Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Jake Kaminski (@jake_kaminski_), a two-time Olympic silver medalist in archery and a longtime member of the US Archery Team, with more than a decade of international competition experience. Known for his technical precision and deep knowledge of the sport, Jake helped lead the US to team silver medals at both the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
Since retiring from Olympic competition, Jake has become a leading voice in the archery world through content creation, product innovation, and educational events. He runs a successful YouTube channel, writes training guides, and develops high-performance gear under the Kaminski Archery brand.
Sign up for the Kaminski Archery Backyard Championship here.
Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
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Tim Ferriss: Jake Kaminski.
Jake Kaminski: Tim Ferriss.
Tim Ferriss: Nice to see you, man.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, nice to see you too.
Tim Ferriss: So glad to be doing this. We’ve had, I was joking before we recorded, that we could just treat this like conversation 678, something like that. We’ve had a lot of conversations.
Jake Kaminski: It might be double that.
Tim Ferriss: It might be double that. It is probably double that, if we count texts in the many, many thousands. And then videos, it just goes on and on. So let’s give people some context. We’re going to do a deep dive into the world of archery. We’re going to do a deep dive into the world of high performance, which transcends archery. So if you think to yourself, archery, I’m not interested in flinging arrows, still, listen, there’s going to be a lot here. And we’re also going to talk about your coaching, and our experience, coach and student, and what we did with that, which I think is pretty special, and fun to unpack.
So we’re going to go in a lot of different rabbit holes, but let’s start, for people who are not familiar with Olympic recurve, what does that mean? What is the sport?
Jake Kaminski: Sure. So the sport of Olympic archery, as I grew up, was just called recurve, because that was the discipline, but now it’s known as Olympic archery, because there’s many different disciplines that have spun off from that kind of bow. But essentially what it is, is a sport of hyper precision. It’s just how good can you work with a machine, your bow, to produce the exact same result every single time, at an extreme distance? So when I grew up, we shot up to a hundred yards, which is easy to see, it’s end zone to end zone on a football field. But now the Olympic distance is 70 meters, or 77 yards, or 237 feet. So that’s about three quarters of the way down the football field. So we’re shooting an arrow that distance, the arrow reaches 12 to 13 feet in the air, in an arcing trajectory, to the target. And it’s —
Tim Ferriss: No magnification —
Jake Kaminski: — zero magnification, no rear sight, in fact. So you don’t even have something to align up in the back, other than a string. You’re using a blurry string that is very imprecise in your reference.
Tim Ferriss: And for people who are trying to get an idea of what it means to perform at a very high level, the center of the target, how large is that? And what does that mean for the amount of motion that is permissible at the arrow point?
Jake Kaminski: The 10 ring, the maximum scoring ring is 12.2 centimeters, or about the size of a CD.
You have to not only take into consideration your alignment with that arrow in that bow, but also you have wind. So there’s a lot of factors there.
Tim Ferriss: Or precipitation.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, anything, anything but lightning. And to hit that 10 ring, that 12.2 centimeter diameter ring, it is the margin of error to hit that repeatedly, is the diameter of an extra fine ball, in an extra fine ball point pen.
Tim Ferriss: So just to put this in perspective, if you’re not watching the video, you’ll still get it. But if you’re watching the video, all right, so you’re trying to hit a CD, for those of you who remember CDs, it would be like the type of dish you might have under a cup of coffee, maybe something like that. It’s small. And then the amount of variance at the arrow tip that will allow you to hit that consistently, is smaller than the point of this pen, not the pen, not the diameter of the pen, the actual rolling point in a ball point.
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: It’s insane.
Jake Kaminski: Correct. And now how often, or how many arrows do you have to do that for? Because it’s not just one, right? It’s more than that. And so when you add in, we shoot for ranking round to seed us in our brackets for the Olympic games, we shoot 72 arrows. And your average, really high score, you’re hitting that 10 ring, probably 40 plus times out of 72 times.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: It’s insane.
Tim Ferriss: So that’s the level. I’ll give one more bit of trivia that I did not know, until we were literally just walking down this hallway, which is that you have also hit the 10 ring from three quarters of a football field away, while standing on an Indo Board. For people who don’t know what that is, it’s like a balance board. Imagine a skateboard deck that you could stand on, and there’s basically a huge rolling pin underneath it, and you place it on the pin, and then you have to balance as you wobble. And if you see someone try this for the first time it’s disastrous and comical. And so to be able to stand on that, and hit the 10 ring, you guys can put the math together. It is just an extra planetary accomplishment, it’s wild.
So let’s back up and share some context on how we first connected.
So the world of archery is, I’m not going to say it’s opaque, because it’s not opaque, but it can be difficult to navigate. And when I was first trying to find potential coaches, and I’ll come back to why I was doing that. I went where I went online, I went to YouTube. But one of the challenges, as most people will recognize, is that, let’s just say for trick shooters, and there’s some amazing trick shooters, which is not to discount that as a discipline, but people can take a thousand attempts, and then show their best outcome. And we were talking about this earlier, but when they actually go to retrieve their arrow, look at the rest of the target face.
Jake Kaminski: Not only retrieve their arrow, just look at the target in frame behind them. Oftentimes it’s like there’s a burlap wrap over the target, because people use bag targets, that’s what they’re called. And you know how worn out they can get, yours are nowhere near as worn out as 90 plus percent of those trick shooters. And yeah, they show you that one impact, but look at the target behind them.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And I think what you’re alluding to is that if you’re hitting the center of the target consistently, you’re basically going to carve out a sweet spot, and then you have to replace that portion of the target face, if it’s replaceable. And there’s a lot of, I suppose, selection and highlights online. And it can make it very, very difficult, particularly if you’re coming in as a novice, you don’t know how to sort, or separate fact from fiction. You don’t know where to go. And so what I ended up doing was asking myself a question I ask a lot.
And for people who’ve read The 4-Hour Chef, which is actually about accelerated learning, and this approach will sound familiar, but this is a chance to see it unfold in recent history, and sort of in real time, because we’re still training. How can I find an objective measure for this sport, for this discipline? And there are almost always options, for instance, I’ve had Susan Garrett on this podcast. She is a multiple time agility champion, so a dog agility champion, she’s a multiple national time champion. And that is an objective competition, with set scoring, with set penalties, under time and there’s nowhere to hide, right, there’s nowhere to hide. So that is how I ended up having Susan Garrett on the podcast, versus a million celebrity dog coaches, where it’s impossible to actually know what you’re buying, because you don’t have any of the outtakes. You don’t have a lot of objective measurement.
And in this case, I was like, all right, well I think archery’s in the Olympics, let me look this up. Oh, it’s in the Olympics, great. Let me try to use that as a sorting mechanism. And that is how I found your amazing YouTube channel. You want to give it a plug?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, it’s just Jake Kaminski.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I mean, when we have gone anywhere related to archery, it’s like trying to move around with The Rock, or Lady Gaga, or some combination of the two. You just get mobbed, because in a world where it can be very difficult to decipher what is legitimate, you offer the bonafides, and a lot of really good technical instructions. So that’s how I found you, then reached out. And then lo and behold, here we are. And it’s really worked out incredibly well. And my background, just quickly, it’s not that extensive, but I’ve been bow hunting for at least 10 years, a bit more than that. Did rifle prior to that.
First hunt ever was with Steven Rinella, during the writing of The 4-Hour Chef. So thanks to Steve Rinella, people can check him out, everything MeatEater, also an amazing writer. And I’ll give people a bit of a flash forward, and then we can talk about all sorts of stuff, including your training regimen for yourself, and development, and so on. But began taking barebow archery. We can talk about what that is, but it’s effectively, for the purposes of this conversation, it’s a competition classification. And it dictates that you basically strip off all the stabilizers, the clicker, don’t worry about these things, the sight, et cetera, from an Olympic bow.
Jake Kaminski: Essentially all the aids.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, all that —
Jake Kaminski: Everything that makes it simple.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you take off all of the performance aids, and then you shoot with that particular bow. And I became interested in barebow for a few reasons. I saw it online, on YouTube, while I was tooling around trying to find something. And there is something called Lancaster Classic, happens in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Lancaster —
Jake Kaminski: Or Lancaster.
Tim Ferriss: Lancaster, yes, exactly. And Lancaster Archery Supply is a huge distributor of archery products, and they hold this competition once a year. And it is for the barebow discipline, I suppose, it’s the largest in the world?
Jake Kaminski: I think so, yeah. I mean it’s at least the most prestigious, I suppose, has the biggest reach. So it gets the most exposure, and I think actually the most participation now, at least as of this last year, and a couple of years leading up to this, it’s taken off. And it is the biggest, I believe it’s almost the biggest, if not the biggest class, as far as the amount of participation.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So you’ve got barebow, they also have compound, they also have Olympic archery, Olympic recurve.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. They have hunting —
Tim Ferriss: They have longbow now, they’ve got all sorts of stuff, so many different classes. And barebow was interesting to me for a few reasons, I have not done any real physical competition, well now I have, but in 20 years, probably. Last thing was tango in Argentina, in 2004, I suppose it was a long time ago. And I wanted to compete, I love competing, but I thought to myself, all right, I want to take a bit of an oblique approach here, which I think is a misunderstanding about what I do, sometimes or what I often focus on, even as early as The 4-Hour Workweek. The goal is not to find the cheap shortcut. The goal is to look for oblique, maybe uncommon approaches to various problems, or goals or whatever. That’s it.
And in this case, I looked at the number of people competing in barebow, and I was like, all right, it’s a smaller population at the higher levels. And it is sometimes nicknamed the struggle stick for folks. And part of the reason it has so much viewership online, compared to some of these other disciplines is, as they would say, like in barebow, anything can happen.
Jake Kaminski: Literally, at any moment.
Tim Ferriss: At any moment. And if somebody lets their nerves take control, if there’s any number of issues, they could really fire on the target, but out of the bullseye, let’s just say, by a substantial margin, which opens up the possibility for comebacks, surprise turns, reversals of fortune. And it makes it fun to watch.
Jake Kaminski: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: And I thought, okay, well that seems like a fun place to bookmark as a possible competition. And ended up competing, end of January, and we will come back to that, and had, I suppose, about six months of real training, real focused training. And so we’ll come back to what that looked like.
But let’s talk about Jake. So how did the archery thing start? And why don’t you just take that and run with it, then I might pepper in questions along the way?
