Rolling a rock down a sheet of ice sounds like a pretty easy task, but it’s a lot harder than it looks. Trust me, I tried.

The idea of sliding on a slippery surface with a stone in one hand, a broom in the other and a slider over the bottom of your shoe doesn’t sound like it would be too hard, but the second I stepped onto the ice I knew I was wrong.

First of all, the stones might look small, but in fact they weigh 42 pounds and are not easy to pick up or toss around. Second, the slider, which is worn over your shoe on your sliding foot to allow you to slide farther down the ice and for a long, smooth motion and follow through, is really slick. This means that it’s easy to fall with one on if you don’t distribute your weight evenly between your two legs.

Third, balancing against the hack (a rubber foothold from which curlers deliver the stone) with the broom in one hand and the stone in the other is quite tricky, but that’s not the hardest part. The hardest part is pushing off the hack and sliding down the ice without falling either on your butt or on your knees.

Oh yeah, while you are sliding down the ice you need to extend the leg you pushed off the hack with until it is completely straight. Then there is the whole part of getting the stone to go all the way down the ice. Even though ice is a slippery surface it’s not that easy to get it to travel 146 feet into the house (the scoring area), which looks like the center of a dart board underneath a layer of ice.

I tried doing this process several times and usually wound up falling with the stone only gone about halfway down the ice. After finally getting the hang of it I found out that there is another step and that is the way the stone is released from your hand. When you let go of the stone you twist the handle upon release to make the stone curl, or curve, as it travels down the ice. This is where the name curling came from. The stone curls in the direction of the turn.

Now, this is also a lot harder then it sounds. If you turn the stone too much it will curve too much and go out of play, but if you don’t turn it enough then the stone won’t go exactly where you want it to.

Usually you want it to land in the house or you might use your stone to knock an opponents stone out of the house. I quickly learned the easiest part of curling is sweeping. This is when you sweep the ice with a broom to make the stone travel farther or to keep it from curling more than you want it to.