Meaningful practice

genou.jpg The development of a curling team lies to a great extend on the quality of the on ice practice. Two factors allow the optimal development of a curler or a team : QUANTITY and QUALITY.

QUANTITY :

The quantity is an easy factor to control. More the curlers throw rocks, the better is the improvement. For example, an athlete that trhows thousands of rocks will be more performant that one throwing fifty or so. In short, a curler should throw as many rocks as possible and ideally throws rocks on a daily basis.



QUALITY :

The quality of a practice is as much important as the quantity but implies much more complexity. Therefore that is the factor on wihch I will bring my attention for this article.

The on ice practice should contain 3 steps : 1 - Technical training; 2 - Shot making; 3 - Mini-games. (Of course, the practice begins with a warm up and finishes with a cool down where stretching is important)

1. TECHNICAL TRAINING : (20 to 40 minutes)

The technical training consists of bringing the concentration of the curlers on one aspect of the throwing or brushing technique : Grip, Stance, Back swing, Forward swing, Slide, Release, Follow through, Brush holding, Brush positionning, Brushing movement.

To be effective :

a) The coach has to know very well all the technical aspects of throwing and brushing.
b) The coach has to know the level of each athlete he's involve with.
c) The season should progress from simplicity to complexity.This means proceed with easy and simple things at the beginning of the season and progress to more difficult tasks as the season goes on. For example, throw open draws and open hits at the beginning of the season and throw come around draws and come around hits later in the season.
d) Each on ice practice should allow the curlers to improve only one or two technical factors and it is a basic needs to stick to these one or two factors. It is fairly easy to improve one or two technical factors during one technical practice if one concentrate only on these one or two factors.Too many curlers and/or coaches go on ice without clear planning and than simply throw rocks ; as a result, after the first rocks thrown one start paying attention to the line of delivery, after the 2nd rock it is the release, after the 3rd could be the weight and so on…When concentrating on many technical factors at once, we have less control on these factors and we gain less improvements. It's a simple idea, just improve one factor at a time and after twenty practices or so we will have improved thirty or fourty technical factors (of course we will have came back a few times on each factor).

The following graphic shows how this principle improve a curler or a team. Briefly, at the beginning of the curling season, the technical factors are simples : Grip, Stance, Back swing for draws, Forward swing for draws, Back swing for hits, Forward swing for hits. However, we will move quite rapidly to more complex factors like : Slide on the axis (line of throw), Rock on the axis, Release, Follow through. At the beginning of the season, each factor is taken separately and when we control many factors, we start to join them together. For example, we work on axis of delivery and release separately to keep the concentration on as least factors as possible. When the athlete controls these two factors, he throws the rocks concentrating on both factors on the same time. An other example : during a practice where we work only on the axis of throw, we will eventually release the stone, but it is important for the coach to give feedbacks on the axis only, not on the release.

The same principle applies when working on the release, we give feedbacks only on the release. At the season of competition (championships), we will have went through all the technical factors and we will have put them all together .

2. SHOT MAKING : (20 to 40 minutes)

The second step of an on ice practice : the shot making goes through the same principles as the technical training. We begin by simple shots as open draws and open hits to go toward more complex shots as come around draws, freezes and come around hits.

The shots thrown must go along with the level of the tecnical practice we're at. At the beginning of the season, if we haven't work on axis of throw, nor the release at the technical level, we will throw draws and hits working on weights only ; we won't pay attention to the axis of throw neither will we give feedbacks on the releases. This will come soon, but not now. Remember to work on one factor at a time (See the previous graphic).

We devide the shots into two groups : The draws and the Hits. Draw group : long guard, short guard, draw in front of " T ", back line weight, hack weight, bumper (the stone softly hit the back board)…
Hit group : normal, heavy, light, peel…
Note : I place back line, hack and bumper weights within the draw group because these weights are related to the speed of the ice and than vary accordingly with the draw weight.For example, if I add one half of a second to the draw weight, I get a back line weight ; if I add one second to the draw weight, I get a hack weight and if I add 2 seconds to the draw, I get a bumper (for a 27 second draw from back line to stop, I throw 26.5 for the back line, 26 sec. for the hack and 25 for the bumper).

Model of shot making during a curling season :

For draws :

For hits :

After a few on ice practice, the curlers will be comfortable with almost all the weights and we will progress to complete shots, I mean the curlers will throw the weights at the broom.

Model for draw shots (after a decent control of weight is reach) :

Same thing with take outs. About Peeling guards, it is important to get use to hit both side of the target rock by hitting the internal side and the external side of the target stone. For instance, we have four ways to peel a guard :

  1. Hit the internal side of the target stone with an IN turn
  2. Hit the external side of the target stone with an IN turn
  3. Hit the internal side of the target stone with an OUT turn
  4. Hit the external side of the target stone with an OUT turn

We should also practice the peels on corner guards on both side of the sheet, which make 12 different shots to play for peeling guards. (See the following graphic)

3. Mini-GAMEs : (15 TO 30 minutes)

The 3rd step, mini-games, consists in completing the on ice practice by a game 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2.

These mini-games may take any kind of format : (with or without sweeping)

This mini-game stage aims two goals : 1, the fun of playing and compete ; 2, Finalise the on ice practice with a game feeling.

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