Jake Kaminski: I grew up in a very small town, in Elma, New York, kind of south of Buffalo, New York. And my dad was a volunteer fireman at the local fire department. And they have a spring and a fall gun raffle every year. And they raffle off guns, and a canoe full of beer, or whatever else. And one of them was a bow, and he won the bow gun raffle, and I was five years old. And of course this was a hunting bow, for an adult, so there’s no way a five-year-old’s going to use that. So we found, I think we went to Kmart, and bought a bear hunting compound for a kid, just fiberglass, super cheap, very basic. My parents bought me that for my sixth birthday. So on my sixth birthday, after we got hay bales from a local farmer or whatever, threw up a target. And I shot my first arrow at 20 yards. And 20 yards is more than double the distance that you would really want to have any person, not just a kid, shoot their first arrow. I vividly remember my very first arrow I ever shot, because I literally shot an inside out X, on my very first arrow.
Tim Ferriss: You should explain what that is.
Jake Kaminski: So inside out X, meaning if you have your 10 ring, like the maximum scoring ring, inside the 10 ring is a X ring. It’s about the size, it’s like between a diamond and nickel, about that size. And inside out, meaning I put the arrow in the dead center of the target, where it did not touch the ring of the X. So it was inside of a dime, roughly. My very first arrow. We won’t talk about the next several hundred arrows.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, thank God for that first arrow, right?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. I mean, I was hooked.
Tim Ferriss: I mean it’s kind of crazy, I’ve heard this story, to think if your first 20 arrows had been all over the place, would it have been a different story? Maybe?
Jake Kaminski: Maybe.
Tim Ferriss: It’s crazy. Who knows?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, really no way to know. And I was with my brother Matt, he was out there shooting with me, and I don’t know if he shot before me, but after I shot the X, he’s like, “Give me that thing.” And of course he —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, he could not replicate —
Jake Kaminski: And then it just kind of started from there. We found that local club, that was down the street, it is a JOAD club, a Junior Olympic Archery development club. There’s many of those around the country in the US. They’re at local hunting shops, basically, if they have a junior development program. We found that club, because that’s where the bow was bought for the gun raffle. And luckily it was about a five minute drive from our house. And so every Saturday mornings they had a junior development program. And so I’d go there, and start shooting with them. And so every Saturday morning I’d be there, no matter what, because I enjoyed it so much. And yeah, I mean the progression, it went from shooting compound. So I shot compound for about six years.
Tim Ferriss: So let’s pause for a second, just for people who have no archery context. And by the way, my not too secret agenda for this is, I want everybody to go out and try archery. It has been such a godsend for me to have that constant, for a million reasons. It turns into a form of meditation. It can also be just as frustrating if not more frustrating than golf, but let’s put that aside for now. It has been such a gift to my life, to have archery, and to be able to train with you. It’s really been tremendous. So I have this not-so-secret agenda, of getting as many people as possible who are listening to try archery, which by the way, is very much within reach for basically everybody listening.
Jake Kaminski: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: If you have a smartphone and you’re listening to this, you can try archery.
Jake Kaminski: A hundred percent.
Tim Ferriss: You do not need to buy anything. But let me explain a term. So longbow is about the simplest thing you can imagine. It’s a, let’s call it a stick. It’s bent and then you have a string attached to it, and you’ll see this in many different indigenous hunting cultures, you’ll see it all over the world. Recurve, you’ll also see all over the world, because they figured out, well, you can make the bow a lot shorter, and have the ends of the bow recurve out, kind of towards the target, to apply more tension.
Jake Kaminski: It’s like an advanced longbow, using laminations of wood, instead of just a stick.
Tim Ferriss: Right? Exactly. So now you have exactly this laminated bow, and you see that all over the world, it’s all over the world. And there are different iterations of that. You’ve got the, well, slightly different idea, but horse bow, which of course I’m in love with, that’s a whole separate podcast, and so on and so forth. So if you imagine like a Robin Hood bow in your mind, I think it was a recurve, in maybe the cartoon at least, made out of fancier materials, whether it’s carbon, or aluminum, or something else. Then you have the idea of what I’m shooting when I’m doing say barebow. And then a compound has various cams, you can think of them almost like cams on a weightlifting machine.
Jake Kaminski: Pulleys.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, pulley, pulleys and cams. So it’s like when you are in a gym using a machine, pushing or pulling, there’s a strength curve. So the amount of exertion required changes over the course of that full range. And in the case of a compound bow, very similar. And what makes it such an efficient, amazing hunting tool, there are a few factors. One is, in the beginning it’s hard, it’s hard, it’s hard. And then there’s a let off, so you might have, I’m making up these numbers, but 60-pound draw weight. And then you’re holding, what would you say?
Jake Kaminski: Maybe between eight and 12 pounds.
Tim Ferriss: Eight and 12 pounds.
Jake Kaminski: Depending on if it’s a hunting, or a competition bow.
Tim Ferriss: Right. So eight or 12 pounds, when you’re at anchor, and to define that, that’s when you have your — very simple terms, your hand that is attached to the string, whether you’re using fingers, or a mechanical release, when your hand is kind of glued to your face, and you always glue it to the same place, to set up the rifle barrel, so to speak. And that’s one element of what makes compounds so interesting. The second is, when you have these additional mechanical aids, let’s just say the speed of the arrow is just —
Jake Kaminski: Dramatically more.
Tim Ferriss: Dramatically, dramatically more. All right.
Jake Kaminski: The main difference in the compound versus everything else, is there’s one string on every other bow, called a single string bow. Whether that be a trad bow, a stick bow —
Tim Ferriss: Traditional bow. Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Recurve, a barebow, whatever that is. Whereas compound has three strings, essentially when you look at it, you can see multiple strings, because the string tension, as you pull it back, it builds, but then it transfers that tension into the cables, which are the other two strings that the arrow’s not attached to.
And so that then catapults the arrow at an incredible rate of speed, when you let it go.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And when you go to your local range, which we’ll get to, and I recommend, you can try all of these different options, in a lot of places. And if you can only start with compound, great.
Jake Kaminski: That’s where I started.
Tim Ferriss: Maybe you stay with compound, and at the highest levels they do some absurd, absurd things. Actually I just have to give credit where credit is due. So also have had some fantastic conversations with Joel Turner, Shot IQ, his son, Bodie, do you want to just explain what he’s capable of doing?
Jake Kaminski: Sure. So you know that X that I shot the inside out on my first arrow? So he will shoot that X, so that same, hitting that dime, for about 120 arrows in a row, essentially, under pressure, when there’s $100,000 plus on the line. And you would not know, just looking at the kid, he is just stone cold, like ice in his veins. You’d have no idea that he even had a heartbeat, just watching him shoot, because he’s incredible. To be able to hit that thing repeatedly, with so much precision, and repeatability under pressure. Most importantly, it’s ridiculous, it’s different. It’s a — we’ll get to talking about a little bit about compound, and how there’s a, I guess a less deep learning curve. You get really good, really fast as far as precision, but still to win with a compound, in a competition, it still requires immense amounts of effort, and energy, and training.
Tim Ferriss: So we’re going to come back to your trajectory in a second, pun intended, but let’s mention that briefly, because I didn’t really fill in the gaps. The compound bow that I used for hunting was fantastic. I thought it was a great transition for me, because I was more familiar with rifle, and so on. It was actually a fantastic transition. And I would hunt once a year, let’s just call it something like that. Use everything, eat everything, for those people wondering. And the hop from rifle and so on, to compound was actually quite easy. And I needed to brush up on a few things. Obviously I learned some technical details, think about back tension a bit, et cetera. But for someone with a sports background, it was pretty straightforward. And if you’re thinking about the target size, the kind of kill zone, on whether it’s a deer or an elk, I mean certainly a lot larger on an elk, but you can get to a point, if you have some kinesthetic awareness, very quickly, I would say within a week, for a lot of folks maybe. Maybe it’s —
Jake Kaminski: So to be ethical as a hunter, to know that when you take the shot, you’re not going to do the animal any suffering, it will be a very, very painless and fast end.
Tim Ferriss: It takes more time to get to that point.
Jake Kaminski: Well, depends, it depends on the distance that you’re shooting. So, say, we’ll say 20 yards.
Tim Ferriss: So what I was going to say is 20 yards, just as people can imagine.
Jake Kaminski: So 20 yards, your average person, I could get them to hit that pie plate. It depends on the coach, of course, and depends on explanations, and the individual person as well. But I would say easily within a week, you’re going to hit that thing nine to 10 times out of 10, every time. Within a day you’ll hit it probably six to eight times out of 10, because it’s just easy, relatively speaking, to get to that level, really quick.
Tim Ferriss: And there are a lot of reasons for that, right? I mean, you have the let off, you have the peep, which is —
Jake Kaminski: The rear sight.
Tim Ferriss: — which is basically a rear sight. It’s a tiny circle, fixed to the string itself.
Jake Kaminski: You have a level on the bow.
Tim Ferriss: You have a level. There are many things that allow you to do that quickly, but then to get to the highest levels, we were talking about this at lunch, it’s kind of like, okay, let’s get you down the hill on a snowboard. Yeah, within a week we can probably get you down some easy terrain on a snowboard. Okay, now you want to compete in the X Games? Yeah. All right, well, good luck. That’s going to take a while.
Jake Kaminski: About 10 years, right? That’s a rule for a reason.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I mean that’s Bodie, and anyone who performs at that level.
Jake Kaminski: Absolutely. So not to take it away from them, their proficiency level is insane. And to be able to do it all the time, under pressure, is even more insane. It’s one thing to do it in your backyard, and be that backyard world champion that so many people claim to be, but to do it in front of other people, on a stage, with crazy lighting, cheering crowds, money on the line, potentially putting food on your table or not at the end of the day too. That’s just a whole lot of added pressure. And so it’s different.
Tim Ferriss: So we’ll probably end up talking about Korea later, and maybe we can just give a sneak peek. I know we’re going all over the place, but I remember you said to me at one point, and please correct me if I’m getting this wrong, if each country could field as many athletes as they wanted for a given sport, that Korea would probably place one to 100 at the —
Jake Kaminski: Minimum, bare minimum, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: It’s basically their, let’s just call it basketball, football, baseball all wrapped into one. Right?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. It is their national sport.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. They are obscenely, obscenely good.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And you’ve said to me before, if you or I were scouted and assessed early on, we wouldn’t have made the early cuts.
Jake Kaminski: No, you would’ve immediately —
Tim Ferriss: Because I’m cross eye dominant.
Jake Kaminski: Because of your eye dominance, immediately —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’m right-handed but my left eye is my aiming eye. So I would’ve been gone. I would’ve —
Jake Kaminski: I get a little bit too excited, so I would’ve also been —
Tim Ferriss: You would’ve been cut.
Jake Kaminski: 100 percent.
Tim Ferriss: So what are some good decisions or habits that you made early on, let’s just say before you ended up in San Diego, that you think helped you to perform the way you performed in those early stages? I can think of one example, but I’ll hold it for now, which is where you’re placing yourself in the gym and how you’re training.
