Abstract
Curling is team Olympic winter sport. One of the players delivers stones to the rings, while other two players sweep ice in front of the stone.
The fourth player determines the tactics and communicates with the other players. In the literature curling is considered as low static and low dynamic sport activity with energy expenditure of 4 MET which is similar to walking.
Pilot measurement was performed on 6 competitive curling players (men, 23.6+-1.39 yrs, height 179.5+-5.06 cm, BMI 24.2+-2.08) during simulated training session of brushing of 10 consecutive stones. Each brushing took 20s, followed by 40s walking to starting position and next immediate brushing.
Heart rate (HR) and oxygen consumption (VO2) were recorded during session. All probands performed maximal exercise test on bicycle ergometer (VO2max 47.9+-6.21 ml.min-1.kg-1, HRmax 188+-5.42 min-1).
Probands achieved during brushing 86+-10 % of VO2max and 91+-4.2%of HRmax on average. Maximal achieved values of HR and VO2 were and 97+-2 % of HR max and 93+-10 % of VO2max respectively.
Despite players cannot maintain the exercise intensity measured during our sweeping test when practicing or playing competitive game, we consider sweeping during curling as moderate dynamic exercise. In regard to published data we consider sweeping during curling as moderate static exercise.