Today I got something you've never seen before.

Frame by frame technical analysis of another carver.

If you guys like this kind of video and find it helpful, I'll invite you to send me your own footage for analysis next time.

Today's subject is Martina C.

She's riding a 160 Neversummer Ripsaw X from 2016.

I want to point out that this board was made for a full-size man, yet Martina is railing high G4s turns on steep terrain at 115 pounds in a Mondo 24 boot.

What I'm trying to tell you is that production boards are way undersized for the kind of carving you want to do.

You should also know that Martina is my wife, so keep your hands where I can see them and make sure to be nice in the comments, please.

Also, that announcement I keep teasing is just a few days out now, so stay tuned to the channel, and if you want to be among the first to know, sign up for the mailing list in the description.

So these videos are selected from our first season riding together.

At this point we had maybe 10 or 12 carving days together.

I'd give her some tips, but not hardcore coaching.

I didn't want to come off overbearing.

This was the courtship phase of our relationship after all.

Now we're married and our roles are established, and she calls me coach on the ski hill, in the gym, and even sometimes in the bedroom.

Let's take a closer look at these turns, shall we?

The last two in particular.

So, this toe side is actually excellent.

Her knees are touching the snow.

This is a steep run.

It doesn't come off that steep in the video, but this is quite steep.

This is the pitch black.

Look at how her shoulders are level here, and how her arms more or less are facing into the turn.

The front arm is very close to the front knee, which is exactly where I want it to be on toe side.

And as you follow through, you see it's really quite good.

I think she hits a bump there.

It was kind of an icy day.

You can hear the surface and the volume there.

And then now she's going to stand up through the transition, and enter right away into her heel side.

Now we can see there are some mistakes.

The rotation here is not bad.

The back hand is right at the front knee where I want it.

The shoulders at this point are mostly level, not perfect.

I would like to see more crunch, but it's the back knee.

So, these knees are kind of pointing different directions here.

We call that the cowboy knees.

There's a big gap between them.

And that's just not going to work.

This back knee needs to point more towards the front of the board, be tucked in behind the front knee, and that's going to help her get her hips and her shoulders rotated around, facing the front of the board where they need to be on heel side.

So, let's keep watching here.

Okay, see there's a nice bend in the board right here.

Yeah, there's a little bump or something she hits and absorbs.

And the knee here is pointing more forward.

You can see the drop of the inside shoulder, but it's not too terrible.

This is actually a pretty nice heel side overall.

See the back hand comes around very close to the front knee, but the back knee is still pointing too far out.

I need that back knee tucked in behind the front, and I need the hips rotated more to face the front of the board, and that's going to help her shoulders get around as well.

What else do we see here?

I see her butt kind of sticking out.

You see a bit of an arch in the lower spine and a bend through the hips.

I would like to see the upper body more erect, stacked over the lower body, and I want to see the compression more in the knees and less in the hips.

Overall, though, not a bad turn, given the board she's riding and the conditions she's riding in and the steepness of the hill.

Next.

Okay, so we're going to start with a couple of turns in what I call the funnel section of the pitch black, off the stoke chair.

So we've got a nice toe side, and then it comes into heel side, and losing balance and wipes out.

Okay, what happened?

What happened?

Let's back up, back up, back up.

Right here.

First thing to notice, she's dropped the inside shoulder.

You see that?

Her shoulders are not level.

She's reaching for the snow, and to reach at the snow, she is bending over at the hips.

I would like to see more compression in the legs and less of the bend in the hips.

But overall, this is actually quite a nice turn, and she finishes it very well, which she doesn't always do, and brings just the right amount of speed into her heel side, which is more problematic than the toe side.

Okay, let's look at what happens here.

We already know she's going to wipe out.

Question is why.

So this is a black diamond section, and she is carving right here with her butt almost touching the ground, but she is not touching the snow.

That is at least twice as hard as doing it with the hand down, just for some stability and some balance.

Even if you're not putting a lot of weight on it or scrubbing a lot of snow with it, you have that tension through your arm, and it just helps you to build the body tension and balance better on your edge.

So that's one thing.

Another thing here, you can look at the gap right here between her knees, and you can see this back knee is kind of pointing off in the wrong direction.

We call those the cowboy knees, you know, like the bow-legged type stance.

And I am constantly telling her to bring that back knee forward and bring the hand forward.

So you can see here as well, the back hand is right around the back knee.

That means she does not have enough rotation, and you can see her hips and her shoulders are both open to the side edge of the board here, so she's out of position.

Then what happens?

Oh, look at that.

She hits a bump, and she's off balance, and now she's hitting the ground, right?

But actually, right here, even though she's falling, she's actually in a much better body position, where she should be at the apex, not the transition, right?

But her upper body is leaning forward towards the front of the board.

Her back hand is actually right at her front knee.

Her hand is down for balance, and her knee is actually pointing more towards the nose than it was earlier in the turn.

Right here, you can see it's pointing off.

