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What is carving?

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
fatbob, You don't need all that much space to ski arc to arc on slalom skis.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
A quick browse on YouTube of 'carving lessons/tips'. Most are at a very low beginner/intermediate level and are simply showing how to turn, traverse, turn again. 'Ski like a pro' carving lesson actually advises skidding and at no point mentions that skidding is poor carving technique. Seeing as most cash-strapped skiers (like me) use YouTube tips to try and augment what they've learnt, this is probably a good indication of why so many skiers and snowboarders call what they're doing carving when it's actually skarving (or 'kidding'?)
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fatbob,
Quote:

One of the best guilty pleasures I found last year was an isolated black (US so Euro red) about a mile long where you could get a sustained run without much traffic. I clearly wasn't carving it perfectly
Ditto for me last week in Whistler - Dave Murray and Bear Paw, both virtually unpopulated. Bliss. Very Happy
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I was training with the technical director of the APSI (Aussies) the other day, and in their system they make the distinction between 'carved' and 'pure carved'. To them a carved turn still has elements of rotary in it, though still with high edge angles, whilst a pure carve is what I would traditionally consider carving, ie edge locked.

I would say as long as you clearly define what you mean, it doesn't really matter what term you use. Most of the people who think they carve don't, and of the ones that do, most of them just park and ride, so clearly there is already a muddying of the waters.
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roga wrote,
Quote:
To me if you move away from a very clear (some might say black and white) definition of what a carve is you end up no longer saying that carving is a high end turn...

I think the problem is that wannabe racers who learn to carve early on can get the idea that carving is the ONLY "high end turn", and develop a too-posh-to-not-carve mentality. Maybe this is a particular problem for those who learn to ski on plastic, but they can end up with huge holes in their technique, being unable to manage efficient grippy turns with small steering angles. They might be able to carve down easy slalom courses, but on harder ones they are reduced to using inefficent skiddy turns to stay in. (I have this problem.) I think this is why some contrarian race coaches choose to redefine carving to allow small amounts of steering.
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Hurtle wrote:
Ditto for me last week in Whistler - Dave Murray and Bear Paw, both virtually unpopulated. Bliss. Very Happy


Carving up Olympic Downhills. More credentials for Scott 'n Rob wink
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fatbob, I should think Hurtle, could write their instruction manual word for word by now wink However, she seems a great skier so it must have been working.
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fatbob, I only THOUGHT I was skiing fast. wink Indeed, I only THOUGHT I was carving, SOME of the time. And they're really not very difficult - not scary steep and both nice and wide. Dave Murray on big edges from top to bottom, 100% carved, is obviously a somewhat different proposition.Shocked
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rmdkrk, indeed - I see quite a lot of young racers who are quite good on their edges but really not there with the rest of it. They've usually (but not always) had a lot of dry slope racing experience with a tendency to angulate, counter and cross-under too much, and flex/extend too little and too abruptly. I also see it in adults who have come to see carving as the be all and end all and try to get there too quickly. Personally I think it's more difficult to execute a polished steered turn than a polished carved turn.
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fatbob wrote:
Next question - for the average European moderately busy resort skier how much opportunity is there to do sustained arc to arc carving? Is it a limited pleasure or is there a risk factor in encouraging people to aspire to it? No doubt its high performance skiing but if you get the skididng hordes doing it (without perhaps the finer control of an expert practicioner) is it potentially a recipe for chaos?


There's risk if they don't have the skills to carve the full spectrum of turn shapes carving offers, or the skills to quickly abandon carving so they can quickly dump speed and access an even broader spectrum of turn shapes than provided by carving.

This is one of the reasons why skimottaret and I are so adamant about the importance of developing a strong foundation of edging (steering) and balance skills before carving is introduced. True carving increases one's speed, reduces the turn shapes they can use, and puts the foundation skill base to the test.

If you're not sure what I'm talking about in regards to turn shape spectrums, here's a drawing that might help explain it.



