Technique

Could you describe your delivery in detail? Could you justify every component of that delivery? Do you know how to protect your delivery fundamentals from competitive pressure? Do you understand the importance of a pre-shot routine? Do you know what is the most reliable part of your body to establish the line of delivery of a stone? Do you understand the reasons to wear grippers on both feet when brushing? Should there be a difference in brushing technique between take-outs and draws, and if so, why?

These are some of the questions the coaches at the Golden Hawks Curling High Performance Centre can help you answer.

Specific topics on various aspects of delivery and brushing technique are outlined below, some available at this site and others available elsewhere.

Setup

• Glenn Paulley of the Golden Hawks HPC draws parallels between the pre-shot routine in curling to that in golf by reviewing Bob Rotella’s book Golf is Not a Game of Perfect from a curling perspective, in an article entitled “The Importance of the Pre-shot Routine“.

Delivery

• In Delivering the Curling Stone 101, Bill Tschirhart describes the mechanics of the no-lift curling delivery, and contrasts the skills it requires with the back-swing delivery. An essay from Bill’s A Pane in the Glass series.
• In this article entitled Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect, Bill Tschirhart discusses the art of practicing in the sport of curling. An essay from Bill’s A Pane in the Glass series.
• In this 2009 Master of Science thesis from the University of Wisconsin, Ellanora Kraemer studies the curling deliveries of junior players at the US National Championships to provide normative data for the angles of knees, hips, and trunks during the delivery. A trunk angle of approximately 45 degrees is argued to be optimal.
• In The Window of Velocity, Bill Tschirhart contrasts the back-swing and no-back-swing deliveries from the perspective of weight control. To best control the “window of velocity”, Bill recommends that athletes use the fastest Teflon slider that they can control. Essay #42 in Bill Tschirhart’s A Pane in the Glass series.
• In this essay, entitled Straight, Simple and Silent, one of Bill Tschirhart’s A Pane in the Glass series of articles, Bill analyzes three critical aspects of a quality curling delivery: the ability to slide on or parallel to the line of delivery, the lack of extraneous movement, and the importance of the grip and release of the stone.
• Bill Tschirhart discusses the coaching points for video analysis of a no-back-swing curling delivery in this essay, entitled Video Analysis: A Primer. Essay number 3 from Bill’s A Pane in the Glass series.
• In this essay entitled You Have the Power, Bill Tschirhart documents the eight sources of power one can exploit to produce effective take-out weight. An essay from Bill’s A Pane in the Glass series.
• Eye Dominance: Fact or Fiction is an essay by Bill Tschirhart describing the effect of eye dominance on a curler’s ability to throw on the line of delivery, and the importance of understanding it by both the athlete and their coach. An essay from Bill Tschirhart’s A Pane in the Glass series.
• In this potpourri of an essay entitled Bits and Bites, former National Training Centre coach Bill Tschirhart discusses sliders, grippers, brushes, and the playing of extra ends. An essay from Bill’s A Pane in the Glass series.
• In this essay, entitled The Technical Double Cross, former National Training Centre coach Bill Tschirhart looks closely at the importance of the number of rotations applied to a curling stone, and how variances in delivery amongst the members of a rink can lead to all sorts of tactical problems. Essay #44 from Bill’s A Pane in the Glass series.
• In this essay, Bill Tschirhart looks at the release of a curling stone in detail, and the importance of a consistent release across all the members of a rink. Team Technical Checkup is essay #45 from Bill’s A Pane in the Glass series.
• In this article by Bill Tschirhart, entitled “The Physicist, the Exercise Physiologist, and the Coach“, Bob Comartin of the CCA Performance Enhancement team discusses the physiology and technical mechanics of the delivery with Jerome Gazdewich, a Level 3 CCA-certified instructor from the Pointe Claire Curling Club in Pointe Claire, Quebec (a suburb of Montreal). The article gives some interesting insight into the mechanics of adapting a delivery to take-out weight, particularly with junior girls. The bulk of the material concerns precisely how additional force is generated out of the hack to deliver a stone with take-out weight, and provides some solid evidence for why it is important to keep the toe of the hack foot from contacting the surface of the ice prior to starting the delivery motion.

Brushing

• John L. Bradley of the Department of Education, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland, summarizes the physiology of brushing in this article entitled The sports science of curling: A practical review, published in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine in 2009.
• The United States Curling Association Level II Instructor’s Manual contains an article by Bill Tschirhart entitled “Brushing 101″.
• Glenn Paulley gives an overview of the technique of brushing, outlining the differences between the open and closed positions.

Equipment

• Glenn Paulley gives an overview of the wealth of curling shoe sliders currently available from the various manufacturers including Balance Plus, Asham’s, and Goldline.