He seems to not want to have to look away from the target between shots, but his quiver is placed out of view and he has to look toward it after his fifth arrow. He also subtly repositions his stance after the third arrow. In general, I'm surprised at the amount of motion in his body compared to the stillness you see with say precision rifle or pistol shooters. e.g. 10m air rifle:
You can also see how he's really fast. This is a completely different style of archery from Olympic, which has stabilizers and a sight. Olympic style archers "aim a lot".
Lars shoots a different style, which is basically "draw and loose" with very little "aiming". The aiming done in that situation is to basically "look at what you want to hit".
Here's a Smarter Every Day episode that shows some of that. You see Byron Ferguson there already putting the arrow on but there's no aiming. When the mint is thrown in the air, he just looks at the mint and instinctively aims and shoots it in mid air.
It's amazing how well this works if you don't need to hit a mint and no worries of shooting a person and even without exactly spined arrows and with just a stick and a string for a bow. Source: I do this for fun (with larger targets).
> Lars shoots a different style, which is basically "draw and loose" with very little "aiming". The aiming done in that situation is to basically "look at what you want to hit".
Reminds me of a friend's bachelor party out in the woods where we were shooting guns. A couple friends brought big revolvers and so I tried shooting them at some targets. Missed every one. I decided if I wasn't gonna hit anything, I should at least have fun, so I took two of them and did a Yosemite Sam impression firing them akimbo at the targets in rapid fire and I heard a PINGPINGPINGPING of 4 shots hit in a row from 2 different guns fired in tandem.
> Lars shoots a different style, which is basically "draw and loose" with very little "aiming". The aiming done in that situation is to basically "look at what you want to hit".
Indeed, it's closer to a field athlete (basketball, soccer, etc) shooting/throwing a ball.
It’s call instinctive in fact, because, as he explain himself he’s not aiming in the traditional sense. Practicing this style is harder than using an Olympic bow with a visor, but you gain a lot of flexibility in 3D shooting, tricks shoot and other techniques where the distance is not known.
As my teachers explains to me, your whole body is used instead of your eyes.
Reminds me of my preteen years when shooting rubber bands was a useful skill to have if you wanted to show off. We made up all kinds of competitions and would hit different targets. I even did it at home (practice). I felt like I got pretty good at it. The quick release method was almost always better for me. I had associated the draw and the aim as a fluid motion. If I drew then took time to aim, it was as if my brain would over analyze the situation trying to account for wind/gravity/etc and I had a higher miss rate because of it. I somehow accounted for these things intuitively better than intentionally. But it does take practice to get there.
There’s a similar form of pistol shooting I like to call “point and click” involving using your middle finger for the trigger and your pointer finger pointing down the barrel. Basically finger guns with a gun.
The first time I saw that killed any interest I might have had in 'serious' archery (I was into it as a kid). It's like watching a weightlifter use an exercise machine.
Nitpicking your comment but that's not Olympic archery, olympic archery doesn't include compound bows, only recurve bows(also the Olympics specifically uses 70m distance only).
Recurve and compound archers are also typically shooting up to 90m (for men). FITA distances are 90, 70, 50, 30m. You’d be surprised how well you can do at the shorter distances and then everything falls apart at 70 to 90m. Instinctive shooting won’t get you far at the long distances.
But getting the shots into a keyhole even at a relatively short distance is very impressive still.
This guy Lars Anderson is fascinating, doing so much more with arrows. He has a great video, trying to rediscover or recreate the Comanche capabilities. Well worth 5 minutes of your time if you have any interest in historic military or the abilities of humans to do amazing things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liHlCRpS70k
Bone chilling. My family was terrorized by Comanche raids to the point that their fates are documented in history books. Even Amerindians have nothing positive to say about them.
People do this all the time in these things. That way now you can win another award for 8 shots next year or whatever. Pretty soon you are the top winner of awards for XXX.
Otherwise you just get one award you can never beat.
Maybe there are only 7 keyhole arrows in the entire world, and each one costs a zillion dollars to make, and you have to wait three days before shooting one again, to let it cool down. Maybe not.
I’ve been saying for years that someone needs to reign in Big Keyhole Arrows but the regulators have been asleep at the wheel as per usual. Thanks a lot, (Congress)/(Brussels)/(Obama I guess).
