Carving Videos: VHS and DVD

US/Europe
Japan

This list includes carving videos that are readily available. Vintage old-school videos with carving are not included.

US/Europe

Video / Year Photo Length /
Format
Comments Where to get
Riders of the Lost Carve 25 min
all_region
PAL DVD or
1080i HD

This video covers the 2008 ExtremeCarving session in Zinal, Switzerland. There is a lot of very laid-out extremecarving, and the video quality is superb. Also features:

  • Great Musik from the Finish group The Knob.
  • At 6:00 into the movie, there is a shot of a carver getting some air, then landing into a carve.
  • The HD 1080i version is 1440x1080, 25 FPS interlaced, 18Mbps, MPEG-2, 16:9. It is *very* high quality. Plus, it has 192 Kbps stereo audio.
flegmatic-carving.com
Attack of the Nature 2007
30 min
all_region
PAL DVD or 1080i HD

Many riders and carving styles, with a lot of ExtremeCarving. The flim is professional quality, with great Musik, editing, and some very good looking still shots.

  • Most of the film is from the 2007 ExtremeCarving session in Zinal, Switzerland.
  • CarvingCamp Oppdal Norway
  • Ylläs Carving Camp during Easter
  • Great Musik from the Finish group The Knob.
  • Plus, there is a shot of a board mounted with tandem plates, but there is no footage of someone actually riding tandem.
  • The HD 1080i version is 1440x1080, 25 FPS interlaced, 18Mbps, MPEG-2, 16:9. It is *very* high quality. Plus, it has 192 Kbps stereo audio. Windows Media player does not scale down the interlaced fields correctly: if you play it smaller than original size, use any other media player (like Real Player, or a DVD player like WinDVD).
flegmatic-carving.com
Revenge of the Nordics 2006
40 min
all_region
PAL DVD

Many riders and carving styles.

  • Ojankaivajat session at Koli in Finland
  • Burner session at Sappee in Finland
  • CarvingCamp Oppdal Norway
  • What-Finns-do-in-summer as Bonus track
  • The ExtremeCarving session in Zinal, Switzerland.
10€ / $15 from flegmatic-carving.com
A new Carve 2005
78 min
all_region
PAL DVD

Many riders and carving styles.

  • Carving in Finland at Tahko, Sappee, and Riihivuori.
  • The Ojankaivajat Carving Camp 2005 in Norway at Oppdal. Plus a fisheye CarveCam.
  • Hardbooters Unite III in sweden at Sälen
  • Racing in Finland at the Ojarace finals.
  • The ExtremeCarving session in Zinal, Switzerland.
10€ / $15 from flegmatic-carving.com
The Carver Strikes Back 2004
60 min
all_region
PAL DVD
  • Ojankaivajat in Finland at Messilä (-20º C), Sappee, Riihivuori, and Tahko.
  • The Ojankaivajat Carving Camp 2004 in Norway at Oppdal.
  • Hardbooters Unite II in sweden at Sälen and in Norway at Trysil.
  • The ExtremeCarving session in Zinal, Switzerland (24+ SWOARDs). Premium CarvePorn, plus a helmetcam. Textbook EC style. Highly recommended.
  • Carving in Austria at Sölden. (Lech was cancelled)
flegmatic-carving.com It's available for free on Google Video.
Return of the Carver 2003
77 min
all_region
PAL DVD
  • Ojankaivajat (trench digging) in Finland at Messilä, Sappee, and Riihivuori. At Riihivuori, they have a limbo contest.
  • Hardbooters Unite Swedish Session hosted by Alpinepunk in Norway at Trysil.
  • Carving in Oppdal.
Not available.
Beyond the Limits
2000
6 min
NTSC VHS
Jörg carves on the groom, surfs the powder, rides switch, and navigates a mogul field on the #one. The movie is also available online at the PureBoarding web site at 320x240 resolution. PureBoarding
2002 ECES
49 min
NTSC VHS
Carving in Vermont at Stratton. Highly recommended, because of the sweet double-arm carving. However, the recording is defective and must be conditioned with a time base corrector. Ok music. A few left from Pawblo
AASI instructional video
1882409183
25 min
NTSC VHS
Very basic carved turns, without much insight. Not recommended. AASI
PureCarve videos. These videos are professionally done, with high image quality, good camerawork, and butt-skimming. PureCarve: Cliff Ahumada
has a few copies available, $25/each
Purecarve
Ride the Edge
1995
27 min
NTSC VHS
PureCarve style in Aspen. Very good carving with many riders on groom and in fresh powder. High image quality and good music. Highly recommended.
Carver: Beyond the Edge
1995
22 min
NTSC VHS
Very sweet, laid-out PureCarve style. On some shots, they get very low in fresh powder. A few overhead shots from the lifts. Tho, somewhat excessive use of slow motion. Good music. highly recommended.
Carve On
1998
  22 min
NTSC VHS
Shots of 13 different carvers really laying it down - on some of these turns, you can almost feel the G-force. About 1/4 of the video is slo-mo of Phillip Cross, and this part is about as close as it gets to an instructional video without actually being an instructional video. Mixed with shots of surfing in Hawaii and non-carving big-air contests. Very high image quality. The music is lame, but who cares. Highly recommended.
Locked In
2002
  20 min
NTSC VHS
Shows a wide variety of styles, with really good carving. Also some very low double-arm carving, and some great follow shots. Some nice carving in 2" of powder on top of cord. Good music. Has clips from Ride the Edge and one of the PureCarve sessions. Video quality ranges from OK to good.
Purecarve X-Session   12 min
NTSC VHS
PureCarve style in Aspen. The video quality and carving is not quite as good as the other PureCarve videos. Plus it's short. The highlight is a 1 minute clip of Phillip Cross that is also on the Carve On tape. Our recommendation: buy one of the other PureCarve videos and ask Cliff to throw this one in for free.
Bomber Sessions: These videos have complete coverage of the events at the Summit Expression Sessions. (Not as much close-up camera work or laid-out carving as the PureCarve videos.) Bomber
2001 SES 35 min
NTSC VHS
Carving in Summit County, Colorado. Respectible carving and the limbo contest. Good music. However, the image quality is low, so it's best to stick with the 2003 SES video.
2002 SES 69 min
NTSC VHS
2003 SES

