This article is joint work with John Newhook of Dalhousie University. In curling, a point, or “dot”, laser is (nearly) essential to the setup of several drills, most commonly the “gauntlet drill”. In the gauntlet drill, the laser acts as the “target broom” to which the athlete throws their stone, and at the same time […]
Using lasers in curling Read More »
This article is joint work with Dr. John Newhook, Dean of Engineering, Dalhousie University. In a previous article, entitled “Dryland Training for Closed Brushing Footwork”, we described a simple, wheeled apparatus that an athlete could use to practice closed brushing footwork in the off-season. The closed footwork trainer assists an athlete in (1) keeping their
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Since publishing the first article about the footwork trainer in June, a number of people have asked for more detailed specifications and additional photographs so that they can construct their own. The trainer itself is simple to construct. The parts list is as follows: two 30-inch wood pieces of 2×6 glued and screwed together using
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This past week, on September 15 2016, Dalhousie University engineering students Devon Hartlen and Katherine Adye presented their team’s design for a sophisticated curling “smart broom” to the 2016 Engineers Nova Scotia Annual General Meeting in Halifax, by invitation after the students’ presentation at the CEEA annual student design competition. The project team included students
Dalhousie students develop new smartbroom prototype Read More »
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. I could not agree more. With nearly three years of smart-broom testing of bantam- and junior-aged players
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Author’s note: This is joint work with John Newhook, Department of Civil and Resource Engineering, Dalhousie University. Over the past two years I have had the privilege to work on a number of different engineering initiatives related to the sport of curling. One of these is the development of an instrumented curling broom, a device
The research behind instrumented curling brooms Read More »
During a curling delivery the trailing (hack) leg can produce such significant drag that it can impact the ability of the curler to achieve what coach Bill Tschirhart calls an optimal “window of velocity” during the slide, and hence can impact both the speed and accuracy of the curling stone. Consequently many curling shoes arrive
Applying toe-dip to a curling shoe Read More »