Right?! They only had 7 setup from the start. If you are breaking a record why would you ever quit before you were spent? If I was ever in a position to break a record I would go until I failed to ensure the record held as long as possible.
Soviet athletes were paid a premium every time they broke some world record. So it makes perfect sense to break your own records incrementally, by as little as possible.
Lars was heavily involved in the Robin hood movie production, the one with Taron Edgerton from a couple years ago. Despite how incredulously "blockbustery" the action sequences looked, the archery itself was all heavily grounded in reality and research from manuscripts of that era. I gained a lot of respoect for Taron Edgerton for his dedication to pulling all that off without resorting to stuntsmen or cgi. Wish the movie did better, so all their work could have had more exposure.
I can't stand the tone of this video, so couldn't watch the whole thing but skipped through, and afaict it's debunking the idea that people ever really did this in battle? Not that the stunts in the video are fake?
Kind of a misleading thing to say it's 'thoroughly debunked' when it's very clearly for entertainment and just says they're 'myths'.
Superficially impressive? Those archery trick shots were amazing! Obviously nobody was doing 360 no-scopes with arrows in the Battle of Crécy, I didn't take that as the thesis statement of the 'debunked' video.
I don't trust any youtube video that claims to be a source of information but hides comments or likes/dislikes, it's a strong signal that the video's ideas don't hold up to even the most surface level scrutiny.
I think you're getting downvoted for the use of the word superficially (what he does and is impressive and the video you linked doesn't debunk the trick shooting itself except for the split arrow), but this is an important contribution. His historical claims struck me as off, and this video does a good job of explaining why.
"How did the Saracens measure seconds?" — My thought exactly!
Friendly reminder that guineas book of records is a company you pay a lump sum of money to, and they stage an event to give you an award for publicity.
So it begs the question. How much did Lars pay to put on this event, of all the possible arrow related records he could have made up, why make up this particular one. It seems obvious that it would have been a more honest record to look at consecutive bullseyes or arrows split or something like that, but perhaps the established records from regular competitive archers where to hard for him to beat. And naturally, why is he trying to create a social bus now? Does he have a book coming out or something like that?
Apologies if that's just a spelling error, but if it's an eggcorn / mondegreen, I feel duty-bound to point out that it's Guinness Book of Records, as in a pint of.
Coming this spring, only on the Discovery Channel: Keyhole Archers. A new reality series following the men and women on the "shooting arrows into really teeny-tiny places" circuit as they shoot for fame and fortune, attempting to win the prestigious "golden arrow".
Guinness world record and world record are just completely different.
Usain Bolt have a world record, anybody can have a Guinness World Record if you have money, and challenge things like most helium balloons tied to a paddleboard while paying Guinness staff to fly around and some big fee to put it in their books.
This one from Lars is actually one of the 'better' ones.
I find it vexing when publications treat 'official world record' as a synonym for 'Guinness world record'. They have no official capacity. They just have very good PR to be able to capture the term for themselves and for us to be able to ignore their novelty Christmas book associations and friendliness with despots.
That's no different than sport records, though. For instance 100m running. Some agency has decided their rules (equipment, drugs, wind etc), but someone could run it faster in a non-sanctioned event not following those rules. Which one to claim as WR?
Sure, but if we take same discipline, they align into same effort. Its just that Guiness corp makes making up disciplines stupidly easy I guess for their own profit/promotion. And nobody sane cares about Guiness world record on 100m for example
I don't think it's that much of a difference. I can say that I hold the world record in replying the fastest to your comment in this thread. But for the world record to actually mean something it needs to be backed by an organisation, which is what Guinness is doing just as World Athletics is doing for Usain Bolt's records.
The important bit is how many people are competing for the record not who is keeping track.
There are any of a thousand of video game speed runs you could probably beat with a week of solid effort, but breaking the Mario 1 speed run is a different league.
This YouTuber reminds me of another who is linked here frequently — Sabine Hossenfelder. Why is that? They both seem to work with a high degree of independence from their mainstream fields? They are both very intelligent and talented while also having few official credentials to verify their credibility?