Jake Kaminski: I would say, for me, one of the biggest advantages as a human, not just as an archer but as a human, was the same kind of thing that you saw, was a meditative escape. Because when you’re shooting archery, that’s the only thing you can focus on. Because if you’re thinking about anything else, your scores go down. Your groups open up.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. You know if you’re meditating poorly very quickly.
Jake Kaminski: 100 percent. So I think for me, that gave me a place to go to. I escaped to archery. So I feel like that was definitely a big factor as to what led to that. It naturally worked for me. It wasn’t difficult for me. It is hard. It’s hard to stay focused on something so simple and repetitive over and over again, but it was very enjoyable because it’s just me, the bow, and the arrow. I love competing as well. I used to play baseball when I was a kid, and that competed with my archery time because I was trying out for the state team in baseball, or about to, and winning nationals shooting archery.
So I kind of had an easy decision there to make because I was already winning nationals in archery. So I went with that. But the overall enjoyment of shooting archery, and enjoying that, me and the bow, and no one else is going to prevent me from beating someone else. It’s not like they’re interfering with me or trying to prevent me from shooting my arrow. It’s very nice. And it’s also 100 percent objective. There is no subjectivity. There’s no way for anyone to influence the outcome other than maybe, at some weird position, a judge to make a bad call. But it’s almost never happening. It just doesn’t happen because it’s such a small community and everybody holds each other accountable, which is also another amazing thing about the community of archery.
So I think that was a big factor there. As far as what you’re alluding to and bringing up and saying is I choose to make things as difficult as possible when I’m practicing. Say if I’m out at a range. I’ll choose the lane nearest to the wall so I have the least amount of space. And we’ll probably get into why we do that in a little bit here, but I would suggest you to do the same thing as we were working together. And you at first were like, “Why? Why would I do that? It’s much better to just stand by myself out in the open and have no influence.”
Well, it’s because when you’re shooting on a line in a tournament, you have 24 inches of space, roughly, for yourself. And the next guy’s 24 inches, then the next guy. And so you’re stacked in there like a can of sardines.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. We could get a photo of me at Lancaster for people who want to see what it looks like.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. It’s —
Tim Ferriss: It’s like a Tokyo subway car. You just happen to all be holding bows with arrows.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: It’s very crowded.
Jake Kaminski: It is. It is. It is. And yeah, so anything you can do to make things more difficult. To shoot in the rain, to shoot in the wind, to shoot in the heat, I would do because, I don’t know, maybe I just enjoy torturing myself. I don’t know. But I found it to be really important. And once I got to the training center, listening to some of the other successful athletes giving talks at the training center about their success and how things went and what made them successful. A lot of them [were] leaning into the same kind of thing — training hard to make competition easy.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Well, it’s very much an echo of, the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.
Jake Kaminski: Sure. Absolutely. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: It’s just like you want to try to make your training harder, if possible, than your competition.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: There are limits to what you can do sometimes.
Jake Kaminski: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: We’ll talk about that.
Jake Kaminski: But even still, the range I grew up on, I would go there more than just Saturdays. And I’d shoot there by myself, because no one else is there. And I’m just shooting. And my coach / mentor at the time, Harry Staebell, would come downstairs, because it was down in a secondary level below. And he’d have a metal ashtray. Back then everybody smoked. And he would just throw it randomly on the concrete ground when I’m at full draw. And I’d have to regain composure and shoot a shot. Right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: So there was all sorts of weird stuff that happened all the time.
Tim Ferriss: Some weird Mr. Miyagi action going on.
Jake Kaminski: There was a lot of stuff that happened that definitely would not fly in today’s day and age. So it’s like, “You’re dropping your bow arm.” That’s a thing that, when you shoot the shot, you have to maintain the bow up. You don’t want to drop the arm.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: So he’d take his pocket knife out, flip it open, turn it upside, and say, “Don’t drop your arm.”
Tim Ferriss: Put it under your arm?
Jake Kaminski: Under my arm. Or you’re grabbing your bow. Something else you don’t want to do is hold onto it. There’s a grip on a bow but you don’t want to grip it. You just saddle it. Right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. You’re kind of pushing into it.
Jake Kaminski: Correct. And so you’re grabbing your bow. Guess what? Thumbtacks were double-sided taped on the front of my bow. Didn’t grab it anymore.
Tim Ferriss: God. That’s so intense.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And it worked.
Jake Kaminski: It did.
Tim Ferriss: Look, I’m not recommending people do that with their kids. But the also supplement to our conversation: we’re going to put a number of videos up on my YouTube page, and we’ll link to Jake’s YouTube page, with archery 101. Both archery gear 101, just laying out the anatomy of a bow. And then technical 101s, so you have a couple of pointers which you may not get at some ranges, so that when you have your first, second, and subsequent lessons you’ll have some really good solid fundamentals, at least, to use.
Tim Ferriss: All right. So you mentioned Thumbtack Billy. I forgot his name. Harry, right?
Jake Kaminski: Harry.
Tim Ferriss: And if I’m skipping any important chapters, let me know.
Jake Kaminski: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: But I want to know when KSL entered your life. And who or what is KSL?
Jake Kaminski: Sure. Quickly before we get into KSL, started shooting compound, the easier sport to get into. Shot that for six years. And then some other of the friends that I developed at the archery range that I was going to were going to the Empire State Games. It’s like a mini Olympics. And it’s for all of the regions within New York State, and they compete against each other, different events. You go to a place. There’s opening ceremonies, closing ceremonies.
Tim Ferriss: They have this for a bunch of sports.
Jake Kaminski: It’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: And so I wanted to do the archery thing, but compound wasn’t in it. Only recurve. And I had really debilitating target panic. Basically dealing with aiming in the middle and the irrational fear to aim in the middle with the intention of shooting the shot. It’s like a —
Tim Ferriss: Which is quite common.
Jake Kaminski: It’s a common thing.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: And so I wanted to shoot recurve because it’s a change, something different. Archery was starting to become unfun for the compound side of things because of that target panic. So I picked up the recurve. And it has a device called a clicker, which is essentially a psycho trigger that is both a draw check to make sure your draw length, the distance you pull the bow back, is the same every single time. But it also gives you a cue to tell you when to let go. So it allowed me to aim in the middle with more comfort to disassociate from that fear of letting go and missing the middle.
Tim Ferriss: Let me give people a visual that might help you imagine what a clicker is. It’s a flat piece of metal that goes on the outside of the arrow. I actually used one for the first time today, and holy God is it challenging to figure out. But if you were to imagine, let’s say you’re using a slingshot. Most people know a slingshot. But let’s say, instead of shooting a ball bearing, you’re shooting an arrow out of this slingshot. And there’s a piece of metal that is leaning against the arrow as you pull it back in the slingshot. Once it flips past the very front of that arrow point, this is not the perfect analogy but it works, and clicks onto another piece of metal, that’s when you let go, whether you think you’re ready or not. And what that’s going to do is standardize how much you pull it back. And it also takes away the decision to let go.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Right?
Jake Kaminski: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: It’s just a Pavlovian response that you train in yourself.
Jake Kaminski: Yes and no.
Tim Ferriss: It’s more complicated, but —
Jake Kaminski: Yes, but that is a brief look at it. So I switched to recurve specifically because of target panic and to go to the Empire State Games.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: So I literally took a bow off the wall. I still have the bow. That was a club bow. And took my stuff from my compound, my arrows and all sorts of other things, and threw it on the bow and started shooting it for a few months before Empire State Games. Made the team. I think I won some medals there. I don’t remember exactly, but it was a lot of fun.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Good time. Very good experience. And ultimately fell in love with archery again because it was enjoyable again. There was no target panic involved. And just continued to do that. Shot up through the ranks. Started winning nationals as a junior and then, at a tournament called the — well, actually it was Junior World Championships at US Target Nationals.
I was shooting against some other people that had just moved to the training center to work with KSL, who we’ll get to in a second. And I was the only person to beat the person who was working with KSL.
And he came up to me after the match and said, “Hey, you’re pretty good and I’d like you to come out to the training center and work with the Junior Dream Team.” It was a squad at the time that would go out there maybe once a quarter. And I said, “Actually I just applied to become an RA, a resident athlete. I’d like to move out there full time in a couple weeks or a couple months.” And he said, “Great. I’ll keep an eye out for your application. Keep it up.” And he disappeared. And so KSL is Kisik Lee, my coach. And he is the godfather of archery in Korea, essentially. He essentially left Korea and went to Australia for a few years —
Tim Ferriss: What did he do in Korea?
Jake Kaminski: He was the national head coach of the Korean archery team and formulated the entire program that is the current Korean archery training regiment to develop archers. And to put it as a quick example as to the type of celebrity level that he is: anytime we would fly to Korea, a limo would show up. He didn’t order it, but the limo would show up. We flew there for a tournament and a limo showed up, and he said, “I can’t fit the team in the limo. No thanks.” And I’m at a tournament in Puerto Rico. We’re in a sauna, me and another archer, with some other random Korean. He looked Korean and he ended up being from Korea.
And he said, “Why are you guys here?” “We’re here shooting archery.” “Oh, did you know archery is the national sport in Korea?” “Yeah. We do, actually. And our coach is actually Korean. It’s Kisik Lee.” “Kisik Lee? Oh, my God. Do you have any idea the level of celebrity and how important he is to the country culturally?”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Just random sauna in Puerto Rico. You know?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: I don’t know.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: So that kind of level.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: And so he left Korea, went to Australia, worked with them to develop a national program. I think before he was working with them officially he went to biomechanics school to try to apply more efficient movements to his method. And he also, prior to that, to jump backwards, part of the development of the Korean National program was looking at the US program back in the ’80s. We were dominant worldwide and hadn’t lost a world championship for decades and were just powerhouses on the international scale.
And so he mimicked the program that we were doing, or at least the movements, positions, that kind of thing, and implemented that in Korea as a national system that would start from grassroots, from day one, no matter what. And then that’s why we would be thrown out, because we didn’t fit the mold. That’s how strict they are. So he went to Australia, made a better program, and then ultimately ended up coming to the States. And so he just got hired in 2006, in like January. So just before Junior World Championships, I moved out to the training center and started training under Coach Lee in 2006.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. We’re going to pick up there in a minute, but I want to just pause because you’re already doing very, very well. You mentioned a few things that influenced that. You found it appealing. Easy to use archery as an escape, a meditation. You made training as difficult as possible. Do any other things come to mind that were decisions you made or things you did differently that you think contributed to those successes prior to moving out to the training center?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. I think one of those things, honestly, was I did not really mesh well socially with other kids.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: And so I didn’t really have a ton of friends.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: It was a very odd situation. I think definitely a lot of it is, I’m an intense person as it is and so I take things very seriously.