26 min NTSC VHS
or all_region DVD
Carving in Summit County. Respectible carving with moments of brilliance. Higher image quality. Good music.
2004 ECES & SES
45 min
all_region NTSC DVD
Carving at ECES (Sugarloaf), and SES (Aspen and Summit County). Some premium carving, and great music. Also very high image quality.

Japan

Japanese carving videos often focus on how-to elements of style. From the U.S., these videos can be special ordered from Japan through Kinokuniya Book Store - the cost is about $50/video. Some videos are available in either DVD or VHS - the DVDs have better quality video, but require a Japanese region-2 DVD player. Or you can buy a DVD player on eBay that plays discs with any region code. Reviews of these videos are also available in Japanese on the Carvingmachine web site.

Video / Year /
ISBN / publisher
Photo Length / Format Comment

Installer 3.5
2004
ISP Pictures

25 min
all_region
DVD

In Japanese (no subtitles). They carve "middle and short turns," which means somewhere between GL and SL. They use a lot of lower cross-under, with a face-the-nose style, fully extending the legs at the apex of each turn, using an upright body position. They go for speed more than high board angle, so there is no laid-over carving. They use an upper-body wind-up: The upper body over-rotates at the end of a turn, which they release at the beginning of the next turn. Music ranges from OK to good. Filmed at Mt Hutt in New Zealand. Probably the least impressive of all the Japanese carving videos - not recommended.

Snowboard
Alpine
Technique
2005
4635913767
Yamakei
55 min
Region_2
DVD

In Japanese (no subtitles). Featuring Morio Aizawa, Tadayoshi Chabara, Kazunori Miyao, and Kouichi Masuoka. Lesson 1: Basic posture, 3 elements of a turn, carving vs skidding. Lesson 2: Turn Control: stance, turning by bending the legs. Lesson 3: Turn Control: super carving, using fluid motion, riding the steeps. Lesson 4: Turn Control. Lesson 5: Turn Control: rhythm, SL turns, middle (semi-GS) turns. Lesson 6: Gate Training for GS: Best line for the flats, finishing turns, strategies for deep ruts. Lesson 7: Gate Training for SL: planning your line, adapting to the rhythm, how to recover, and correct your line. Plus: Freestyle Alpine with Hidekatsu Tsuchiya, Rei Aoki, and Yuko Nakamoto. Pretty good mix between racing and freecarving.

