I was curious what some of you do to help decrease the swelling of your thumb. Unless my hand is pretty cold to start off with, my thumb is sometimes very hard to get in my ball. By pushing in and out a couple times it seems to make it better or I sometimes have to put my thumb in with a plastic bag to make it feel open. Eventually my thumb fits and I can bowl my league, however I usually find myself hovering near the ball return all night in order to cool my hand off and I try to drink water while I play. Now while you may be thinking my drilling is wrong, I also have to mention that I fall out of the ball at release sometimes as though the hole is too big. So I tend to go through this frustrating mix of swelling and I was curious if there was any other advice out there anyone has. Thanks in advance!

I do 2 things to reduce swelling every single time i bowl. First off, kep your bowling hand elevated in the air with the thumb facing up. This will keep the blood from rushing to that part of the hand. Secondly, if it is swolen and it wont get into the hole, ill put my shirt over the thumb hold and shove my thumb in. Compresses the thumb down to a good fit.
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"Strike for show, spare for dough"
Im A Hammer Head 100%
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Now this is a question that I used to suffer with.

I found that :

My thumbhole was too BIG and it accually caused me to grip the ball. This meant the next time I bowled that my thumb was still way big and too tight to fit in the hole. I have found that its the gripping of the ball that made my thumb constantly swell.

I now use very tight oval holes which has meant no more gripping (I use Hyperfix tape on the back of my thumb just in case it catches). Thus a smaller thumb. I now have very little thumb swelling problems.

Tricks I have tried in the past were the smaller thumbslug between shots.
Cleaning my thumb with alcohol prior to bowling which seemed to remove some of the fluid from my thumb.
Slick tape (Teflon)in the back of the thumbhole.
I even made my own thumb stalls out of LYCRA that were tight on my thumb and bowled with them.

I had the same problem with dropping the ball occasionally as you do too before changing to a smaller more oval thumbhole. Thats what gave me my final solution.

I have actually made my own shaped thumbholes by adding Epoxy to the back of the thumbhole to tighten the hole and then shaping it to size. Longwinded but it seems to have solved my problems. No more gripping, no more swelling.
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Happy go lucky bowler from the UK.
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I had a swelling issue and I was going nuts trying everything till it was suggested to enlarge my thumb hole slightly and use the Vise Hada Patch on the back of my thumb. Now the swelling is done I come out of the ball much cleaner and the tape comes in 4 different speeds and are colored differently and also numbered not to mention NO MORE TAPE!!!
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X's for show, /'s for dough
ROTO GRIP  KING OF THEM ALL