How to become a great skier

Rob Stewart from Ski Press and the Whiteout Podcast here. I have come to the Stubai Glacier near Innsbruck in Austria. It's the end of November. As you can see, it's snowing really heavily here. We've had powder conditions for my first day of the season, but I've come here specifically to test the new Carve product. I love that tech product, Carve 2. It's just been launched very recently and I've come to test it out. I have skied with Carve before. They used to have to put inserts into your ski boots, but now you don't have to do that anymore. You just clip them onto the side of the boot and off you go. I must say, that's not the only improvement they've made. There's loads of algorithm improvements they've made. It actually knows the kind of terrain you're skiing on, whether it's off-piste or moguls or groom slopes, and it adjusts accordingly. I'm glad to say that I got my highest ever Carve score today, even though the conditions were a little bit challenging here on the Stubai Glacier. Thanks to the algorithm guys, because it's clearly working in my favour. But yeah, it's really good fun. I also caught up with Jamie Grant, the founder of Carve, and he told me more about the actual launches and the new things that they have done with the product to help improve it. New this year at Carve, we have a completely new form factor. This is the Carve 2 form factor. This actually just clips onto the top of your boot and it's way more easier to use than the previous version of Carve. You just clip it on and you go skiing. That's the first thing we've changed. The second thing is we're now doing all-terrain coaching. So previously Carve only worked when you're on-piste, and now it works when you're in the deep powder, in moguls, and even uneven terrain. So we recalibrate the experience, so it's giving you special tips for that terrain. And the last thing we've done is we've massively improved the accuracy of the algorithm. So every year we improve the accuracy, but this year we've had a huge leap forward by having just a motion sensor because it has very reliable data. Yeah, one of the things I really enjoyed about Carve is having headphones in here as well. It doesn't talk to you when you're skiing, which is great, but when you finish the run it gives you some feedback, it gives you some scores on your turns, and it encourages you a little bit to try a bit harder each time. And when you are skiing you can change all the settings. When you are skiing you can put a setting on so it kind of gives you a signal, like a beeping sound, like a positive beeping sound if you're doing the turns it wants you to do, a little bit of a dud sound, a more negative sound I suppose if you're not performing up to the level. Yeah, I must say I think these changes have made a big difference. I can really see in the data, when I know when I've done a good run, I know when I've got my skis on the edges a bit more, it's scoring me better than it was before. I know that when I felt comfortable, more comfortable, a little bit more in balance, not getting thrown in the back of the skis, that it's scoring me better as well. So pretty accurate data I would say, and then it's fun to have a look at the app afterwards and compare it with your friends. You can group together and have a look at what your scores are. Of course it gets a little bit competitive if you're like that, but actually it's just a bit of fun. But on a serious note, you know, I've been speaking to people about Carve and they are, they're using it either in conjunction with ski instructors, and there's lots of ski instructors starting to use it as well. It's a tool in their box to use with their pupils, quite a nice addition actually to a lesson, to compare the data and to try and push those scores up a little bit with an instructor. That's becoming more and more popular. And just, you know, actually really improving people's turns and really improving people's skiing so they can see what is going on in on their skis. And the fact that you don't have to put a footbed in, it's not only the hassle of that, it's actually that you feel that footbed in a boot. And if you've got a low volume boot, it's just not very comfortable anymore. So, you know, this is way better. So anyway, yeah, check it out at getcarve.com. At getcarve2, you buy a subscription and it's £199 per year for the subscription, but that includes the hardware, right? So that's all in one. And after that, you can just buy a six day passes for it. So the price is obviously lower after that, once you've got the hardware and the first year subscription. So yeah, brilliant. Really enjoyed it. So I've been looking at Rob's data today and you know, beautiful skier, even hit 140. So really, really good ski IQ. For the next thing, for the next level for Rob, it's going to be about really trying to get those g-forces on the turns. So we saw that after a few runs, once the system was calibrated, kind of got an understanding for what Rob needs to work on and asking to essentially increase the g-force. So basically doing wider turns, bigger arcs, more speeds and really getting into that carving turn. So yeah, interested to see how you progress today, Rob.