I don’t mean to impugn either YouTuber, but I’ve been burned too many times by equating “wow this is cool material” with “this is correct”. I’m almost ashamed to admit that my desire to root for the underdog biases me in their favour precisely because they are outspoken, with disastrous outcomes. Well known examples of this which I’ve seen — although much more serious than arrows and stars! — include Andrew Wakefield (MMR maverick, much lauded as a “whistleblower”, later shown to be a hoaxer) and David Irving (maverick second world war historian, much lauded, later shown to be an anti-Semitic white supremacist.)
The keyhole stuff is objectively cool but how do I know the historical takes aren’t just “fake news” for nerds?
Readit News
https://youtu.be/iTmiMwQnres
Or Olympic archery:
https://youtu.be/fOt4uz-bkfA
Even pool players are extremely still in their motion:
https://youtu.be/-FHz4kf_cus
Lars shoots a different style, which is basically "draw and loose" with very little "aiming". The aiming done in that situation is to basically "look at what you want to hit".
Here's a Smarter Every Day episode that shows some of that. You see Byron Ferguson there already putting the arrow on but there's no aiming. When the mint is thrown in the air, he just looks at the mint and instinctively aims and shoots it in mid air.
https://youtu.be/Q8Yp9SjCU5E?t=225
I recommend the whole episode.
Also Legendary Howard Hill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36R7cLzPNuw
It's amazing how well this works if you don't need to hit a mint and no worries of shooting a person and even without exactly spined arrows and with just a stick and a string for a bow. Source: I do this for fun (with larger targets).
Reminds me of a friend's bachelor party out in the woods where we were shooting guns. A couple friends brought big revolvers and so I tried shooting them at some targets. Missed every one. I decided if I wasn't gonna hit anything, I should at least have fun, so I took two of them and did a Yosemite Sam impression firing them akimbo at the targets in rapid fire and I heard a PING PING PING PING of 4 shots hit in a row from 2 different guns fired in tandem.
Sometimes the best aim is no aiming at all.
Indeed, it's closer to a field athlete (basketball, soccer, etc) shooting/throwing a ball.
Works surprisingly well for unsighted shots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AoCK5r2TWg
The first time I saw that killed any interest I might have had in 'serious' archery (I was into it as a kid). It's like watching a weightlifter use an exercise machine.
What are we talking? Like a peanut m&m? A macaroon?
But getting the shots into a keyhole even at a relatively short distance is very impressive still.
Otherwise you just get one award you can never beat.
Double so if there are monetary prizes involved.
I’ve been saying for years that someone needs to reign in Big Keyhole Arrows but the regulators have been asleep at the wheel as per usual. Thanks a lot, (Congress)/(Brussels)/(Obama I guess).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Bubka
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Duplantis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZsQmlZclTo
Kind of a misleading thing to say it's 'thoroughly debunked' when it's very clearly for entertainment and just says they're 'myths'.
"How did the Saracens measure seconds?" — My thought exactly!
So it begs the question. How much did Lars pay to put on this event, of all the possible arrow related records he could have made up, why make up this particular one. It seems obvious that it would have been a more honest record to look at consecutive bullseyes or arrows split or something like that, but perhaps the established records from regular competitive archers where to hard for him to beat. And naturally, why is he trying to create a social bus now? Does he have a book coming out or something like that?
Apologies if that's just a spelling error, but if it's an eggcorn / mondegreen, I feel duty-bound to point out that it's Guinness Book of Records, as in a pint of.
Usain Bolt have a world record, anybody can have a Guinness World Record if you have money, and challenge things like most helium balloons tied to a paddleboard while paying Guinness staff to fly around and some big fee to put it in their books.
This one from Lars is actually one of the 'better' ones.
There are any of a thousand of video game speed runs you could probably beat with a week of solid effort, but breaking the Mario 1 speed run is a different league.
I don’t mean to impugn either YouTuber, but I’ve been burned too many times by equating “wow this is cool material” with “this is correct”. I’m almost ashamed to admit that my desire to root for the underdog biases me in their favour precisely because they are outspoken, with disastrous outcomes. Well known examples of this which I’ve seen — although much more serious than arrows and stars! — include Andrew Wakefield (MMR maverick, much lauded as a “whistleblower”, later shown to be a hoaxer) and David Irving (maverick second world war historian, much lauded, later shown to be an anti-Semitic white supremacist.)
The keyhole stuff is objectively cool but how do I know the historical takes aren’t just “fake news” for nerds?