Friday, February 12, 2010

Top secret biomechanical research aids TC shooting accuracy

Team Canada's wheelchair curlers have been part of a top secret research program out of the University of Alberta that has been analysing and subsequently fine tuning delivery motions using computer analysis of high speed photography.

Phys. Ed. lecturer Pierre Baudin said that the research on wheelchair curling was significant because it had not been explored before.

“Probably the biggest impact we had was on the wheelchair curlers. Nobody had ever done research on wheelchair curlers before and so we were starting from scratch there and a lot of the things they were doing were biomechanically incorrect [...] we changed a number of things for all the curlers.”

Read the article HERE

There's a lot that goes into a successfully thrown stone and certainly a biomechanically efficient delivery is an important element. But so too are being disciplined about where you place the stone, and the chair in relation to the stone, and the broom in relation to the chair and the stone, in addition to being able to regulate the speed of the throw when contact with the stone is measured in fractions of a second.

Working out what motions best accommodate a particular wheelchair users muscle set can help, and if the analysis breeds confidence, so much the better.

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