Tim Ferriss: His wife is laughing from around the concrete pillar.
Jake Kaminski: Yes. Yeah, I take things very seriously. And as a kid that can make things difficult.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Even though talented in sports, baseball, any throwing sport, really, and archery, and just didn’t fit in in school. So I basically built a shell around myself, didn’t talk to anyone in school. Because I got made fun of and got overall, not attacked because it wasn’t physical, really. It just wasn’t something I was interested in. I wasn’t wanting to participate in social life, so I just made a shell around myself and stayed inside of that in school. And at archery, I didn’t have that identity.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Right.
Jake Kaminski: I was a kid.
Tim Ferriss: Everybody’s shooting and doing their own thing.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, everybody’s doing their own thing. Everybody’s as interesting and different and awkward and normal and talented and just human.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: And so I didn’t have that aura of that negative experience of school following me around. So it supercharged my desire to want to do it more because it was just, I was normal.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: People treated me like a normal human. A normal kid, with respect. And it was great, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: So that was ultimately my life. Yeah. I think that really is what supercharged my desire to want to do it more, because it was something that I felt happy doing.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, totally. And I want to — this is as good a point as any to say that part of what got me excited about archery was realizing how welcoming the communities are.
Jake Kaminski: It is.
Tim Ferriss: And there are different personalities.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like compound crew’s different from the Olympic crew, which is different from the barebow crew, which is very different from the horse bow crew.
Jake Kaminski: Oh, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: They’re all like different, very different Burning Man camps with super different personalities but, broadly speaking, incredibly welcoming.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: People are happy to give you advice, give you pointers, help you out. And I mean this in the best way possible. It’s also kind of like Weirdopalooza. I mean it’s like —
Jake Kaminski: For sure.
Tim Ferriss: And it doesn’t matter.
Jake Kaminski: No.
Tim Ferriss: Right?
Jake Kaminski: No.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like, “Okay, there’s some dude in a kilt. Okay, whatever.”
Jake Kaminski: Whatever. That’s normal.
Tim Ferriss: And then there’s some emo chick with a mohawk. Yeah. Okay, whatever. And everybody’s just doing their thing, shooting. And of course that’s not every archery range.
Jake Kaminski: No.
Tim Ferriss: But in Brooklyn, Gotham Archery, great spot, you see everything.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: And those people will be right next to a dyed-in-the wool hunter who’s born and raised in Montana, who’s getting ready for a hunting season.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And everybody’s cool.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So that’s part of what I really have enjoyed about it. All right, so [transition sounds]. Austin Powers fade back to KSL. So you get to the training center and technically you’re perfect. And he’s just like, “Let it rip, son. Just move forth. Be bold and prosper.” Or was there more to it?
Jake Kaminski: Well, yeah. Perspective is I moved out there I believe in the end of August of 2016. World Championships, Junior World Championships, the trials that I met him at. It’s the first and only Junior Worlds I’d ever go to. And when we first moved there, we being other people, because I also had another buddy of mine, Dan Schuller, who moved out there with me. And my number one competitor, head-to-head, since like 14 years old. And we just pushed each other and kept competing and moving up the ladder as we got older and older.
And so we both moved out to there at the training center at the same time. And Coach Lee said, “I won’t change your form at all. Don’t worry. Train and compete through the World Championships and then we’ll work on your form.” Because part of the reason of going to the training center was to learn from Coach Lee. To really learn how to be a real archer. Because up until that point my shot cycle, which is a thing that you do for archery, it’s the same method over and over again. It’s like a mantra, but physically.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like a physical recipe.
Jake Kaminski: Yes, exactly.
Tim Ferriss: In a sense. Just like someone who’s, let’s just say an Olympic diver, right?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: They’re going to have their routine. Never deviates.
Jake Kaminski: Yep.
Tim Ferriss: They’re probably toweling off in the same way.
Jake Kaminski: Probably.
Tim Ferriss: They’re putting things in the same place.
Jake Kaminski: They probably fold it the same and put it in the same place on the railing.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. Because all of that genuinely matters at a high level, at least to the routine, for sure.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: And so for archery, my routine prior to that was pull back the bow, anchor, look at the middle, and wait for the clicker to click. There was no activation, there was no mental talk, there was nothing. It was genuinely pull it back, look at the middle, and wait. That’s it. And so when I was there, there was about that two month time period before Junior Worlds, and I started shooting phenomenal. To the level of, I could be easily competitive, top two, top three in the senior division. Really starting to shoot high level scores and, frankly, to be a threat to actually metal at Junior Worlds. So that’s very exciting.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: And then about two weeks or so before the actual event, before we went down to Mexico, everything changed. Coach Lee just decided it’s time to change your form. And not just change my form, change my equipment, which is another part of it. And so to not exaggerate in the least, the only thing that was the same on my entire setup and in my entire shot process was my riser, the center part of the bow that’s made of aluminum, that the limbs, the piece that bends, snapped into. The riser and my sight bar, which is the thing that moves the sight.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: So my sight pin, my finger tab, my arrows, my fletching, my string, my stabilizers, my entire shot process, how I stood, how I thought, what I told myself. Everything had changed. And my scores went from nationally competitive as a senior, a threat on the world scale as a junior, to genuinely not shooting that terrible ever. Ever.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. It was the worst you’d been shooting?
Jake Kaminski: Literally the worst I had ever shot, even before I picked up my recurve for the very first time before going to the Empire State Games. So if I took my scores at Empire State Games, I probably outshot my scores at Junior Worlds in Mexico.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. Why would Coach Lee do that two weeks before the competition?
Jake Kaminski: He’s an interesting guy.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: And his reason was, “I can’t take an archer that looks like that to world championships.” In his defense, my technique was atrocious.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: A completely arched back and what we would call a hollow back. So standing very upright. I’m a young kid at the time. Just turned 18. Barely strength trained ever. I did some planks. That was my strength training, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: And yeah, just couldn’t control my body, and just didn’t look the part. He is known for having very specific looks in his archers. A very specific, biomechanically efficient movement with very precise loading of the structure of the body itself to maintain the weight of the bow. And I was not doing that in the least.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: So basically I asked him afterwards and he said, “I was embarrassed to bring those archers to a Junior World Championship.” And he was not afraid to say it. Ultimately I was there for the Olympic Games, not for Junior World Championships, so how could I ever say no? My ultimate goal was to make the Games, not to do anything at Junior Worlds. But it definitely had quite an effect on my overall mental perspective of how things were going.
Tim Ferriss: How long did it take you to build back up to the same scores or superior scores?
Jake Kaminski: I would say probably three to four years.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So what are you saying to yourself mentally over that period of time? Because I would imagine that could be incredibly demoralizing.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: And you would have, I would think, moments of doubt. And I’m curious what kept you going and how you kept yourself going during that period of time. Because look, I think I’m a glutton for punishment and have pretty good pain tolerance, physical and mental, but I don’t know if I could do that.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. To put it in context, it took me three to four years to get back to zero, square one.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Whereas my buddy, Dan Schuller, three months.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, wow.
Jake Kaminski: Maybe. Maybe less. Yeah. I don’t know why, but maybe three months or so for him.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: So I see somebody who went out to the training center with me at the same time. I was at the same level, if not potentially a little bit better, at least the way I saw it, than him. And then extend my timeline times 15 times.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: That’s how long it took me. Much longer to take me to get back to zero. And so yeah, it was definitely very difficult mentally and emotionally, for sure, because it was more than challenging, to say the least. And not only that. Adding in physical challenges, too, because prior to that, prior to moving to the training center I was shooting maybe 100, 120 arrows at the most I could ever shoot in a single day. And I would maybe shoot that once a month. I would shoot often, don’t get me wrong, but maybe it would be 50 to 60 arrows a session at the most.
Tim Ferriss: Yep.
Jake Kaminski: And I thought I was doing a lot. And never strength training. I went to the gym at school and did planks and I don’t even know what. Some very basic, maybe wall sits or something like that. Really just not strength training. So move out to the training center. Started shooting upwards of 400 to 500 arrows every single day.
Strength training three days a week, on the track doing morning workouts six days a week, and shooting overall six days a week. So super crazy amounts of load. Developed tendonitis, tendinosis in shoulders, and dealing with all sorts of inflammation issues. I still deal with a little bit of that today, and I have learned a lot of things to deal with that. But at that time I’m going to the sports medicine for hours a day. So I’d do prehab, rehab exercises every single day, and I’m the only one complaining of the pain in my shoulders and all sorts of other things, whereas all my other teammates are shooting just as much, if not more arrows than me, with just as much, if not more draw weight. Going to the gym. Doing all the same things, and none of them had to go to sports medicine. Very few of them were even sore enough to feel like they needed to ice or do anything.
Tim Ferriss: That’s wild.
Jake Kaminski: And I’m there having to do all sorts of different things. And it was a big, big struggle and a challenge. And I don’t know really what pushed me through exactly. I can’t really put my finger on the pulse of that, but I think a lot of it actually I have to attribute to my sister, Liz. She was approaching things with a different mindset than pretty much that I have ever heard of in the past. Trying to manifest things instead of just going through the motions. Instead of just doing it and hoping the outcome changes, but to try to just overall bring what you want into fruition and to not just hope that it’s going to happen.
And so a big part of that was actually using affirmations. And I had no idea what they were at the time, but she started bringing me into that mindset of using positive affirmations to change everything. I was dealing with being on depression medication and all sorts of other things, because if I had to pick one word to describe to you how I felt during that timeframe, it was apathy.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Just a lack of anything. And so anyway, fast-forward to the positive affirmations. Using I am, period. We check our hand placement and our grip every single shot to make sure it’s exactly the same thing.
Tim Ferriss: So he has, “I am.” tattooed on basically, let’s just say the back of the hand. The webbing between the index finger and the thumb on the left hand, which you’re going to check every time.
Jake Kaminski: Correct, because that’s my bow hand.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: I want to make sure my bow hand placement is precise in the grip. And so it’s not just I am, It’s I am. Period. It’s a statement, right?
Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.
