backwardsyourweight is in your feet on
each turn. It was at this point inthe day that
I discovered that on the slopes, Iam one
stable Mabel. A steady Eddie. A balanced
Clarence. Wemovedquickly onto
Outside:Inside foot pressure, which
evaluateshow you transfer yourweight from
foot to foot as you turn. Here, I’m afraid to
say:less impressive.
Whilethe audio prompts are condensed
intoa single number per turn, Carvrecordsa
whole wealth of data for each move, which
means you can dig right inand get really
granular withit. On that second drill,for
example, I could see exactly when I was
applying pressure in each foot on each turn,
how smoothly I was doing it, and howmy
right turnscompared to my left. As a result,
I learned that I was very much a ‘smooth
with the left, stampywith theright’ kind
of skier. Interesting.
Once I’d addressed that and had a good
idea of what I was aiming for,it was time to
shift to Training mode. isis likeentering
yourownreal-lifeskigame,only you have to
be more careful about not drifting off a cliff.
e scoresare replaced with a satisfying
Ting!or [ominous buzzer sound] for good or
bad turns, and a certain number of good
movesin arun earns you a pass on that level.
As you work yourway up,the pass range
gets narrower,and starts to factor inother,
related metrics.
In Training mode, Carv provides
coaching tips throughout the run. So much
information in one go canfeel a bit
overwhelming initially. But asI got used to it
I found it helped me properly home inon
what I was doing,so I wasfocusing on my
technique and for the first timestarting to
find a rhythm, rather than just trying to
makeit downto the bottom of the
mountain in one piece.
We ended the day with Challenge mode.
is consists of short, specific drills. How
manyturns canyou do in30 seconds?
What’s the highestedge angle you can
achieve? Can you turn to the beat of a
metronome?How long can youski on one
leg for? Very addictive.
WhileCarv has a lot to offer less
experienced skiiers likemyself(currently,at
a minimum, you wantto be doing mostly
parallel turns rather than snow plough),it’s
probably a better investment for confident
skiers who want toreally hone their skills.
A huge bank of elite-level knowledge has
gone into putting the coaching together,and there’sa massive amount of information
to tap intothatyou couldn’t access any other
way.As well as being an impressive training
tool, it’s also just super fun:the gamified
drills are addictive and the challenges are a
real blast.
For my part,I might not havequite
reached ‘Carv Connoisseur’ standard yet,
but my experience withthis app made me
see skiing in a completely different way;one
that was nuanced but masterable, and a
whole lot more fun.Hamilton wasa guestof Stubai Valley
(stubai.at), andJagdhof Spa hotel (hotel-
jagdhof.at) – prices start from£145 a night.
Find out more about Carv at getcarv.comABOVE
The app on your
phone delivers
guidance through
headphonesJANUARY 2022 T 3 63A smarter skicoach