The green area represents turn shapes that can be made via carving, and the yellow represents the expanded zone available to steered turns.
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FastMan, That reassuringly suggests I got good lessons from Arc Adventures on holiday. We did lots of stuff on balance, one legged drills, edging skills etc. before we went on more conventional skiing round the mountain stuff, and then that included lots of edge to edge stuff and turns in different directions, both open and closed. That all sounds linked to your foundation skills described above.
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slikedges wrote,
Quote:
... a tendency to angulate, counter and cross-under too much, and flex/extend too little and too abruptly.
That describes my skiing pretty accurately. Little Angel
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Nice pic fastman, I guess credit to little tiger for that. So for lets say a mid wide freeride ski at what radius does the interior no carve zone kick in? Sidecut say 28m, width (no idea if its a real variable or just an excuse) 100mm trying to do short radius turns? I'm guessing still possible if you're skilled enough.
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fatbob, pretty hard to do Shorts on fattish high sidecut skis ( i was rubbish on my mantras at that sort of spec)

i recon a decent broad guesstimate is around half the sidecut radius
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Hurtle wrote:
fatbob,
Quote:

One of the best guilty pleasures I found last year was an isolated black (US so Euro red) about a mile long where you could get a sustained run without much traffic. I clearly wasn't carving it perfectly
Ditto for me last week in Whistler - Dave Murray and Bear Paw, both virtually unpopulated. Bliss. Very Happy


Agreed, I enjoyed both of those on my second visit to Whistler and would love to repeat the experience. snowHead
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rmdkrk, and it did mine wink - despite only doing dry slope race training for a very short time (never actually raced on dry). However being aware that performance skiing on dry can lead to a dry slope form with unhelpful movement patterns not to mention an unaesthetic style is key to minimising its deleterious effects on snow skiing
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Just thought I'd tell you guys, I started a similar topic thread over at Epic. The consensus seems pretty strong that they don't like the current adulteration of the definition of carving, and we're going to try to combat it. One particular post offered an opportunity to address some questions I'm sure many are having when reading about this topic, so I thought I'd drag it over here to share, in case similar questions are dwelling in the minds of some of the silent readers here.

http://www.epicski.com/forum/thread/102068/riding-the-bend#post_1316700
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slikedges, could you expand on your post above. What are the unhelpful movement patterns to watch for? Thanks
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ianmacd, briefly, they are the characteristics I have already posted above. Are you a regular dry slope skier or racer?
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I ski regularly at a dry slope and attend race training but am pretty hopeless haven't raced yet. I should add I am 47 and overweight which maybe explains why I spend too much of my time going sideways Laughing
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ianmacd, 47 years young, still plenty of time to get there, and being overweight just means you bend the ski better! If a dry slope was my most convenient slide, I'd want to be down there regularly too. For most people dry slope training is very much an advantage. I just think that as you get more and more advanced if not careful you can end up with too much of a dry slope specific technique. If you recognise the problem you can attend to it and then switch between dry specific and snow specific styles as required.
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I use the terms CARVING (clean turn when tail follows tip leaving a clean line) and CURVING (a variation where there may be some lateral movement of the ski, however the skis follow a curve). It is quite amazing to see people struggle with Curving as they only see the value in Carving. Skier needs to know how to Curve if they are to also add Carving to their bag of tricks. This comes from the Austrian CURVEN where the turn shape is developed quite early in a skiers development.

PSG
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gilleski, you'd need to be a bit careful using that word when teaching some Eastern European women.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=curva
wink
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Hurtle, Good advice! I'm off to Budapest on Saturday to see my great aunt, I will refrain from inquiring about her curving!

