From club night to tournament: how a bonspiel runs, how the club gets you in, what etiquette applies and how to survive two games in one day.
A bonspiel — the traditional name for a curling tournament — is not a longer club game but several full games within a few days. And that is exactly where newcomers come unstuck: not on technique, but on the sum. A game runs eight ends at club level or ten at championships [1]. Play two of those on a tournament day and you have completed twice the dose of a normal practice evening — with a result attached.
What that means physically has been measured: a front-end player sweeps on the order of 60 stones per game and covers up to around 1.6 kilometres while sweeping, with heart rates reaching the region of 170 beats per minute in measurements — in a game that overall sits at only about 4 METs, the order of brisk walking [6]. A bonspiel is not a strenuous sport. It is several moderate games back to back — and that is something entirely different.
The good news: you need no performance level for it. Curling can be learned at any age, and clubs live off beginners eventually growing into a tournament [4]. In Germany that road almost always runs through the club.
Tournaments run through clubs. So the route is always the same: membership, or at least a regular practice slot, then ask which team is short of a fourth. The association's clubs are the entry points — they recruit members and run the beginner courses that tournament teams grow out of [2].
A bonspiel usually means several games across a weekend, often two in one day. Budget eight ends per game in club format [1] and around two hours. The breaks in between are shorter than you think. Plan the day like a double shift, not like an evening.
In a tournament every end counts. Only one team can score in an end: one point for every stone of theirs closer to the centre than the best opposing stone [1]. The hammer — the last stone — goes in the next end to whichever team did not score; after a blank end you keep it [1]. Work that out in the third end and you have given away two.
In competition analytics the team with hammer wins roughly 60 to 62 per cent of ends when the score is level [5]. Those are orders of magnitude from competition data, not controlled study values — but the direction holds: without hammer, one point is a success; with hammer, one point is a missed chance. That is how you judge your ends in a tournament, not by the final score.
None of the following appears in a statistic, and in a tournament it still matters more than any tactic. You greet your opponents with a handshake before the game and thank them afterwards. You do not stand in the line of sight of an opponent who is delivering. You call your own infractions. And when a game is decided, you concede rather than play it out — that is not weakness, it is respect for everyone else's schedule.
Between two games you cool down. Association guidance recommends a two-stage warm-up: general warming, then curling-specific dynamic movements for legs and trunk — at least five minutes before and after play [7]. Before the second game that counts double, because you are tired and your head believes you are still warm.
Several games in one day are the classic on-ramp to overuse. Knees, back and shoulders count as curling's most vulnerable zones, and physiotherapists trace a large share of complaints back to missing warm-ups [7]. A bonspiel is therefore the worst day of the year to skip warming up.
Watch your back line especially in the second game. Back loading arises above all from a back that is not straight in the deep lunge and in the delivery [7] — and that is precisely the posture fatigue takes away first.
And the hard limit: if you are in pain, you do not play the next game "for the team". A tournament is a weekend, a knee is a season. No guide replaces coaching or medical assessment.
Take exactly one goal to your first bonspiel that has nothing to do with the result — for instance: "I call every one of my own stones back to the skip before it reaches the hog line."
It sounds small and it changes everything. You stop watching the outcome and start doing your job. At the end of the day you have an answer to a question you can influence — instead of one that depends on your opponent. And that is what the second bonspiel lives off.
Through a club. The German Curling Association has around 18 clubs with more than 750 active athletes nationwide; they run beginner courses and enter the teams [2]. The season runs roughly from October to March [2]. Specific tournament calendars change every year — the organiser's own announcement is always the binding source.
Eight ends in club format, ten at championships [1]; per end both teams deliver 16 stones together [3]. That usually means around two hours per game. A tournament day often stacks two games — plan food and breaks accordingly.
Moderate but long. Curling overall sits at about 4 METs, the order of brisk walking; sweeping is the hard part: around 60 stones swept and up to roughly 1.6 kilometres per game, with heart-rate peaks in the region of 170 beats per minute [6]. Two games double that.
No. Curling is a lifelong sport and can be learned at any age; learn-to-curl programmes exist exactly as the way in [4]. What you need is a team of four with fixed positions [3] and the willingness to see a long day through.
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