Professional Bowling: A Personal Reflection on Participation and Enrichment

Running head: PROFESSIONAL BOWLING
Independent Project Bowling
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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PROFESSIONAL BOWLING
According to Foubert-Samier et al. (2012), all human beings engage in occupation
either for professional gain or for personal gain. The following assignment is about my own
reflection of personal participation in professional bowling as a part of my leisure time
occupation. The reflection will mostly highlight the reasons behind why I choose bowling
above other games; how it enriched my life and the process, which I went through to learn
this new occupation. I will also try to highlight how I located the resources or the tools,
which are required to undertake the occupation, my learning experience, my personal
thoughts and how this occupation helped to fulfill my personal goals and the skills, which I
have developed eventually while taking part in professional bowling.
Professional Bowling as Occupation
As a 41 years old man with a family of three kids, I have many financial
responsibilities on my shoulders. My daily work profession as a phone technician was
gradually increasing my sedentary mode of life and along with monotony. I was gradually
gaining weight and I was slowly becoming addicted towards smoking in order to fight against
my stress. Therefore, when the idea came to engage in some new occupation, which will
bring new excitement in my otherwise monotonous life and will cut-short my sedentary
period, I choose bowling. I opted for a sports occupation because since childhood I was
addicted towards sports and used to love playing games (soccer) however, as I grew old,
responsibility increased and I became workaholic with no time for myself. So, selection for a
leisure occupation will help to get back my past fulfilled days. However, my selection of

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PROFESSIONAL BOWLING
bowling as a new learning activity in the midst of other popular sports like cricket, rugby,
soccer, badminton and tennis was mostly driven by age bracket and the date back history of
bowling in sports. The sport bowling as mainly gained popularity under the influence of
German immigrants (International Bowling Museum, 2017). Since I was fascinated about the
history since childhood, I readily connected with the traditional history of bowling and opted
for the same. Moreover, according to Gilmour (2012), participation in the group activities
helps in social inclusion along while strengthening communications skills. Since my job role
offers gamut public interaction, bowling participation will help me to refine my interpersonal
skills. Bowling also suited best for me keeping into consideration of my age, as it does not
demand rigorous physical activity in comparison to other popular sports. Moreover, bowling
is not a seasonal sport and can be played throughout the year while staying indoors.
Therefore, via taking into consideration about these above mentioned facts, I opted to
bowling.
How bowling enriched my life
For the majority of people, sports is just like any other silly game or past time but for
me bowling became a way to connect with others and to gauge my interpersonal relationship
skills. While taking part in bowling and learning the process, I came closer to several groups
of people from different communities and it helped me to gain detailed insight about different
people from differed ethnic group living in US and their way of thinking in life. This in turn
helped me to gain my skills in cultural competence. It also helped me to indulge in healthy

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PROFESSIONAL BOWLING
competition. Nailing the art of bowling and taking active participation helped me to improve
my overall health. According to Eime et al. (2013), overall health incorporates the physical,
metal and social domains of life. Adapting skills of professional bowling helped me to
increase my performance skills like motor skills. It increased my hand eye co-ordination and
physical endurance and thereby making myself physically fit. Eime et al. (2013) further
opined that taking active participation in the physical activity as sports help a person to
address comprehensive domains of health including social health. Apart from increasing my
social participation, taking active participation in bowling advocated my leisure time while
giving a wide range of health related benefits.
Process I went through to learn the bowling
The main process, which I went through before becoming agile in the field of bowling
is, a mandatory stretching program and other training activities. First, I used go through 15
minutes warm up. This helped me to activate my otherwise sedentary muscles. After the
warm up sessions, there used to occur the main training for bowling. This training mainly
involved stretching of different parts of the body, which are required during bowling. The
main area of target for flexibility and stretching exercises include wrists, arms, upper back,
upper legs and shoulders. These were basic stretching skills, which help to gain flexibility of
my muscles, and prevented me from being injured through muscle cramps. Flexibility gained
via stretching helped me to maximize my bowling skills. Apart from gaining the physical
flexibility and endurance, I gradually learn to grip, hold and lift the ball. When my fingers