Jake Kaminski: And so what is I am? I am is whatever you want to be. For me it was, I am an archer. I am an Olympian, period. So changing my overall habits and mindset started with just self-talk. And then —
Tim Ferriss: And would you do that at basically that point in your shot cycle or —
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like trying to — when you’re shooting an arrow there’s a difference between trying to hit the 10 ring and trying to not miss the 10 ring. There’s also a difference between fighting for position and owning a position. And so ultimately, how is your approach? And so if you approach from the stance of it has happened and you are that person, then your habits just change.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: And so genuinely it was like, “I am an Olympian, period.” Okay. I’m not yet. I’m not using the standard thing when I ask people, so what do you want to be? I want to be an Olympian. Okay, great. You’re going to always want to be one. Let’s change that thought to be, I am an Olympian, because then your habits change. And so my habits changed to be more of an approach of looking at myself from an honest perspective, of am I doing the right thing? Am I getting enough sleep? Am I strength training enough? Am I putting in enough effort? Am I being honest with myself? All of those things. Because if a champion would do whatever it was and I wasn’t doing it, I’d change that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: I made a decision to make that change. I think a lot of it that took me out of that spiral, that negative spiral, was just believing.
Tim Ferriss: And using the present tense affirmations.
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: Positive affirmations.
Jake Kaminski: Yes. Never a future tense.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Because the future tense is you’re just setting yourself up to continue to want that. It’s not done.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: If it’s done and you shoot from that position of, I have arrived, I am that. I am what I want to be. Then everything else can click.
Tim Ferriss: And for people listening, this is not the first time that affirmations have come up on this podcast with people who are top performers. It can be a really powerful tool. And to this day, I’m still chasing the dream here, but my best ever day of shooting was a day early on when I started using affirmations. And for me it was, “I am a top Lancaster competitor.” Right?
Jake Kaminski: Mm-hmm.
Tim Ferriss: And it was every single shot.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And we will talk about practice scores versus competition scores at some point, but it is remarkable what that can contribute to. What it can do.
Jake Kaminski: For sure.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: All right. So you’re rebuilding, rebuilding. Three to four years. Good God. It’s an entire college experience, basically.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Talk about brutal. But you’ve made all of these decisions, you’ve had all this training, you’ve got Coach Lee’s input, you have the positive affirmations you’ve developed, maybe fine-tuned your shot sequence, right?
Jake Kaminski: Mm-hmm.
Tim Ferriss: You’re no longer just staring at the middle of the target and waiting until the clicker clicks. When does it all come together?
Jake Kaminski: Ultimately it really came together in 2012 at the Olympic Games in London. Put it in perspective, as we talked about Korea already. Korea is a powerhouse now. What the US was in the ’80s, Korea is today.
Tim Ferriss: Yep.
Jake Kaminski: It’s just dominant for decades at this point.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So just to put that in perspective. If we take, could be the women’s team or the men’s team. How dominant? If you look at their medal record over time, what does it look like?
Jake Kaminski: With the exception of the Korean men, the Korean women haven’t lost a gold medal, individual or team round, in I think like — I don’t know. 28 years or something crazy. I don’t know exactly. It’s an absurd statistic.
Tim Ferriss: It is as impeccable a record as a country can possibly have.
Jake Kaminski: Correct. And the only reason that I say with the Korean men as an exception is because they didn’t have an individual male Olympic gold medal for quite some time. They just recently got one finally.
Tim Ferriss: Why is that?
Jake Kaminski: I don’t know. Maybe the pressure. I don’t know. There’s a lot riding on it. There’s also a lot of benefit for them to perform well, but there’s a lot of pressure.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure. I didn’t even really think about this because I guess on the one hand you could say, “Well, wait a second, they’ve been shooting 700 hours a day since they were a fetus. Why can’t they handle the pressure?” But at the same time, you told me — I can’t remember who it was. You don’t need to mention them, but what did someone say to you to calm you down before one competition? I can cue you. Do you remember what I’m talking about?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: What is it?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. No one gives a shit.
Tim Ferriss: Meaning in the US about —
Jake Kaminski: Meaning I’m not LeBron.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: I’m not Kobe. I’m not Michael. Right?
Tim Ferriss: Right.
Jake Kaminski: No one’s watching. No one cares.
Tim Ferriss: Right, so relax, take some pressure off yourself.
Jake Kaminski: I believe he actually said “No one cares.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So in contrast, if you’re a top Olympic competitor in Korea, you are LeBron, you are Kobe. Everyone cares and everyone is watching.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: So it’s a tremendous amount of pressure.
Jake Kaminski: For sure. Yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a lot of pressure no matter what, but okay, so 2012.
Jake Kaminski: So 2012, the Korean men then, because of the team, so we’re leading into the team rounds because that’s where we’re heading here.
Tim Ferriss: And how does that work? Is it like the cumulative points of three people who go round robin or what —
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, so we do round robins head to head, single elimination for elimination. We do that individually. We also do that as a team. So you seed yourself in the ranking round. There’s 64 men competing, one through 64. One versus 64, two versus 63, and so on.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like an NCAA bracket.
Jake Kaminski: Individual, correct. That’s how you decide the individual champion. Team round, it’s your three archers combined score that ranks you as a team amongst the other teams. And then there was 12 teams at the time and so you then, same thing, just like the March Madness style bracket, it’s single elimination and head to head. And so you shoot three archers together as a team. You shoot in rotation, so you step on and off the line and you have a very limited amount of time to shoot your arrows. So there’s no time to second guess, no time to let down. And you have to be a well-oiled machine to execute properly.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Let me just say, so let down for people who may not get that, if you pull back and you make a mistake or you didn’t set up properly, it doesn’t feel right, you can choose, if you’re practicing, let’s just say, to let down, which means slowly bring the string back to the bow and start over.
Jake Kaminski: You essentially abort the shot.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you abort the shot.
Jake Kaminski: You pull back, you’re like, “Eh, something doesn’t feel right. The wind’s blowing harder. I had a negative thought pop in my head.”
Tim Ferriss: Which is what I had to do over and over again today because I overdrew and clicked the clicker when I was not prepared to release the shot.
Jake Kaminski: Yep.
Tim Ferriss: And so not having any wiggle room.
Jake Kaminski: No wiggle room. There’s just really no time to second guess and you just have to go for it. So after the ranking round, Korea was ranked first and the United States was ranked either third or fourth. So that means that we would meet in the semi-finals. And so that meant whoever won the semi-finals would go for gold and then the loser of that match would have silver. And then the loser of the semi-final match would have the chance to win bronze in the next match. And so we were seated to meet Korea in the semi-finals. And so the first question that we got asked as a team and the coach included, Coach Lee, was, “So how does it feel to be shooting for bronze tomorrow?” Because that’s —
Tim Ferriss: That’s just the assumption.
Jake Kaminski: That is the assumption.
Tim Ferriss: That’s such a dick question. God.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, so I don’t even know who the actual media outlet was, but it’s like, “So how does it feel to be shooting for bronze?” It’s like, “Have you been watching at all?” We are at the US men at that time, we’re ranked number one in the world as a team round because we were winning World Cup events, which are world ranking events leading up to that and doing quite well. The Koreans were ranked second in the world and we had beat them several times on the World Cup scale, but of course everybody’s just assuming that they’re going to be dominant because they had won for the last decade straight or more. And so yeah, it was a interesting wake up call to all of a sudden be like, “What? Can you ask that question again?” And yeah, so it was just a shock to say the least, but the power of positive affirmations.
By that time, I started changing my thought process and talking, not just “I am an Olympian.” Period. It became much more powerful and actionable and timely. So tying smart goals into positive affirmations of “I am an Olympian,” or “I am 2012 Olympic champion because I run my mental program more than any other archer.” Period. So it’s not just “I am.” Not just “I am an Olympian.” “I am an Olympian at this specific time at this specific event for this specific reason. And that specific reason is something that I’ve identified as an absolutely crucial thing to do every single shot in order to succeed.” And so that’s how I ended up talking to myself at that time frame, to that level of detail. And so of course whatever our response to the media was at that time, I’m not exactly sure.
Tim Ferriss: What did Coach Lee say?
Jake Kaminski: Well, Coach Lee, we had a lot of opportunity to talk to a lot of media leading up to the event. So we get to London 15 days before the start of the competition and we’re there training and media’s there asking us questions during sessions that we book. And so the Korean media was coming in, asking Coach Lee questions about basically the same kind of thing. How does it feel to win silver before we haven’t even shot an arrow yet, essentially? And he started saying things in Korean, responding to them as their questions were in Korean as well. And you could just see the shock of this reporter’s face, right? And even the cameraman’s like — just this response. And so after the media left, we asked Coach Lee, “So what did you say to them?” He said, “Let’s just put it this way. I don’t think I’m going to be welcome back in Korea.”
So I don’t know what he said. He didn’t really fill in the details there, but the idea was essentially that the power that we had as a team of the confidence. Not just the archers individually, the archers as a team because we were really the first and only team to compete as a team in that tournament. So normally, it’s individual. It’s an individual sport. That’s what it is. That’s what the prestige is. And you happen to have three individuals that come together to compete as a team, but they’re just still shooting as individuals. If somebody shoots, say, worse than the others, it’s easy to kind of point fingers and be like, “That’s the reason why we didn’t win.” Because it’s an individual sport. It’s like we’re a team. We win as a team, we lose as a team. And so we had that genuine change. Our main focus was team rounds. It was not individual, the three of us, because there’s 12 other teams and there’s 64 other individuals.
You only have to win three matches to be in the medals in team rounds, whereas you have to win five or six matches to be in an individual medal. And so statistically it’s much easier to medal as a team than as an individual. So we genuinely trained every day once we selected the team leading up to that event as a team. Encouraging each other, learning each other’s shot. Not just learning each other’s shot, but during this head-to-head match play there’s no time for equipment failures. So if your equipment breaks, you can’t go fix it. So usually you have a backup bow and the backup bow is just there and it’s kind of working. You do your best to make it as good as your primary bow, but it’s your backup bow for a reason. It just doesn’t shoot as well for whatever reason. And Coach Lee basically said, “Backup bows are pointless because if your main bow breaks, you’re mentally just going to be shot. So what’s the point? Don’t even bother setting up a backup bow.” And so we actually shot each other’s primary bows as our backup bows.
Tim Ferriss: Wow.
Jake Kaminski: So I shot Brady’s Bow and I shot Jacob Wukie’s bow.
Tim Ferriss: Well, hold on a second. Hold on. So how similar are your draw lengths and your ape index in terms of —
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, not at all. But the thing is I’m using —
Tim Ferriss: Ape index is — anyway, you guys can look it up, but it’s just like your physical proportions are not the same. And at that level, certainly everything is —
Jake Kaminski: Everything mixed.
Tim Ferriss: — customized.
