Korean and Japanese styles of carving?

I can't see the first video, but it's worth mentioning that when you do a cross-under turn on skis it's true that you are back seated in the transition, but as soon as you start to extend your legs in the turn you simultaneously pull back your feet and push your hips forward and really attack the tips of your inside ski with your upper body and if I remember the second video correctly he kind of glosses over that

No playback on other websites... but the link is:

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZwU1PBpLjs"

Oh. I couldn’t watch it because I have to visit YouTube. I just assumed it was a geo block and didn’t even read the text on the embedding. 

Also. The reason why you’re back seated during a cross under turn on skis is because you physically can’t bend your feet much in that direction (in ski boots at least), ie pointing the toes to the sky. So if you were to not be back seated during the transition the tails of the skis would have to lift off the snow. And so you’d have way less control putting them down on snow again as they’d go down tips first and probably pivot further so that you’d scrub off too much speed

Both go against the conventional front-weighting... and you make some interesting points.

Asian riding seems to have evolved from surfing, rather than skiing or skateboarding, so there might be something to that.  But they seem to have a lot of lower angle slopes as well, so perhaps they're deliberately trying NOT to scrub off speed.

Ok, I was going to sleep but I couldn't keep myself.... I think they're riding mostly with a lot of flair and style. I took a bunch of screen shots of one of the turns and I don't know if I agree that they ride that back seated actually...

Spoiler

Lots of text and images

1. See here in the transition, super back seated but also with an extreme amount of torsional flex in the board

2. And then clearly moving forward to be more neutral

3. Followed by really attacking the inside tip of the board early in the turn

4. Mid turn still really aggressively forward

5. Starting to move slightly backwards to engage the tail

6. Really loading up the tail of the board here

7. The board springs him up and he has to regain control of it to go into the next turn, I think this is done on purpose as a stylistic choice. 

8. He never actually loses control I think so he manages to set the board down on edge as he's simultaneously lowering the nose and shift his weight towards the nose from his extremely back seated position

9. Then same as the heel side where he continues to attack the nose

10. And the cycle repeats, we're basically back at a toe side 3

To me this looks very similar to when James does his signature 360° "loop-de-loop" carve where you can see he really drives it through the tail of the board to the point that the nose almost always significantly lifts off the snow. Though this is done with a pop out of the turn.

Regarding the back seated transition and the comparison of the skiier.

I visualized keeping my tails on the snow on skis after a carve turn and I recognize this feeling as happening if I get too back seated at the end of the turn and lose control of my skis because they rebound away in front of me instead of "into me". When it happens I cannot manage to carve the next turn immediately without spending up to half a second gathering myself and my skis up and regaining my balance. (I can't visualize this on a snowboard because I'm simply not nearly a good enough rider!) Maybe I could do ride like this on skis on a mellow slope... Look here at the ski racer

Back seated transition with tails in the snow during the transition

Followed by attacking the inside ski tip as the turn starts, mid turn here because it's more obvious

So I think this goes well with how you attack the turn with the tips/nose and finish with the tail(s). You always have that forwards/backwards movement over the board or skis. It's just that when you really bend your board/skis you have to manage the rebound. And to do that as just an advanced (not expert) rider you cannot be too back seated or the board/skis will shoot out in front of you leaving you hopelessly back seated. I'm pretty sure Deb Armstrong has a great video on this for skiiers. She talks a lot about balance and being in control of your skis so you ride them rather than them taking you on a ride. She had a great video on riding moguls at the end of the last season that touches on this topic and how you have to ride them differently because of the extreme changes in angles that the moguls create compared to a well groomed piste.

I think this is also an excellent snapshot showing how far forward these riders are mid turn even though they are very back seated during the transition

This just analyzed the riders in the first minute of the video, would love to see other peoples thoughts!

My finishing thought on this is: Visualization is a super powerful tool for improving your own riding when you don't have access to snow, or even just for being able to work on technique without getting any (muscular) fatigue.

Visualization is actually how I learned to do my first skidded turns on a snowboard. I half dreamt half just thought about riding while in bed and somehow figured out I could kick out my back foot to rotate the board kind of how I would imagine that you surf.

