Excerpt from:   http://strobeonline.ca/books.shtml

At a surface glance, almost every person can play Lawn Bowls. The game looks so easy. Being with a few friends and rolling a ball for an hour or so down a lawn to stop 30 metres away is obviously within the physical scope of everyone – or so it seems. As a competitive sport, Lawn Bowls is much more demanding on the players than that.

1. Flexibility of joints, muscles and tendons needs to be maintained or improved.
2. Rhythm of the delivery motion is very important in practice and competition.
3. Balance is required throughout the delivery motion. This improves the consistency of the results.
4. Strength endurance must be sufficient to cope with the weight of the bowls in the delivery arm and hand and for the bending and lifting of the players own body weight.
5. Stamina is required even for recreational players so that they can enjoy playing to the completion of their game.
6. Accurate eyesight with good depth perception might require corrective lenses to reduce the physical toll on the eyes that extended exposure on the green can create.

Lawn Bowls is categorized as an analectic, anaerobic physical activity in the Coaching of Sport hierarchy. That means that speed, strength and specialized cardiovascular fitness are not high on the list of requirements and should not be the focus of physical training for players looking to improve their competition results.

That is not to say that strength and speed play no part at all in Lawn Bowls. You must be strong enough to lift, hold and swing your bowl for every delivery. The ball we use weighs between 1200 and 1590 grams (2 lb. 10oz to 3 lb. 8oz). After 40 or so deliveries, that adds up to a good workout for the fingers, wrist and arm.

Here’s your smile for the day. View the video of a nine year old lawn bowling champ on an Australian TV show

Why Play Croquet