I did it again. That's right, a 3rd 400 series.  And I'm supposed to be a scratch bowler.  Also, competed in a scratch tourney last weekend and the problems continued.  I made about 15% of my spares, it was just really awful.  I could feel my arm just going all over in the swing.  It was ugly.  Then, after the 3rd 400 last night, I'm like, "that's it, I quit!" broke my bag, got soooo angry, told my coach I was done and he could sell all my equipment blah blah blah.  Walked around for about 15 minutes, cooled down and decided to practice some.  The coach was still there and he stuck around to work with me.  He was watching my swing every shot, and it kept wrapping around me every time.  Then, bout 20 minutes into it he's like, "your second step (left foot) is about 6 to 8 inches to the left of your center of gravity.  You are opening everything up with that step.  See if walking straight might help a little."  So I'm like, ok.  A few minutes earlier he told me that I should stop practicing unless he's there with me so that I don't further ingrain these bad habits into me.  I try walking straight one time and he's like "Eureaka!"  That was it, my swing was on line, my hand didn't come around to the side of the ball, my accuracy was back, balance was better...  It was so relieving to find that out.  I was feeling so hopeless.  He made me throw about 20 more like that and told me that all I need to do for the next couple months is practice that.  My swing is good, it's online, better power and leverage.  He said there wouldn't be a magical thing to fix it, and it could take months until we work it out; but then there it was.  One step, all I had to do was align my foot-work and everything fell back into place.  Not that I'm done yet, of course I still need work, but it really helped alot.  I went in to practice today, and my first 3 games I made 10 of 10 spares with a 696 pinfall.  3 clean games out of the gate!  With the problems I've had with spares lately, that was a huge boost.  The 4th and final game I had back-to-back 8-10 splits, and flagged a 10 pin.  I'm not too anxious for next Wednesday, I'm not sure if this is one of those "flash in the pan" fixes that doesn't get to the root of the problem (I get those sometimes) but Paul feels great about it and so do I.  So, hopefully next week will be a return to form from earlier this season, as I set the highest average on the first week (it was a fluke, of course) and in the last month I've dropped my average 15 pins and might be dead last.  I hope I can push it back up into the 200 range before it's all over, and a couple big weeks should help.

I did it again.  I had another 400 series this week.  I know why too:  Once I get into a slump, or have accuracy problems, I try really really hard to hit my target.  The problem is, my coach always says, is that "muscles are not nearly as accurate or predictable as gravity."  So, the harder I try, the farther I get from my fundamentals... In this case a free arm-swing.  It's interesting how, as I get better at this sport, that smaller problems in my mechanics/delivery have a larger effect.  A year ago, somthing like this wouldn't have changed as much about my game because there was so much going on that was wrong.  Like, if you are bleeding from 1000 cuts adding one more won't make much of a difference.  I stayed and practiced for a couple hours afterwards and did ALOT better than I did during league.  I just hope I can carry the confidence into next week and remember to just let gravity and the ball do their thing.  The more I can get out of the way, the better.  Fortunately we did manage to take 5 or 7 points as my counterpart on the other team had a rough night as well.  That gives us a 12-9 record 3 weeks into the 3rd quarter.  We've got our work cut out for us.