Jake Kaminski: For sure. Not just that, the balance of the bow, the feel of the grip, the sight pin, all of those things. And so the thing that is constant is our arrows, so we use our same arrow. And our clickers, the device that’s a draw check, was roughly in the same place. I think the only exception was one of us and Brady chose to not even bother with a clicker when he was shooting one of our bows as a backup. He would just pull back, control the shot and execute good shots and deal with that. Whereas I used their clickers and essentially I learned that I think Brady’s bow, maybe I hit low eight. So about eight, 10 inches low at 70 meters. So I would just aim high eight with his bow. And Jacob Wukie’s, I’d have to aim low right blue or something crazy to actually have the arrow land in the middle.
Tim Ferriss: Wow.
Jake Kaminski: So we just played this game.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah.
Jake Kaminski: And so it was just this level of intimacy, per se, as a team that no one else had in the world because they all trained as individuals, not as a team.
Tim Ferriss: So a couple of questions, then, because I guess to even me listening, I’m like, “Well, it’s still kind of an individual thing.” I used to wrestle way back in the day, right? And it’s like, okay, yeah, you’re a team and you want to be supportive, the backup bow, using someone else’s primary as your backup? It’s super interesting. This is the first time I’m hearing of it. Are there any other strategies where, let’s just say, I’m making this up, but, okay, it’s like the wind is gusting and the first person up is going to have to deal with the brunt of it, you think. So you pick the person who seems to be best in high winds. I’m making that up. I have no idea, but is there any other strategy that you can build around the team?
Jake Kaminski: Yes. I mean, so for us, and the wind is actually was part of it, we’ll get to that in a second, but if you approach team rounds as an individual, you’re working on your own shot and that’s it. So you either shoot a 10 or you don’t. And your teammate, who’s also your opponent in individuals, either shoots a 10 or he doesn’t. And that’s just how it normally works, but what we did was we worked with each other to understand a little bit more about each other’s shot cycle, each other’s mental approach. What makes someone better than doesn’t? Do you want to hear your name when you’re at full draw? Like, “Come on, Tim, shoot a 10,” or do you want just, “All right, strong shot.” Something that’s general, but not specific to you.
And so there’s little things that you learn, but then also there’s a supreme trust in each other. And so in team rounds you have to communicate with each other how the shot went and then ultimately where did the arrow go compared to how the shot went. And then the next shooter makes adjustments based on that because the wind is always changing.
Tim Ferriss: I see. Right. So each person is a feedback mechanism for everyone else.
Jake Kaminski: Exactly. And also the coaches, too, because he has this third person view. He’s not shooting but he’s able to look at stuff, the wind blowing in different areas. And actually, the very specific thing that Coach Lee did with the wind that we couldn’t as archers because of a piece of clothing choice that he made different than us at that day. The day being when we shot for medals. So if we just fast forward to the actual medal rounds, we are in the semi-final match against Korea. We almost lose our first match. We’re very close to actually losing and just barely squeaked by by a point or two, but there was no doubt that we were ever going to lose, at least in my head. I had no fear of that. I was so supremely confident because of this affirmation, the power of it that there was never a doubt. Even when we were behind in the match, it just was like it’s supposed to happen this way apparently.
And once we got to the semifinal against Korea, everybody said that was the gold medal match of the games, actually, because everybody wanted to see that. Korea was a powerhouse. US was ranked number one. It’s the Olympic games. What’s going to happen? Everybody’s watching. We actually had, I think, the highest viewership of any Olympic sport at the 2012 Olympics during that match.
Tim Ferriss: That’s wild.
Jake Kaminski: They put us on TV because we were the first medal of the US, our first chance to get a medal. And back then it was Twitter and I had comments saying, “I love my sports team.” Whatever it is, the Sabres, or the Buffalo Bills, or whatever, people from my hometown. And they’re like, “I have never stood on my couch and screamed at the TV, but I did when I saw archery at the Olympics.”
Tim Ferriss: That’s incredible.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, so cool stuff. Anyway, so the wind. Usually we have a windsock. The windsock is not a calibrated windsock. So meaning if it’s at a certain angle, it’s a certain speed. We don’t do that in archery for whatever reason, but it’s always at 50 meters. So the distance we shoot is 70, the flag is three fifths of the way down range or so, and it’s always on a specific pole at a specific height. And you have every so often they’re placed. And so you have a general consistent reference as to what the windsock’s doing and how you can guess where to aim. And that’s ultimately as best as you can do, is guess. And so we were shooting at Lord’s Cricket Ground and on the pitch where they throw the ball back or bowl the ball back and forth to each other, the people who stand on that, the lawn care people, are anointed by the Queen to be allowed to stand on the hallowed ground.
The lawnmower is anointed by the Queen to be allowed to mow her grass. But because our windsock and the stand that held that windsock was not anointed by the Queen or whatever they call it, it was not allowed to be there. So they put it in a different location that it ever had been at any other event. We’re also shooting in a stadium. Within the stadium is another stadium inside of that stadium where the archery fans are sitting. And the stands go down probably 50 meters. There’s several thousands of people in the stand and it kind of fans out towards the target. And so we’re guessing. We’re genuinely guessing where to aim. Ultimately, before that match, Coach Lee was like, “Trust me, I know where you need to aim.” Okay, you’re not shooting. How do you know? I’m the lead off, Jacob Wukie shoots second, Brady Ellison shoots third. And I have to do my job when I lead off to shoot a supremely confident shot.
Tim Ferriss: Clean shots.
Jake Kaminski: Clean shot.
Tim Ferriss: So you can use that to calibrate for everybody else.
Jake Kaminski: Correct. Or be so in tune with my shot when I make an error, I know, or can essentially estimate, where that arrow should land, and then compare where it actually lands to where it should land, and then suggest to Jacob Wukie where to aim. So to give you an idea as a quick sidetrack, when I let go of the string at 70 meters, I can tell you within the size of about a baseball where that arrow’s going on the target the moment I let it go because I’ve shot so many arrows. I verified where it went on the target looking through a spotting scope and attributed my feeling of how the shot went to where it landed. And so I can just tell you exactly where it’s going to go.
And so that’s my job as lead off. Coach Lee’s wearing shorts. We’re wearing pants. He can feel the wind blowing on his leg hairs and he’s like, “Aim left nine.” Okay.
Tim Ferriss: That’s wild.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, so good luck finding any other team that has ever worked that closely together. We ultimately ended up winning and then went on to lose the gold medal match by a fraction of an inch at 70 meters away. But I mean, ultimately everyone came up to us afterwards and said, “That was the gold medal match, regardless of how the actual medals end.” So supreme confidence in that positive statements, those positive affirmations of just supreme faith and belief in the process as it’s happening, even if it’s not going well. Our first match when we were losing, we were behind the first several ends of the match and the matches are only four ends.
Tim Ferriss: So an end is somebody getting up and shooting a group of arrows?
Jake Kaminski: Correct. So as a team, that would be each archer shoots two arrows. So that’s a total of six arrows. That’s an end. And then a cumulative score at that time was shot. So whoever had the highest score of 24 arrows after four ends, because that’s the total amount shot, that team won in advanced in the match.
Tim Ferriss: All right, that’s an incredible story. That’s crazy. I’ve never heard a bunch of these. This is wild. In all the time we’ve spent together, it’s nuts. For comedic relief, because you mentioned the Korean media interviews and them looking shocked talking to Coach Lee, so I’ll just share a sidebar on Coach Lee because I’ve had a little bit of interaction. So I flew to San Diego because we did a little bit of training together and I wanted to meet this famous Coach Lee. Why not?
Jake Kaminski: So I made the introduction and said, “Hey, Coach Lee. Tim would like to work with you.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And so I land in San Diego and a few things that are, I think, fun to share. So the first is we meet at this outdoor range and I’m going to be shooting mostly at 20 yards. So 60 feet, let’s just call it, roughly. And we hang out for 45 minutes. I’m taking copious notes, he’s giving me some pointers, and then we stop and he’s like, “Okay, I think you have plenty to work with and I don’t think you need my help anymore.” And I was like “Uh,” because I’ve flown down, planning to be there for a week or something. Five days, something along those lines.
Jake Kaminski: Not just to be there for five days, but to —
Tim Ferriss: To be there explicitly to train with him. And so at some point I’m like a bit crestfallen and I’m like, “Oh, man,” letting my head hang like Eeyore. I’m like, “Oh, fuck, I do feel like I need more help.” Somehow we get talking about firearms and guns and he is very interested in marksmanship and all things firearms. And so he gets more excited and we’re chatting, we’re talking about this, that, and the other thing. And then he asks me, “So what brings you to San Diego?” And I was like, “Well, maybe this sounds strange, but I flew here to train with you.” And he’s like, “Oh, okay. All right, tonight’s Korean barbecue.” And so we go out to dinner and end up having an amazing time training with him. And he’s really one of a kind. And also, the reason I was mentioning the shocked look on the faces of the Korean media is you do not worry about Coach Lee speaking his mind.
Jake Kaminski: No. So direct.
Tim Ferriss: You do not have to worry about him sugarcoating things. And to give you an example later, I ended up driving to his house behind which he has all these targets set up. And basically, I was the only non-Asian there. Absolutely 100 percent the only non-Asian there, which is fine. It’s just a Korean army and tons of Korean kids. Also some Taiwanese kids and Chinese kids, but they’re all 12 years old and shooting, by my standards, especially at that point, incredibly well. And I’m off in the corner getting some pointers from Coach Lee and just looking like a total remedial case, which is fine. And then at one point he wants to give pep talk to the kids and he’s like, “Tim, Tim, come over.” Okay. And so we all stand in a circle and he’s giving this very Coach Lee motivational talk, which is like 60 percent inspiration, 40 percent like you need to shape up or ship out, toughen up kids.
And at one point I’m wondering why I’m in this circle. And he points to me and he’s like, “Look, this is Tim and he is an old man, a very old man. And he’s here training, seriously.” And I was like, “Oh, I see.” If I can be an inspirational/warning tale for these amazing young children with so much promise, I’m in. I’m in for it, I’m in for it. But it’s just so endearing and the guy’s a genius. I mean, he is really one of a kind. Okay, so those are my Coach Lee stories. Thank you, Coach Lee.
Let’s talk about your coaching and what we ended up doing and all the experiments along the way because you mentioned, for instance, Coach Lee’s feeling the leg hair and the movement, and you’re providing feedback, you’re getting familiar with one another’s shot cycles. The little things matter.
It is hard for me to explain verbally just how many tiny, tiny, tiny details make a huge difference with archery. And just the way you hook your fingers on the string, the exact placement, how far it is from the fold of one joint, the amount of curl of the fingers, how much do you use your, you’re using in this case, index, middle and ring finger. The degree to which you can see or not see as a coach my nail on my ring finger and the difference that makes, the angle of the back of the hand and the difference that makes. The level of detail is really unbelievable when you want to start training and performing with precision.