Here's another example of how much they're attacking the nose mid turn

And here are two cool series of stills from the video showing some "wiggle carving" where you can see how they're achieving significant edge angles almost exclusively through angulation and counter rotating with the arms to reduce the angular momentum required to go from edge to edge. There are more examples scattered throughout the video but they were hard to capture

Spoiler

Wiggle 1

Spoiler

Wiggle 2

Posted by: @superfelix

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I get too back seated at the end of the turn and lose control of my skis because they rebound away in front of me instead of "into me". When it happens I cannot manage to carve the next turn immediately without spending up to half a second gathering myself and my skis up and regaining my balance. (I can't visualize this on a snowboard because I'm simply not nearly a good enough rider!)

Yeah, I try not to get my weight too far back on the board or it can seem to run away from me.  This can happen on steeper, sketchier terrain… then I’ll skid to get my weight back up over the board.  I really try not to do this though… I’d rather stivot and drift into a gripped turn for the proper finitiation into the next turn.  But that’s for steep steeps.  On mild slopes I just never get that far back.

On the YouTube vid someone commented that it includes Korean. JSBA, and SAJ styles… but I don’t know what’s what?

Those were some great clips that you broke down though!  I generally get my weight back up over the board during the transition and onto the front to bend my nose into the turn.  Some of them seem to be midway into the turn before they really get onto the nose (if at all), whereas I think I’m already fairly centered by that point.

I watched it again, and I think they are actually pressuring the front more than I had initially thought.  They’re just not shifting their hips forward like I (and most North Americans?) do… and it does come a bit later in the turn.

Posted by: @board-doctor

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I watched it again, and I think they are actually pressuring the front more than I had initially thought.  They’re just not shifting their hips forward like I (and most North Americans?) do… and it does come a bit later in the turn.

You don't think they're shifting their hips forward? I'm guessing you're mostly focusing on the deep carves rather than the wigglier ones? Because I think they're really shifting their hips forward, especially mid-turn, but they're also bent over at the waist which may hide it a little. Look at the rider in the black jacket with yellow flowers that I managed to catch 3/5ths into the turn for example, it's of course a bit at an angle but he's really covering the nose of the board. Or the the guy in white. 

And I think it may be an illusion that they're not putting pressure on the nose early because of how far back they are during the end and transition. So they may be a bit more neutral at the very start, but they have quite a bit of momentum toward the nose already so that should help it to hook up.

I think a lot of it is aesthetic rather than optimal riding technique. I think overall the snow looks quite soft yet still pretty smooth so they can get away with this flamboyant way of riding. It's definitely a very different aesthetic from how James rides for example as he likes to be fully stretched out and rely a lot more on inclination rather than angulation to achieve the edge angles compared to these guys. 

I watched it at 0.25 speed because it's so difficult to see otherwise, if you didn't do that I can recommend it!

I've started watching these K-Carving lessons and they're interesting...

I don't like reading subtitles though, and man is he a fast talker.  I have to slow it to 0.75 and sometimes I still don't keep up.

@board-doctor Nice video, very interesting indeed! I really like his suggestion to set the rear binding angle according to your flexibility; I've been riding the 27/12 angles James suggested, but I might give that a try next season.

One thing I immediately notice is that the terrain he's riding doesn't look very steep compared to what James rides in Revelstoke. He also rides in a lower, more compact posture; he's not quite reaching for the snow on toesides but his shoulders aren't level. Still looks good, though!

I have to echo that setting up the rear binding angle according to flexibility is super interesting! 

I need to find the time to watch the entire series! I've only watched ep 1 and part of 2 so far.

I watched the whole series.  The later ones don’t have translated subtitles, but using the translate caption function in YouTube works well enough (some are hilarious).

He does talk about chattering out on the heel if you can’t get your weight back in the turn.  I just don’t have that problem, but I don’t ride that low.  They do straighten the front leg to push their crouching stance back. It really is different.

The counter rotation segment is interesting.  I don’t normally do that when I’m out to carve, but do sometimes when I’m on steeper terrain.  Dropping the hip on the toe side is a lot quicker than leaning your whole body into it.  This gets me into the turn and across the fall line quicker to control speed.  But on mellow terrain, it’s not a style that I fancy.  I do need to keep my hips more open on the toeside though.  I think the way that James does it has more flow and looks more relaxed.