Martina also has another difficulty, or had, when we took this video.

She tends to ride with her front leg straight and her back leg bent, which doesn't really work.

We tried setting her stance back on her board after this run, thinking that we could even out those legs a little bit.

Let's look at these two turns again, just from here.

Toe side with the dropped shoulder, and then heel side with not enough rotation, and the back knee is pointing in the wrong direction, and she's out.

Okay, next.

This one is Fowley's Lap, one of my favorite runs at Revelstoke Mountain Resort.

It kind of bowls out here, and so you get banked turns on each side.

It's brilliant.

It gets steep right here, and wipe out.

Okay, what went wrong?

Let's have a closer look.

We're going to look first at the body positions she's using through here, but actually, I think her biggest mistake on this run was in the line choice, and we'll look at that right after.

Okay, so here we are.

She's coming out of a toe side, standing tall, gets into her heel side position not too bad, under-rotated as she always is.

You can see her back hand kind of out to the side there, where it should be basically right above her front knee.

I've looked at this run closely.

I know her hips are a little bit out of position, too.

She had a lot of trouble getting that hip shift, getting those knees together, and really facing her hips and shoulders towards the front of the board.

But this is a pretty nice turn, standing up through the transition, right?

But you can see here, it's not so much her legs as it is her hips.

Her torso is still bent over even at the transition, so she's not fully extended here.

I would like to see from most people, but also including Martina even to this day, more of the compression happens in the knees and the legs, and less of it happens by bending over, bowing from the torso.

If you are going to bow, you've got to bow towards the front of the board, not over the edge.

You can see right here she's bowed a little bit over the edge.

That's just not going to work great.

She stands up.

She enters that toe side with some commitment.

The shoulders are relatively level here.

I would like to see, and you can see her knees are bent, but her hips are also bent.

Again, over the side of the board, not over the front of the board.

I would like to see the torso straighter, more of a crunch in that front oblique on toe side, and that hand goes up, reaching away from the snow.

Here is where she makes her first mistake in line choice, but stands up real quick through her transition, comes down.

This is not too bad.

Her back hand is pretty close to where it needs to be.

I'd like to see more rotation, more hip shift in this turn as well.

Let's see if we can get a better view of that position.

Here you go.

You see the legs are mostly straight, and she's bending over this edge of the board in the hips.

I would like to see both knees bent, the back knee tucked behind the front knee, the hips, the butt, closer over the back of the board, the shoulders, and the hips.

If they're not actually facing the front of the board, that's okay, but I want to see them pushing towards facing the front of the board.

Maybe it's a little difficult to see.

We might look at it later.

Let's see.

What do we see here?

We see the big bend in the hips.

Here you can see how she's sticking out her butt and arching in the lower spine.

I want to see the tail tucked.

I want to see those hips thrust forward pretty much in all parts of the turn.

There's no room for sticking your butt out.

It's just not going to end well.

Let's look at her choice of line here.

Remembering now that we have banked turns on both sides.

Here she has to make a decision.

This is one of my favorites.

I ride this all the time.

The slow sign is at a different point every day.

You always have to figure out last minute which side of the slow sign are you going to go on.

She opted to go below the slow sign.

She comes really quite close to it.

I think a much better line choice here would have been to stay in that position.

Have more patience.

Rotate a little more.

Push a little harder.

See if she could get above the slow sign.

This section of the hill is actually extremely steep.

Well, extreme.

It's the steepest part of that run.

It's definitely black diamond.

Every Revelstoke Blue run has at least one section of black diamond.

You can't see it from here, but this is a bit of a headwall.

She ends up coming in right here and having to put her turn into the headwall.

She doesn't quite finish her turn either because she's running out of space.

If she had gone tighter, I mean from up higher, she might have been able to turn in front of the slow sign.

Now she's going across the hill and she's traveling uphill because of the bank.

She can lose some speed, put her heel side here and her toe side here and avoid that steep section altogether.

Line choice, it turns out, is not as easy or natural as I tend to think it is.

This is the Practically Pro, another Revelstoke Blue with a black section, which is right there.

These are some of the best turns of the season.

Again, I think her biggest mistake on this run is line choice.

Let's look first at the body position and then one more time at line choice.

Backing up right here.

Let's see.

She comes in, has a little bit of a hiccup, but she's okay.

She stands up nice and tall.

You can see her back hand is over her back of the board.

She's lost the rotation in her hips that she needs to be successful and keep that edge in the snow.

The back knee is not terrible.

They're not quite together, but it's not off to the side in the cowboy style as she is in some of her other turns.

Coming into heel side.

She gets low, puts her hand down.

Now the inside arm is dropped a little bit, but actually see right here, the shoulders are actually relatively level.

This is quite a good position.

You can see she could use a little more rotation.

That front hand is pretty close to the front knee where it should be on toe side, but a little under rotated as always.

It's a combination.

The knee tucks in, the hips come along, the shoulders push, and you find that correct rotation there.