PSG
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Hurtle, Now I'm obsessed with urban dictonaty! It's classic, I have looked up all the normal ones you would expect, now I'm going deeper. I love it Smile


Last edited by Ski the Net with snowHeads on Sun 6-03-11 19:49; edited 1 time in total
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gilleski, it's brilliant, isn't it?! Laughing Laughing Another classic, recommended to me by stoatsbrother and taking pride of place in the smallest room of my house is this. I love dictionaries. Very Happy

Sorry, terrible thread drift. Embarassed
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Sofia wrote:
A quick browse on YouTube of 'carving lessons/tips'. Most are at a very low beginner/intermediate level and are simply showing how to turn, traverse, turn again. 'Ski like a pro' carving lesson actually advises skidding and at no point mentions that skidding is poor carving technique. Seeing as most cash-strapped skiers (like me) use YouTube tips to try and augment what they've learnt, this is probably a good indication of why so many skiers and snowboarders call what they're doing carving when it's actually skarving (or 'kidding'?)


I think that this is the Ski like a pro clip you are referring to Sofia - it mentions throwing in a skid at the beginning of the turn in order to control speed


http://youtube.com/v/RUi-tn5CDR0
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and just for good measure, here's the part one of the long carving vid


http://youtube.com/v/NpleOZtz8aY

The drill in the vid is IMHO very useful when it comes to showing angulation (sorry, should have remembered the BASI term - lateral separation!). Any other drills snowHead s can suggest?
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You know it makes sense.
rob@rar,
Quote:

don't think we should hold up carving as the pinnacle of skiing, it's just another tool in the box, but it would be nice if there was a wider understanding of how to carve with these 'carving skis' that we've been buying for two decades.


Agree here as a relatively newcomer to skiing "learnt to ski in the carving ski era" I spent hours on the plastic learning to carve and transferred it to snow with relative ease, but it certainly didn't make me a good skier, sure riding from edge to edge on blues and moderate reds was a great feeling but after that I had to go and learn to ski, "come off" my edges if I was ever to explore the rest of the hill, I learnt this lesson fast, from a guy who rarely bothers to carve but boy can he ski!
Very Happy
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Sleipnir wrote:


The drill in the vid is IMHO very useful when it comes to showing angulation (sorry, should have remembered the BASI term - lateral separation!). Any other drills snowHead s can suggest?


I could suggest a whole DVD worth... Very Happy
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Sleipnir, have a look at this article. I have pictures in it of several drills that are excellent for angulation. http://www.yourskicoach.com/YourSkiCoach/Making_Time_For_Drills.html
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gatecrasher wrote:
I had to go and learn to ski, "come off" my edges
I once had an overly-charasmatic instructor bellow up the hill at me "Rees, get off those f**king edges" Laughing
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Hurtle wrote:
gilleski, you'd need to be a bit careful using that word when teaching some Eastern European women.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=curva
wink


Oh that's just classic. Sweet innocent little Hurtle introducing people to Urban Dictionary. What has this site done to you woman? Twisted Evil Laughing
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Sideshow_Bob,
Quote:

Sweet innocent little Hurtle
I think I'd better put a few laughs in myself, before the rush.
Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing
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Hurtle, Laughing Laughing

Sideshow_Bob, You have to look quite hard, but I think the clue's in this bit somewhere...

Quote:

recommended to me by stoatsbrother


Toofy Grin
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Is it possible to carve using inclination, rather than angulation? I'm guessing that when you adopt angulation you get better edge angles?


Last edited by You'll need to Register first of course. on Fri 11-03-11 15:07; edited 1 time in total
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c0Ka|Ne, yes
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^^ & ^ surely the problem is though that with no angulation it's very difficult to get much of your weight on the turning ski so it's not a great habit to get into?
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roga wrote:
^^ & ^ surely the problem is though that with no angulation it's very difficult to get much of your weight on the turning ski?
Don't you just shorten your inside leg to keep well balanced on the outside ski if you want to be more inclined rather than angulated?
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rob@rar, yes but surely angulation is the better and more dynamic method to employ? As a drill what you describe is fine I would have thought but when I've worked on carving the coach/instructor as far as I can recall has always put the emphasis on angulation.
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