Carving
Master 2
2004
4789940357
SkiJournal
45 min
all_region
DVD

In Japanese (no subtitles). With Tadayoshi Ohabara, Daisuke Hayashi, and Rei Aoki. Covers 9 steps for alpine carving: positioning (up/down, body angles between limbs, center of mass, issues of breaking at the waist, stacking bones over the edge), weight transition, edging (drills for hopping from edge to edge, flexing and extending, and increasing edging, crossover, tips to increase board angle, riding with the back foot out), open/closed styles (facing bindings vs facing the nose), eye contact, when to pressure the board throughout the turn (focus is on cross-over, using a more stable style), turn control, transition control, focusing on carving on a freeride board, middle/short turns, with some cross-under. Most of the techniques are shown on both hardboots and softboots.

Carving Master
1997
4789930661 SkiJournal
30 min
NTSC VHS

In Japanese (no subtitles) - If you are a beginner, it's a great introduction to angulated carving, but only if you can understand the dialog. If you are advanced, you will recognize all the techniques and can provide the voice-over to teach your girlfriend how to carve. Includes drills for: avoiding counter-rotation; verifying balance by riding with the back foot out; weighting / unweighting; flexing/extending; angulating by touching the outside hand to the knee or edge. Also cross-under slalom style techniques.

The Carving
2004
4635913481 Yamakei

55 min
NTSC VHS or Region_2 DVD

In Japanese (no DVD subtitles) - A very well done, advanced how-to instructional video on angulated carving, but only half the techniques will be clear if you don't understand Japanese. It covers 9 training steps: cross-over and avoiding counter-rotation; weight shift across the board; timing for weighting / unweighting; flexing/extending the knees; leading with the hips / hip alignment / rotating the hips to avoid sitting on the toilet; angulation vs inclination; GS gate training tips and timing; shorter GS turns; slalom technique. Plus some tricks. Also riding with the back foot out to verify setup. They show split screens to compare variations on technique. They get pretty low.
Snowboard Alpine Technique
1998
4635871878 Yamakei
45 min
NTSC VHS
In English, with Japanese subtitles. The video features four pro racers: Sigi Grabner, Karl-Heinz Zangerl, Dieter Krassnig, and Ueli Kestenholz. 1/4 of the video has freecarving, and half of that is very good looking GS and SL style turns. The rest of the video consists of clips of SL and GS racing. Plus they give some racing tips, but it's very basic - for example: "For SL on front side, enter the turn with most of your weight on the back foot, and shift it to the front to get acceleration. Then for SL on back side, keep the weight 50/50 on each foot." They also show race clips and analyze the styles of 5 other pro racers. Plus some cliff jumping. Ok music. It's recommended if you would like to get a close-up look at the style of the four featured racers.
Alpine Technique: Freecarving
1999
4635877124 Yamakei
30 min
NTSC VHS
In English, with Japanese subtitles. Features Ueli, Sigi, Karl-Heinz, and Nicolas Conte. Also brief shots of 4 other pros. 1/2 of it is freecarving, and 1/2 is freeriding big powder in Alaska and Jackson Hole. They give tips on carving, all of which are useless. The carving ranges from OK to pretty good, even though a lot of it is on chopped up terrain. The big powder riding is OK. OK music. There isn't quite enough great carving to recommend it as a carving video.
GS Gate Technique
1999
4645877132 Yamakei
30min
NTSC VHS
In English with Japanese subtitles. Features Ueli, Sigi, Karl-Heinz, and Nicolas. 1/3 of the video is freecarving, about half of which has good looking GS turns. The rest of the video consists of highlight clips from about 25 different GS races from the '99 ISF Tour, which include about a dozen different pro riders. It's good for comparing the styles of different racers. They give very basic racing tips - in a nutshell: don't break at the waist, keep torso rotation to a minimum, keep your shoulders parallel to the slope, and unweight to change edges. Good music. Recommended if you want to compare the styles of many different racers.
1997 ISF Snowboard World Pro Tour
463587169X Yamakei
(recently discontinued)
45 min
NTSC VHS
In English (mostly), French, German, and Japanese, with Japanese subtitles. They show PSL and PGS heats from 30 competitors, and interview each one afterwards. The racers talk about their technique and give very basic tips. Mark Fawcett shows off his flo tubes, Jasey-Jay shows the ski pole handle he grips during the race, and Karl-Heinz says "I ride an asymmetrical board ... when you carve on them, they are always faster than a symmetrical board." Some of the PSL and PGS races have a drop off jump in the middle, resulting in major air. It's highly recommended if you want to take a look at the GS and SL technique of 30 pro racers.