Jake Kaminski: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, so I find you, we meet up and then ultimately about six months out from Lancaster decide to take it seriously. Now there are few constraints, right? One is you live in Florida. I do not live in Florida, so we have limited in-person training. Although I think we did a good job with that, what would you say? Maybe on average, was it a few days a month or a week every six weeks, something like that?
Jake Kaminski: Probably somewhere in that timeframe, but I think I was maybe there for three to four days once every six weeks.
Tim Ferriss: And we’re doing a lot of virtual training. I travel a lot. So if there are awards for most varied training environments, I think I would win that one hands down.
Jake Kaminski: For sure in the barebow division.
Tim Ferriss: In the barebow, yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Absolutely. The only exception would be if you’re a professional archer who is traveling the world competing, but that’s the only exception. And there’s no one doing that in barebow.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Not even remotely.
Tim Ferriss: So I ended up bringing my roller bag, which looks like it’s carrying an assault rifle. Customs did not love this bag. They’re like, “Sir, what’s in the bag?”
Jake Kaminski: “Sporting gear.”
Tim Ferriss: Sporting gear is the answer. That’s how you get your bow and arrow through customs, but I traveled all over the place, all over the country in the US certainly. And I would check my targets and often it’s just a big cube of foam. And they’d be like, “Sir, what’s in the box?” And I’m like, “There’s nothing in the box.” And they’d be like, “Sir, I need you to be serious right now. What’s in the cube?” I’m like, “It’s solid foam.” And they’re like, “Yeah, but what’s inside it?” I’m like, “Foam.” And this would go on and on and on. And going to Hawaii, going to Canada, going to the UK where I ended up going on this pilgrimage trail, the Cotswold Way. And at every tiny inn I would have to negotiate, try to pitch my little heart out to shoot in the backyard or anywhere. I ended up shooting from inside a hotel to outside the hotel. I ended up shooting from outside a hotel through the living room, through the kitchen, into a laundry room where I hit a target.
Jake Kaminski: Pickleball courts.
Tim Ferriss: Pickleball courts.
Jake Kaminski: Tennis courts.
Tim Ferriss: Tennis courts, just —
Jake Kaminski: Batting cages.
Tim Ferriss: Batting cages, right. Where you have kids whacking balls with aluminum bats and screeching and hooting and hollering.
Jake Kaminski: Eight feet from you.
Tim Ferriss: Eight feet from you.
Jake Kaminski: Deafening.
Tim Ferriss: If you want distraction training, that’s a great way to do it. So we had some things to work around, but the forcing function was for me, and this is always the case, the magic of a deadline. And having a competition on the books, which I wasn’t 100 percent committed to. When I was like, “Let me behave as if, let me train as if I’m going to compete.” It’s like I don’t want to embarrass myself, I don’t want to embarrass you. Let’s see how it goes. I remember probably a few months out paying the registration fee and I’m like, “Okay, now my name is online for everybody to see.” That probably means I should go. And then the question is, all right, what do you do if you have six months to train? And a few things come to mind immediately.
Number one is you’re always going to have things to work around. So it could be logistics, could be, in my case, my left shoulder, which was reconstructed in 2004 and it was a real limiter. Had many different physiological limiters. Right now I have a bunch of torn extensors. I mean, they’re probably going to require surgery in my right elbow, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. It’s like, “Okay, well, we will have to just work around it.” And lo and behold, you can work around. You might have to make some compromises. Absolutely. Okay, fine. But it’s like if, for instance, as we experienced, if shooting with a particular stance causes my back to seize up and it’s producing a lot of incredible pain, okay, we’ll make a few compromises on that in order to minimize that. And then that’s going to trigger a whole chain of other adaptations that we need to make. And like you, I guess as a kid, I very quickly found it meditative. Archery was almost like taking a break from my monkey mind, right?
Jake Kaminski: For sure.
Tim Ferriss: And particularly when you start to focus on, and this is something we focused on pretty early, I want to give Joel Turner, again, credit, Shot IQ in terms of the boot up sequence and blueprinting your best shots, really having a script for your checklist, like your pre-flight checklist, as you’re going through your entire shooting motion and having, for instance, positive affirmation. Where do you put that? You want to put it in the same place every single time.
Jake Kaminski: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: And then I would say also recognizing that given some of the physical limitations, it’s like, okay, I can’t do 500 hours a day. Forget it. When we first —
Jake Kaminski: We started at 60-something arrows of limit a day, I think.
Tim Ferriss: Max.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, that was the absolute max.
Tim Ferriss: Yep, and —
Jake Kaminski: A lot of that had to do with very typical Tim Ferriss fashion, as I know now, to over do everything to 11 out of four.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I was basically doing a Mr. Olympia pose down every time I was trying to shoot the arrow. So there was a lot more tension in the system than was necessary, which is just, in fairness, in my own defense, really common. Go to a range and watch, especially guys who have a little bit of muscle shooting these things and it’s like, whoa, okay, this guy’s trying to hulk his own shirt off.
Jake Kaminski: But for you, the challenge was you had actual injuries, actual limitations. So how much were those affecting the system versus the excessive tension? And it was this back and forth juggling to figure out what was the cause.
Tim Ferriss: What was what. Yeah, so there’s a lot of detective work. And for instance, in the left shoulder you have two titanium screws, had the whole arm ripped out doing some combat sports stuff a million years ago and my arm ended up sticking out of my chest basically. And I won’t get into all the gory details, but suffice to say, when you tack down the shoulder with these, you create some limitations. And as a consequence of that, I had a lot of tendinosis in rotator cuff muscles. Infraspinatus, supraspinatus, they’re a mess. Really, really tangled up. So what that means is like, okay, how do we work around this rather than do I need to stop? I mean, look, there are times when you need to stop. Right now with this elbow that requires surgery. I’m probably going to have to take a break from the hard stuff for a little while, two to three months. But outside of that, it’s like, okay, how do we work around this?
And that took a bunch of different forms, including rather than trying to whack out, we ultimately got to the point when we were training in person. At least that we were doing, what, 200 plus arrows on some days?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: And there were many aspects to that. And then we can talk about some of the technical stuff, but just from the physical workaround perspective, when I started practicing, there were a few things that I would do. And all of this we talked about and I was building off of your advice. So rather than doing one session, break it into two sessions. And also, start and end your sessions with blank bale practice. All right, do you want to explain what blank bale is? Because this avoids the target panic that you mentioned earlier and I think is an incredible tool, that I found it very, very helpful. What is blank bale practice?
Jake Kaminski: So blank bale is, so the target bale is blank. There’s no target face on it, nothing to aim at, not even a spot, a shadow, a hole or whatever. You can do small amounts of aiming, per se, but it is not for the sake of precision. It’s not trying to hit the 10 ring or anything like that. What it does is it removes the aiming requirement or the aiming distraction from the process.
Tim Ferriss: And when you were at the high level using blank bale practice, how far away from the target are you standing?
Jake Kaminski: Generally speaking for blank bale, I would be eight feet or so from the target. So you’re never going to miss. And so you’re just simply going through repetition. It’s like a palate cleanser, almost. So you go through your motions, you go through your shot process, but you’re not aiming at anything. So you can confidently move through the movements without being careful or over analytical or get yourself in a bind. That can happen when you’re aiming at a target. So it allows you to ingrain your technique to a level that really trains the subconscious brain to try to take over when you’re in pressure situations. And it also allows you to put in a lot more repetition without so much time spent walking the distance to go down to the target. So for me, going down to 70 meters takes a bit of time to walk that distance. So instead, I can just walk eight feet, pull my arrows and pick up my bow and immediately start shooting again.
So that’s what it meant to me. And the amount of training at blank bale really depends on what you’re working on at that time, but generally speaking more is better because it really allows you to focus on the process and ingrain your steps. You talked about the level of detail with just the hook alone. To be able to ingrain that to be automated to where you grab the string and you don’t even have to think about it, you have to put in the reps. And so if you’re putting in the reps and you’re distracted by aiming, it can take away your focus on that grip, on that hook, or whatever it may be.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly. So I could use it for warming up in the beginning of a session, let’s say the beginning of the first session. And then towards the end, I’d be like, “Okay, look, I got, as anyone competitive as likely to do, overly fixated on the scoring, and the aiming — “
Jake Kaminski: Sure, the performance.
Tim Ferriss: ” — the performance. Let me end on a good rep.” And so ending the training practices with blank bale just allowed me to settle the snow globe a bit, focus on the biomechanics. Particularly, something, I mean, at least I took this approach, in the training session, if I notice, oh, you know what, I am collapsing a little bit, meaning losing back tension in the following way, A, B, or C is happening. Or maybe I’m not pulling my bow hand pinky back enough, and therefore I’m landing right, or whatever.
I’m just going to focus on that for my blank bale. That’s going to be my most important cue, particularly in the beginning. Because if you try to incorporate too much too quickly, you’re going to get the Mac ball of death beach ball.
Jake Kaminski: For sure.
Tim Ferriss: You’re not going to be able to divide your attention and maintain any type of performance in the beginning. So a lot of what I found so valuable with your coaching was the layering.
Jake Kaminski: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: When do you choose to introduce certain things?
Jake Kaminski: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: And I also really liked the focus on biomechanics. So the blank bale you could think of, in a way, as if, let’s just say you’re, I don’t even know if they do this, but I’m making it up, let’s just say you’re a major league pitcher, and it’s like, all right, you’re trying to focus on some aspect of your throw, without the distraction of trying to put it right into the sweet spot of a catcher’s mitt. Then let’s just say you had a very, very large net hanging. It’s like 20 feet just hanging down, and you were just throwing the ball into this net, and working on the biomechanics.
Jake Kaminski: It would be similar to dry fire training with a pistol or something.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, very similar. Similar to dry firing, which you should never do with a bow.
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: We talk about that in our video. Unless you want your bow to explode, literally —
Jake Kaminski: Do not do that.
Tim Ferriss: — don’t do that. And I’m trying to think in the early stages, what, because it was a detective process, right? And my mind is a little unusual at times, and I process things a little differently. So do you recall what some of the early most important things were that we focused on in training?
Jake Kaminski: A lot of them were conceptual things, not necessarily technical, physical, but thought process, how does the shot go? What should you be trying to achieve kind of things. So a lot of those are really setting up kind of the process of how to shoot a bow, not necessarily how to shoot tens with a bow. So how to shoot tens with a bow comes later, I think. I’m not sure about that, but —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, and tens, just if people are getting distracted, just think about shooting both sides.
Jake Kaminski: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So not how to put it in the middle, how to shoot a good shot. And so there are some really key factors that are super important to actually shooting a good shot.
