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Dryland training for brushing footwork
This article is a revision to an article that originally was published on the Ontario Curling Council website on 11 June 2016. In the Curling Canada High Performance Program coaching manual, under “Technical Development: Sweeping”, you will find the following quote attributed to Darryl Horne: Without doubt sweeping is the most under-coached, under-practiced, under-appreciated, and under-rated aspect of the game. In my experience in working with U15, U18, and U20 teams over the past 14 seasons, a common development issue with athletes is in mastering the biomechanics necessary for brushing effectively, that is insuring that the forces the athlete develops through the brush handle are optimal to the task. To assist athletes with learning the correct footwork for brushing in the closed stance, in the spring of 2016 I built a “footwork trainer” (see video at right) that athletes could use through the spring and summer in order to gain sufficient speed, stamina, and muscle memory in order to achieve
Mapping delivery split times to hog-to-hog times
In a previous article, John Newhook and I described ten reasons why the use of split times can be problematic for a team. Using interval, or “split” times, can benefit the delivering team because an interval time provides a proxy measurement for the velocity of a curling stone at the point of release. With an interval time, the two brushers can utilize the time to assist with their weight judgement, and the delivering player can use a split time to assist their delivery with respect to weight control. One of the complications that we mentioned was that there is no straightforward, easy-to-compute mapping between split times and hog-to-hog times. Not only are interval times subject to user error, but the mapping between a split and a hog-to-hog time depends to a significant extent on a particular athlete’s delivery technique (rate of deceleration during the slide phase, and/or an accompanying arm extension, to name but two variables), ice conditions (the coefficient
High-performance brushing in the open stance
This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on the Ontario Curling Council website on 4 October 2017. This is joint work with John Newhook of Dalhousie University. We would like to thank Fraser Reid, former Canadian university champion with Wilfrid Laurier University, and Paige Bown of Team Dominique Vivier, for their demonstrations of brushing in the open stance. As coaches, we ordinarily teach brushing in the open stance to novices. For novice players, the open stance is considerably safer than alternative tactics. In the open stance, the player faces the skip while brushing and the feet are both facing forward, making the open stance much easier to learn for beginning players. Karlee Burgess and brushing partner Emily Zacharias brush a draw during the 2023 Manitoba provincial playdowns. Both athletes are in the closed stance. Photo credit: Connie Laliberte. Before ‘Broomgate’ in 2015, the Rules of Curling stipulated that any brushing motion had to take place fully
The importance of the preshot routine
This article was originally published on 23 March 2016 on the Ontario Curling Council website. Last week, during my own club game, I was reminded in the 3rd end why a preshot routine is critical to a sound curling delivery. With my first stone of the 3rd end, I became distracted while cleaning my stone. Then, rather than placing the stone precisely in front of my hack foot with the correct handle orientation, I had left it straddling the center line. Then I got in the hack as usual, but with the stone in the wrong place. I recall thinking that this wasn’t feeling right, but no matter, I’d throw it anyway rather than stand up and start over. Big mistake. Without completing my preshot routine as usual, I simply wasn’t ready to throw. Predictably, I missed. Consistency and the preshot routine In way that’s very similar to golf, adhering to preshot routine in curling is essential for competitive play.
Setup – The importance of the slide foot position
This article is joint work with John Newhook of Dalhousie University. Routinely, one of the delivery elements we encounter frequently with young athletes is the inconsistent placement of their slide foot when in the setup position prior to beginning the delivery. In the delivery it is critical that the slide foot be positioned in a heel-toe orientation relative to the hack foot so as to permit the athlete to squat without twisting their hips, which leads to a multitude of potential problems that must be “fixed” in order to release the stone correctly on the line of delivery. This article (click on the image at right to open the PDF), originally written in 2014, documents the effects of a misplaced slide foot in the setup position. We are grateful to former Wilfrid Laurier varisty athlete Evie Fortier of Ottawa who acted as our model for the photographs included in the article. To better illustrate the issues that can occur with
Curling, university, and the student-athlete
This article was originally published on the Ontario Curling Council website on 6 August 2016. Come September many active U18 curlers will make their way to Universities and Colleges across Ontario to begin their university careers as student-athletes. The majority of these student-athletes are already experienced players, many with several seasons of competitive play behind them and looking forward to continuing their pursuit of high-performance play by trying out for their respective school teams. And that is the subject of this post: what to expect from your school’s curling program when you arrive on campus as a freshman student on Labour Day. University curling in Canada is very competitive, and the calibre of play is high. At the university level, teams must consistently shoot in the 80-85% range in order to be successful. This past season, the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks men’s curling team earned the right to represent Canada at the 2017 World University Games in Almaty, Kazakhstan by winning