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by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.
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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Bowling for Wellness: How To Reform At Least One Sedentary Sport To Combat the Obesity Epidemic

Wednesday February 18, 2004

More than 95 million people enjoy bowling in 90 countries spanning six continents! Bowling is one of the largest participatory sports in the world. There is even a museum and a hall of fame devoted to bowling in St. Louis, Missouri! In the 1930's, Sir Flinders Petrie, a British anthropologist, discovered a collection of objects in a child's grave in Egypt that he concluded were used in a crude form of bowling. On that basis, bowling enthusiasts trace the ancestry of their game to 3200 BC. (Early man and woman no doubt ran like hell when chased by large animals--does this mean the ancestry of track and field traces back millions of years?) *

Henry VIII Bowling I am a former pin boy. In my brief part-time job career, I dodged thousands of wooden pins while crouched above a narrow walkway. In my pin boy heyday, I could gather and rearrange a set of pins and clear out the pit in about ten seconds. This gave me several moments, maybe five seconds, before another bowling ball would rocket into my handiwork, sending pins every which way. I estimate I failed to dodge a grand total of about six pins over the course of my pin-setting days in the early 50's in the bowels of the General Electric Switchgear plant in SW Philadelphia (but none did any permanent damage.) Thus, I feel I have the credentials to claim to know a thing or two about bowling, though I have not had much interest in playing the game. As a wellness promoter, I'm aware that the sport does not provide much exercise, at least for bowlers. It used to provide plenty for us pin boys, before the alleys were automated half a century ago. (In case you are wondering, no, there were no pin girls in my day--females had better sense than to want this kind of work.)

Since 74 percent of Americans are overweight and a third are obese and a lot of these heavyweights bowl, perhaps bowlers would welcome an opportunity to design more exercise into their favorite sport. (A deficiency of exercise is also seen in cart-riding golfers, an even more popular low heart rate activity, but that's for another day.) Besides the health benefits, new features of the game might make the sport more interesting for those who just go along to watch. In any event, here are a few new twists that bowling authorities might consider to transform the sport into a better exercise routine.

Basically, I would leave bowling itself alone, but encourage teams of bowlers to develop new methods for scoring contests. Keeping everything in the same location (and possibly adding to the profit margins of bowling alley proprietors), treadmills and/or stationary bikes would be installed in the viewing area of the alleys. The players would run on treadmills or ride the bikes when not tossing balls down the alleys!

Isn't that terrific? Scores would depend on such factors (all to be decided by the national bowling hall of fame and other top officials in St. Louis in consultation with exercise organizations) as exercise duration, incline and intensity on the machines. The experts can decide point values to credit and, at the end of an hour or whenever, as agreed, scores would be totaled. The old time method (pins felled) would be supplemented by scores based on treadmill/ bike performances. Then awards could be given, but the best of all rewards would be the improved fitness levels of participants.

That's it, that's my idea. Do you like it? What's not to like? Aerobic bowling. A sport for the fit, for the future. Golf could be next.

Who knows? Maybe this will get me nominated to the bowling hall of fame.

*Data and graphic courtesy of the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame.

Domain: physical
Subdomain: exercise and fitness

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