{"id":6800,"date":"2026-06-17T12:39:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T16:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennpaulley.ca\/curling\/?p=6800"},"modified":"2026-06-17T12:40:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T16:40:01","slug":"high-performance-brushing-in-the-open-stance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennpaulley.ca\/curling\/2026\/06\/17\/high-performance-brushing-in-the-open-stance\/","title":{"rendered":"High-performance brushing in the open stance"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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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.<\/em><\/p>

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.<\/em><\/p>

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.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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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.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Before ‘Broomgate’ in 2015, the Rules of Curling stipulated that any brushing motion had to take place fully across the face of the stone, and ‘corner sweeping’, or sweeping only a portion of a stone’s running band, was explicitly prohibited. At the time, brushing in the closed stance (see photograph above) was usually preferred by competitive players. This was because the thinking at the time was that an athlete could generate greater vertical force through the brush in the closed stance, particularly during the “pull” portion of the stroke, with the body hinged at the waist. With a flat back, accompanied by optimal closed footwork, the athlete’s chest is over the brush head throughout the stroke. While the pull portion of the stroke is always weaker than the push, an accomplished athlete can still generate vertical force numbers during the pull phase of the brushing stroke in the neighbourhood of 20%-25% of their body weight. A typical normalized mean force (mean force in kilograms over the entire bout, divided by the athlete\u2019s body weight) for an accomplished female player would be 45% and higher. The highest normalized mean force I have measured for a female player brushing closed is 53%.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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One might well ask why the closed stance is relevant today, since many competitive teams utilize a single brusher who brushes from a position behind the stone (see image at left). There are at least two reasons:<\/p>