch
Since forward pitch usually keeps your digit in the hole longer, it
makes sense that too much forward pitch in the
thumbhole can cause you to “hang up” in the ball. To cleanly exit a ball
that has forward pitch, your hand has to be
totally relaxed. The more relaxed you are, the more stuff on the ball.
Many highly skilled players use either minimal
2 / 3
reverse pitch or some forward pitch for those reasons. This allows them
to really get a lot on the ball with very little
effort.
Too much forward pitch in your fingers frequently causes elbow pain or
the pain that radiates through the back of the
wrist or the inside of your hand. There can also be a burning sensation
on the fingertips. Some people think that, like a
gunslinger, they should have to blow on their fingertips to cool them
off. Not so. Calluses or bruises on the tips of the
fingers are a bad thing. They can be caused by too much forward pitch or
by grips that are too tight. Some people
don’t want any reverse in their fingers because they think it can cause
a loss of rotation. Bunk. Finger pitch doesn’t
cause rotation; hand action does that.
Interchangeable thumbs
There are many different brands on the market. Here are some questions
to ask and things you should know or
consider as you do your due diligence in researching this for your game:
Most of these molds use either compression or a vacuum to stay in the
hole. What is the success ratio of the particular
mold you are evaluating? Do you know anyone who has one? What has their
experience been? Has it ever failed to
stay in the hole or slipped out? Does it require a tool to use? What if
you lose the tool? Is there any other way to get
the mold in or out? How expensive is a replacement?
I believe you should have more than one size mold. If you shrink or
swell a lot or bowl in different parts of the country
you might need your giant thumb mold, your medium mold, your February
mold, your zero humidity mold, and your
Baton Rouge humidity mold.
Should your spare ball have one? Some people don’t feel they need to
take the time to remove the mold from the strike
ball, install it in the spare ball, and then take it back out of the
spare ball to put it back in the strike ball before every
shot. So, have a separate set of your molds just for your spare ball.
It’s the ball you throw the most anyway.
Do very thorough research before deciding which thumb mold to use. I
think thumb molds are a no-brainer, particularly
for people who shrink and swell or who have sensitive dry skin/wet skin
issues. As David Hasty says, “An
interchangeable thumb makes the thumbhole a source of confidence rather
than a distraction.”

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