What Weight Bowling Ball Should I Use?

For beginners just getting into the sport of bowling, choosing the right ball can feel like an overwhelming task. Looking at the technical specs for a bowling ball starts to look an awful lot like your high school physics textbook with descriptions like “friction coefficient” and “rate of gyration”. There are a lot of considerations that go into picking the best bowling ball for your game, but for now, we’ll stick to answering just one: what weight bowling ball should I use?

The question of how heavy should your bowling ball be is often the first one that new bowlers ask when considering a ball to pick, and it applies not only to shopping for your own personal bowling ball, but also when bowling with house balls (the bowling balls offered at the bowling alley for casual bowlers who don’t have their own). So what weight bowling ball should you use? To answer that question, let’s look a little at the physics of bowling.

The Physics of Bowling

This may come as a surprise to beginners, but bowling as a sport involves quite a bit of physics. It factors into everything from the design of the bowling balls themselves all the way to the approach that players take on release. We won’t go into the nitty gritty of bowling physics right now, but for the case of choosing what weight of bowling ball you should use, there are some basics for beginners that you should know. The most important is the formula to calculate the force of a ball as it hits the pins: mass x acceleration.

Because our aim is to knock as many bowling pins down as possible, we naturally want to increase the amount of force that the bowling ball exerts on the pins as much as we can. This means that we need to either increase the mass of the bowling ball, or the acceleration. This is why the most common adage when it comes to choosing which bowling ball to use is to choose the heaviest weight that you can comfortably handle.

What weight can I handle?

Bowling balls come in a variety of weights, from six pounds at the very lightest weight all the way to sixteen pounds at the heaviest end of the spectrum. But those 6-pound bowling balls are often favored by children, not adults. So how heavy should your bowling ball be?

A good starting point is to look at balls that are about 10% of your body weight. Most people will find that weight to be the most comfortable. If you spend a lot of time in the gym, however, this rule may go out the window. If you follow the 10% rule and the ball is just too light for you, just move up to a heavier ball. In contrast, if the ball feels too heavy, you can simply switch to a lighter ball.

Typically, you want to go for the heaviest ball that you feel comfortable using, but there are a number of reasons why you might be better off with a lighter ball. For example, bowlers with back injuries or other physical disabilities might find that it’s more comfortable for them to choose a lighter ball, and certain play styles that focus more on ball acceleration and control over weight might prioritize lighter balls, as well.

How do I choose?

While understanding the physics of bowling is helpful, and knowing the general ranges for most players gives you a good starting point, ultimately the best way to know what weight bowling ball you should use is to experiment with different sizes. See how a lighter ball affects your game versus a heavier one. Do you feel like you have more control with one over the other? Do you like the way it feels? How does it affect your game overall?

These are questions you can’t answer without going out and bowling, so that’s what you need to do. Take advantage of the house balls offered at bowling alleys to play around with different weights to see which ones feel best for you, or if you have friends who bowl, consider asking to borrow one of their balls to see how it plays for you.

Once you have a general idea of how the weight affects your game, you’ll be able to tell which weight feels most comfortable for you and you’ll be on your way to buying your own personal bowling ball.There is no right answer to the question of ‘What weight bowling ball should you use?’ except the ball that helps you play the best game for yourself.