Is CARV worth the money?

Last ski season, I decided to pick up a CARV. It's a digital coaching system that includes two digital footbeds that measure pressure applied to different parts of the foot bottom, in addition to orientation of the foot-plate (presumably relative to gravity). This is a review of the CARV, to help you decide if you want one. 

TL;DR - Does the device provide value? I'm a non-racer avid live-on-a-ski mountain all year long freeskier. For a couple weeks I used the CARV, then I took some advanced ski lessons. The CARV device itself did virtually zero. The live instructor lessons massively improved my ski form. I don't think it's worth the hassle vs benefit of using the device. That said, CARV does produce some excellent youtube coaching videos, so I don't mind having sent some money their way. Hopefully in the future they will find better ways to achieve the dream of a virtual ski coach. 

What CARV Is...

Compared to the cost of sking the device is not terribly expensive ($200 + $150-200 per year). If it could deliver on the dream of virtual ski coaching, it would be a heck of alot more economical and scalable than everyone getting private ski coaching. But there are limitations of what the technology can measure that make it's coaching advice really generic and limited. 

Yes, just like you've seen in videos, it reports on a bunch of stats like edge-angles, as well as side to side and fore-aft pressure. The trouble is, even as it's coaching you to do drills, it's not actually telling you what is wrong with your ski form, because it doesn't know. It's just challenging you to meet some arbitrary foot-orientatation stats. 

Hips out of alignment? It doesn't know. Inside ski leading too much? It doesn't see this. 

For me, trying to "hit the numbers" on CARV without ski form coaching was like trying to hammer in a bent nail. Sure, I could smack at the nail sideways to try to straighten it out, then wack it in a little deeper, but I had just as much chance of bending it more as I did of getting the nail in. And even if I succeeded, all I ended up doing was driving a bent-nail into the wood. 

When we're skiing, we want to learn proper form, so we can drive that nail in straight, every time, with efficiency and precision. A ski coach can do this, CARV can not. At best, CARV can help digitally confirm some metrics after you fix your ski form, at worst, you can screw up your ski form even more trying to improve narrow metrics.

What using CARV is like...

Out of the box, with all the notifications turned on, CARV was like having a deaf repetitive yapping child reading off a teleprompter glued into my ear. It didn't understand when I was in the middle of a conversation with a friend, and the digital prompts it has are so incredibly repetitive that by the end of the second run I had to turn them off. I just don't need an app to repeat the same pre-recorded prompt five times in ten minutes. I'm not that stupid. 

So I turned off all the notifications, and gave up on the digital "gameification", and focused on a self-guided approach to improve my ski IQ. I would watch some carving youtube videos before going out, and interleave practicing my turn skills with checking the CARV stats on the lift. 

I was certainly able to improve the numbers a little, but it didn't *feel* like my turns were much better, probably because they were not. I was just bending the nail this way and that trying to get more angulation, since CARV likes foot angulation. I never got that feeling of really "nailing" a turn, because my ski form was *messed up*, as I later learned with a live ski coach. 

I think this is just a limit of the approach. I can't see my own posture, so I can't tell what I'm not doing. CARV can't see my ski posture, only my feet. We're both blind trying to critique someone's handwriting. Useless. 

Live Ski Coaching

I will admit, that I had an unusual amount of incredible ski coaching. I probably received over five-hours of carving form coaching from level-2 and level-3 certified coaching instructors over just a few weeks. At rack rates, probably over $1500 in carving lessons. However, even in just the first two-hours (say $600) of live instruction my carving and ski form improved massively.. much more than in all my time using CARV (which probably totaled 8-10 days before I shelved it). 

The most impactful live coaching time was spent in a feedback cycle... My coach would watch me ski a section, pick something about my form to correct, have me do 10 minutes of very-specific posture drills to try to correct that element, then ski a section and try to incorporate the posture change into my turns. Rinse. Repeat. 

This is something that CARV simply can't do, because it doesn't measure your *joint* angles, only your feet angles. 

Some of the many turn-carving form improvements we worked on included -- creating edge pressure from the feet-up, hip orientation, arm and shoulder posture, pulling the inside ski in line (tips parallel fore-aft), fore-aft balance during turn initiation, and much more. 

Perhaps most importantly, each time we fixed something notable about my skiing, I really *felt* the difference. Like a litttle zing or jolt of new adrenalin because of the way things were just *easier*. 

For example, when I reduced my exaggerated fore-aft ski-staggering (something that comes from lots of ice-skating and rollerblading), I found I could initiate turns massively faster, instantly pivoting from edge to edge. CARV never told me I was staggering my skis, because it doesn't know. 

What I wish CARV was....

I want to believe it's possible for CARV, or some virtual ski assistant, to give people valuable ski coaching. Of course having a full suit to measure body joint angles so the computer could "see" what a coach does, would be a big help. However, I think there is alot more that could be done today, just by changing the way a virtual ski assistant interacts with you.

First, I dont ever want the app to talk to me until I'm stationary and ready to listen.  Skiing is a dynamic and complicated sport with skiiers (and boards) of varied skill levels whizzing around. Just like talking on a cellphone increases accident rates, listning to CARV yapping in my ear when I wasn't ready for it wasn't just annoying, it felt unsafe. I want to tell CARV, with a voice command, that I'm ready to hear something, and what I'm ready to hear. "CARV drill", "CARV feedback", "CARV lesson". (more later)

Second, I don't want to hear the same digital prompt within 4 hours, possibly not within 48 hours. Once the device repeats the same thing a few times, it feels like it's just an idiot programmer nagging me to "ski better". Obviously, saying the prompt once doesn't magically improve anything, and saying it three more times is also not going to improve anything, it's just going to annoy me. 

Third, I want a ski coach focused around form-drills, not measured foot-stats. I get that the CARV measures foot stats, but foot stats does not good ski form make. The drills ski instructors use are well known, CARV has youtube videos on many of them (which are more helpful than the CARV device, frankly). It is my opinion that the CARV experience would be better if the app was using voice instruction to explain how to do a drill, and then using the CARV device measurement to try to verify something expected might be happening, rather than focusing the skiier on detailed measured data that isn't indicating ski form improvement.

Here is an example session with the CARV device I wish I could try:

"CARV drill"

"Excellent! Time for a drill. Are you stationary on a groomed blue slope? (yes) Great! We're going to work on ankle-knee-hip posture. To stop at any time, say CARV stop. For this drill, grasp both ski-pole handles with your left hand, then lift your poles horizontal in front of you, grasping the tips with your right hand. Ready? Good. Now you're going to bend at the knee, and reach your poles forward, trying to keep them over the tips of your skis at all times. You should feel the balls of your feet pressing into the front of your boot. (CARV confirms) Good! Now, gently start slowly skiing down the run,  making gentle turns. Be sure to keep your poles out over the tips of your skis through every part of the turn. (CARV measures left turn) Good! (CARV measures right turn) Good! (CARV notices weight on heels) Keep your pole outstretched!"

Of course, CARV won't know which of these ski drills you need the most like a live instructor can. One solution to this is to just run you through all the drills. Another solution to this is to have the skiier pick drills they prefer. Yet another solution to this would be to ask a skiier some questions about their ski posture, trying to get them to judge what drills they need. In the case of my coaching example above about ski-staggering, it would be very easy to ask me to make some turns and ask me to look and judge how many inches my inside-ski leads my outside ski. <3" is good, >3" needs a drill. 

Perhaps some day we'll see a device an app like this. Perhaps not.