Devon Young forwarded this article on high-tech curling training brooms. No one knew if it was better to sweep fast or sweep hard:
Each SmartBroom has four sensors in the broom head that relay data to a small display unit. Hamilton took one for a spin down the ice, and the data was instantaneous — line graphs along with a slew of numbers that showed his force in pounds and his stroke rate in hertz. Hamilton also pointed to a figure that he described as his “sweeping performance index,” or S.P.I., a metric that combines power and speed in one easy-to-digest figure.
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The numbers by themselves might not mean much, Flemming said, but subtle changes in technique can lead to big differences in the quality of each stroke. And now curlers have that information at their disposal. They can experiment to see which stroke works best for them.
“It’s sometimes tough to convince an athlete that what they’re doing is maybe not the best, because they feel like they’re working really, really hard,” Flemming said. “And it’s probably true that they’re working really, really hard. But they might also be wasting a lot of energy.”
The Canadians used the brooms to train before the 2014 Olympics, and swept the medals in that tournament. Now they are working on a competitive version of the broom:
They all hope that more innovations are forthcoming. For example: hardware light enough to embed in brooms used in competition so that real-time statistics can be broadcast on television.
Curling just gets better all the time!
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2EWpGI9
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