Super Carving Training
2000
4635877213
Yamakei

35 min
NTSC VHS

In Japanese (no subtitles). You need to understand Japanese for this one. Features three carvers: Morio Aizawa, Jiro Aida, and Miwa Yoshida, at Whistler / Blackcomb. They go over carving in hardboots and in softies, using an upright stance. The video starts with "Easy Carving," focusing on push/pull and transition. Then it moves to "PureCarving", which includes diagrams on when to pressure the board during a turn, and how to stack the bones, along with fore/aft body shift. The climax is "Super Carving", with emphasis on angulation and weight position, with diagrams showing arm and leg body angles. They explain how to tighten up turns to make circles instead of wide ellipses, and how to avoid counter-rotation. Also how to use knees for suspension, and rhythm. Each rider talks philosophy and tips. Skill-wise, they are OK, but not great. It's on par with "The Carving." Also a few shots of ISF races.
Advanced Technique
1998
4635871932
Yamakei
30 min
NTSC VHS
In Japanese (no subtitles). About 1/3 of the video covers carving skill, with Morio Aizawa. It goes over flexing/extending, upper body position, and rotation. They cover medium (shorter GS) turns, then longer GS turns. It also has some tips for carving through moguls and chop, as well as some tips for high-speed carving. There's a bit too much skidding in some of the sequences, and the techniques are not considered in-depth. Not recommended.
Alpine Style
1995 SnowStyle Magazine (discontinued)

36 min
NTSC VHS
In Japanese (no subtitles). Carving at Japanese resorts. About 5 minutes of pro riders on SL and GS race courses, but the rest is really lame. Not recommended.

Videos featuring Sigi

Much like the French fascination with Jerry Lewis, the Japanese have a fixation on Sigi Grabner. He uses an upright racing style for everything. Factoid: Like most racers, he does almost no carving during the winter, because he spends all his time gate training.

Video / year / ISBN / publisher Photo Length / Format Comment

Sigi Grabner Back to the Roots
2001
4635877523 Yamakei

30 min
NTSC VHS
In English, with Japanese subtitles. Also includes about a dozen different pros carving and running gates. The race-style carving looks pretty good - the best of the Sigi series. For stance setup, Sigi dethrones conventional wisdom by saying only that "each rider has to find his own comfortable position. Never copy anybody." Front side tips include pushing the hips to the inside of the turn (a way to angulate). Back side tips include keeping a 90º angle between thighs and torso (also a way to angulate). He braces against a bungle cord to illustrate how to pressure the board, and he emphasizes smooth movement. Includes wacky Japanese humor. To demonstrate backside turns, he actually sits on a toilet. There is enough good carving, race shots, variety, and music to recommend this one.
Sigi Grabner Ride in Japan
2004
4635913600 Yamakei
60 min
NTSC VHS or Region_2 DVD
In English, with Japanese subtitles, featuring Sigi. The carving is 1/3 slalom (boring), 1/3 short GS turns (boring), and 1/3 GS turns (for racing - not laid-out). Plus a few 1-turn layouts and running gates. He focuses on flexing/extending and timing. He gives very basic tips on SL and GS gate training, and draws sketches to illustrate how to pressure the board around gates. He also critiques 6 beginners running gates in his camp. Plus shots of Gilles Jaquet carving (he gets lower than Sigi) and running SL. Includes 9 PGS runs and a PSL run from the FIS '04 - Sigi is very smooth and gets major air between gates. A bit heavy on the wacky Japanese humor. If the video had more advanced gate training, more advanced GS carving, or better music, it would be recommended.

Sigi Grabner All-Mountain Riding
2003
4635913295 Yamakei

52 min
NTSC VHS or Region_2 DVD

In English and German with Japanese subtitles. The carving is 1/3 slalom (boring), and 2/3 racing style GS turns. The carving is a bit sweeter than "Ride in Japan," but is not laid-out. Sigi explains front side and back side turns at a very basic level - in a nutshell: keep your feet, hips, and shoulders stacked in a straight line over the edge. Then pressure the board in the middle of the turn, and unweight to change edges. Shows 5 of his runs from the FIS '03 PSL championship - he looks great and really pumps the board around gates. He gives a few tips on dealing with ruts and bumps on a GS course, but it's very basic. For strength training, he demonstrates 9 exercises that require only stretch cords. He critiques 6 other pro riders on their SL technique as they run gates - that part, as well as a few other brief sections, is in German. Good music. The final part has some shots of super-steep heli-riding and powder surfing. It is marginally recommended.

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