An instructor sheds some light on the sport of curling

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An instructor sheds some light on the sport of curling image

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Answers by Adam Endicott, curling since 2010, level 1 USCA instructor

Curling is not a physically demanding sport, or at least it does not appear so. Wouldn't it be nice to have national teams mixed up? Are there mixed curling teams?

Curling is much more physically demanding than it first appears. Sweeping in particular is highly demanding. You need to be in excellent shape to effectively sweep for a full game. At the top levels, front end players (leads and seconds who do the majority of the sweeping) especially are excellent athletes who do year-round cardiovascular and weight training. There's actually a quite good book written by John Morris and Dean Gemmell called "Fit to Curl" if you're interested in curling-specific fitness.

The difference that strong, fit sweepers can make is quite large. Think about it this way: Every foot your sweepers can carry a stone beyond where it would have traveled on its own is an extra foot of buffer in how precise your throwing weight has to be. The sweeping is a huge part of the reason why the top skips can draw to the button seemingly every time. If they throw it within 10 feet or so on championship quality ice, their sweepers will get it the rest of the way, exactly to where it needs to be.

Beyond sweeping, the main physical difference is in throwing high-weight takeout shots. There is some advantage to being able to throw the rock rather hard in certain situations. If you have stronger legs, your leg drive out of the hack can be that much stronger, leading to more speed. More generally, though, stronger legs mean less effort pushing yourself out of the hack to throw a given weight. If you don't need to throw every ounce of muscle you have into your leg drive, you can slide out under more control, so that your accuracy doesn't suffer.

There is a mixed curling discipline, however; two, in fact. Full mixed teams are made up of two men and two women. The throwing order must alternate between men and women. There are national and world championships for mixed curling, although the events don't receive near as much attention as the men's and women's competitions.

There's also a relatively new discipline called mixed doubles which is one male and one female. The game is quite different, and there are special rules for it. There is a mixed doubles world championship event. Some countries hold national championships, others select representatives. There is talk of adding mixed doubles to the Olympics, so interest in that discipline has picked up lately.

Is all the yelling in curling really necessary?

Yes and no.

Most of the yelling is communication between the skip and sweepers, telling them to sweep or stop sweeping. So the communication is definitely necessary, but continuous yelling often isn't.

Most curling facilities I've been in get quite loud when multiple games are happening at the same time. You can end up in a situation where all the skips are competing with each other so that their sweepers can hear their calls. In that sense, yelling is often necessary because it's the only way to be heard.

However, many skips will keep yelling their instruction even after their sweepers have heard, understood and acted on the call. In my opinion, this usually isn't necessary. Sometimes you keep yelling to emphasize how important this particular sweep call is, so occasionally it makes sense, but I think most skips just keep yelling for no particular reason. This, of course, adds to the general noise level on the ice, causing all the other skips to yell even louder to be heard. So you can definitely get a feedback loop going there pretty easily.

How is curling scored?

To clarify around the edges of Charlie's answer, a stone is considered to be in the house and therefore eligible to score if any part of it is touching any part of the outermost circle. More technically, the stone is potentially in a scoring position if it is less than 6 feet from the center of the house. A special measuring device may be used for close calls on this. The device is basically a 6-foot-long pole that can be set in the center of the house. It is then moved in a circle near the stone; if it touches the stone, the stone is in.

If two opposing stones are determined to be equally close to the center, neither stone counts for scoring since to score, a stone must be closer than the opponent's stone.

Do you have any advice for a newbie?

I think it's important to get to know the people in your club. It will make the experiences have more enjoyable, and there will certainly be several people who will be willing to help you out as you go.

As far as the curling itself, I've been teaching beginners for the past year or so, and the most important part of the delivery is balance. Keep things simple and try to find a repeatable delivery where you're nice and balanced. Everything else will work from there. Also, keep your eyes up throughout your delivery, looking at the target the whole way.

If you find you like the sport, definitely invest in a pair of curling shoes. They'll give you much better support than a slip-on slider, and also better traction when sweeping.

Good curling!

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