One of those is follow through. It’s a very simple thing to explain. If you think of somebody, say, throwing a ball or kicking a ball, the moment of contact of the foot hitting the ball when you kick the ball is when you let go of the string for shooting archery. Or when you let go of the baseball when you’re throwing it, that’s the moment you let go of the string in shooting archery. And so follow through is what happens after that motion. No one ever, in any other sport, including baseball and soccer, stop their motion of their foot or their arm the moment they let go of the object or make contact with it. It just doesn’t happen. Same thing with golf, right?
So the stuff happens afterwards. That’s a follow through motion. That is a maintaining of your, in archery we call it tension and direction. You maintain that through follow through. So tension and direction being, you pull back the bow, it’s wanting to collapse you. So you have to build tension against the bow, the system, and whatever direction that is going, back with the string hand and forward with the bow hand. That tension and direction has to maintain exactly how it is when you’re at full draw, through the release, until the follow through finishes.
So that would be the principle of tension and direction, and just follow through in general. It’s a very simple concept to imagine, but it’s quite difficult to implement. So we worked a lot on the technical aspects of how to apply that physically, throughout the months or years, because we’ve been working together for a couple of years now. But really, that last six months leading up to Lancaster, trying to hone that in to be fluid, one motion, not fake, not two points.
So not letting go of the string, losing all that tension of the string hand, and then faking a follow through motion. So it’s like, for those that are watching, the motion would look something similar as, so the hand touching the face at anchor, the fingers opening, the arm not moving, and then moving back in a second motion. So a good follow through would be the same fluid backward motion of the elbow, the same exact time that the fingers are pushed out of the way of the string. And then that tension just continues until you run out of range of motion with the shoulder.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I mean, imagine, just for a visual for folks, if you had a TheraBand, or a giant rubber band, and you got into an archery position, and you’re holding that rubber band at max tension, the way that it would simulate holding the string of a bow. And then you closed your eyes and somebody walked up and just cut the rubber band.
Jake Kaminski: Correct. What would happen?
Tim Ferriss: And the arms kept going.
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: Obviously, you didn’t expect it. And that would be what you then have to do consciously, on some level. It should take care of itself if you’re using —
Jake Kaminski: The proper thought process.
Tim Ferriss: Proper thought process and proper tension in the back and not in the arm or the bicep.
Jake Kaminski: But even if the tension is improper in the back or the arm, the follow through will happen if you have that concept of maintaining whatever tension it is, right or wrong when you’re at full draw, but you continue through release.
Tim Ferriss: Well, and this also relates to the inner monologue.
Jake Kaminski: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: Right? So when you’re at anchor, okay, so you’ve got the string’s fully pulled back. Again, for people listening who are not familiar with archery, your hand is glued to your face, or under the jaw in the case of Olympic archery. Okay, now at this point, what are you saying to yourself? Or what do you sometimes say to yourself?
Jake Kaminski: For me?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Really just, there’s a lot of different options.
Tim Ferriss: There are a lot of different options.
Jake Kaminski: But basically just continued motion.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, continue motion —
Jake Kaminski: Continue the back shoulder moving around and behind me, and the bow moving forward.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, or finish the shot.
Jake Kaminski: Correct. Or finish the shot. So one of the things that I talked to Coach Lee about, somewhat recently, when I had dinner with him about a year and a half ago or so was, “So anything new to share?”
And one of his responses, well, he chuckled first, and then his response was, “You’re not going to like this,” or “Others won’t like this,” actually. And he said, “release is not a step anymore. We do not release the string.”
And I said, “Tell me more.” He said, “Well, if you follow through, and your main primary focus when you are at full draw, before you let go of the string, is to follow through correctly, the release will take care of itself.” If you maintain and execute a good proper follow through, your release is good. But if you’re focused on the release, you cannot then switch your brain fast enough to the follow through motion. Because the follow through, it’s frankly a reaction, not an action. So it tells you everything about the tension that you’ve built up in the system when you’re at full draw.
So it’s my job to watch you and see the motion that the elbow moves, and the hand moves, and the bow hand moves, and all sorts of different spots of the body, even your head movement. The moment the string comes off your fingers, what direction does a particular body part move? And that the motion of that body part tells me the tension that you have at full draw.
Because I’ve shot enough arrows, and I’ve watched enough people with enough intention and attention to look at their form, analyze it, and just overall just watch, I can see where the tension is built. And then a lot of the stuff that we did working together was, when you’re at full draw, I’m behind you and I’m making motions and doing things to feel what you are feeling.
So I can assume that if the hand’s coming out, there’s a change of tension going outward of the release hand coming away from your face when you let go, instead of maintaining that line along your neck as it comes back off your face. So if I mimic what you’re doing, I get a bit of an insight as to what you’re feeling. And then I can communicate with you nearly at the same language, hopefully. Maybe not using the same words, but at least trying to meet you where you’re at.
Tim Ferriss: Or tap the muscle I should be feeling as a primary mover when I’m supposed to feel it.
Jake Kaminski: Correct. Correct. Correct, yes. And I only get that based on looking at what you’re doing, and just overall trying to really just tear down the shot and see what’s happening on the inside.
Tim Ferriss: So flashing back then, thinking about, say the six months leading up to Lancaster, a couple of things. So one is, I, for a very long time, people are going to find this pretty funny, number one, I didn’t care about hitting the bullseye. I did care about grouping. Right?
Jake Kaminski: Yep.
Tim Ferriss: So I wanted arrows to land very close to one another.
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: But if they were bottom left, top right, my assumption was, and I’m sure this is based off of conversations we had, if you’re shooting consistently, if you’re getting good groups consistently, it’s not just a one-off lucky bunch of arrows, then moving that on the target face is, I’m not going to say necessarily simple, but it ended up being pretty straightforward as we got further down.
Jake Kaminski: Sure. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: But doing the blank bale, I mean, it got to the point with the blank bale where granted it’s like for me, 10 feet away, 12 feet away, whatever, that these arrows were just getting clumped right on top of one another. Even if I shot, I know this is maybe not your favorite thing, but I did this too, sometimes releasing with my eyes closed.
Jake Kaminski: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: And then later, I mean, how long before Lancaster did I start aiming with the crest of the Aratum?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, so about two weeks. So what Tim was doing was having blind faith that the arrow would land in the middle, by using instinctive aiming, per se.
Tim Ferriss: Well, I was also doing a few things that you recommended. Because in fairness, we tried to have me aim earlier. And I had, for the first time, target panic, with the understanding that the tip is always going to move.
Jake Kaminski: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: But I started to develop this anxiety around shooting.
Jake Kaminski: Because you didn’t want to let it go when the point wasn’t right on the middle.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly. Wasn’t right on the bullseye, so to speak. And I also didn’t have the biomechanical control, and the conditioning, which had to compensate for all sorts of things —
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: — to do it effectively. Right?
Jake Kaminski: And we also hadn’t adjusted your bow either. Because we did make compromises within your equipment to help work with the shoulder and other things.
Tim Ferriss: We did a bunch of stuff that we won’t necessarily get into, because it gets really technical. But a lot of things that would confuse even certain experienced folks, like the upper and lower limbs where you would attach the string, switching those and making all sorts of tweaks to the equipment, to compensate, or to allow this compromised shoulder to function.
Jake Kaminski: To work with you.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Not against you.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. I mean, because for instance, the more weight — I mean, there’s a point of diminishing returns, but since you can’t put stabilizers on a barebow, people add weight. They just have to keep the weight very close to the bow because this ring has to be able to pass over the whole thing for you to use it in competition. But people had quite a bit of weight. And it helps to stabilize things.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: But I could not. Tried, but I couldn’t do it. My shoulder would develop all sorts of pain, and tendon issues, and just couldn’t do it.
Jake Kaminski: And ultimately, you could only shoot 60 arrows in a session.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly.
Jake Kaminski: You couldn’t put in the amount of arrows that was actually required to be proficient.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. So I was like, okay, we’re going to make yet another trade-off, which is, I’m going to sacrifice some of the stability in order to be able to add more volume.
Jake Kaminski: Correct. But the point was to allow you to work with the system. And because, when we first started aiming, you started aiming early on, that distraction because you weren’t yet there physically, pulled you out of the process.
Tim Ferriss: If we were to lay out step-by-step every single checkpoint that I go through or you go through, I mean —
Jake Kaminski: We’d be here for three hours.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, we’d be here for three hours. It’s like 25 steps. I mean, I’m exaggerating a little bit, but yeah.
Jake Kaminski: 25 steps for my hook.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I mean, actually you’re right. If I were to go through every single checkpoint, it’s like hundreds.
Jake Kaminski: Hundreds.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, like a hundred checklist points for every shot. And until you have a critical mass of those steps on autopilot, you cannot add more steps.
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: And therefore, given the compressed timeline we were dealing with, it was also waiting for my nervous system to adapt. And for that reason, sometimes, if you’re trying to grease the groove with a particular motor pattern, it’s like, okay, lighter limbs are fine. Dial it down.
Jake Kaminski: Yep, yep.
Tim Ferriss: Then, so in terms of my instinctive approach, where we found a compromise was, all right, you’re not going to try to put the arrow tip or the crest of the arrow on the bullseye. Again, for simplicity, just saying that.
However, there are a few things you are going to do. You’re going to burn a hole into the very center of the target with your eyes, and you’re going to, people think of shooting an arrow, if they haven’t had a lot of experience, as pulling back and letting go. But you have this equal and opposite action in pushing forward with the bow hand.
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: And there’s a lot of technical detail that goes into how you do that. But basically, pushing a portion of your palm, kind of the right next to your lifeline in the meaty pad of the thumb, let’s just say, roughly.
Jake Kaminski: Where your wrist meets your palm.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. And pushing that also. So you’re burning a hole into the target in a very dead center, and you’re pushing that point on your palm also towards the exact center of the target.
Jake Kaminski: Despite whatever you’re seeing, as far as your sight picture [inaudible 01:55:37].
Tim Ferriss: Right. And your sight picture. So don’t worry about where the tip of the arrow is. And maybe I said it, maybe you said, I can’t remember. We ended up calling this the Jesus takes the wheel approach. Jesus take the wheel. And it was shocking to see what happened, because more often than not, I would shoot better with that type of approach.
Jake Kaminski: And it worked surprisingly well.
Tim Ferriss: It worked surprisingly well.
Jake Kaminski: Until —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, it worked surprisingly well, until. I guess we just decided —
Jake Kaminski: It was working.
Tim Ferriss: It wasn’t reliable. I mean, to give you an idea, and this will mean more to people who’ve shot some arrows. But when I was hitting, and I had some pretty good scores in practice.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Like, I don’t know —
Jake Kaminski: Into the 270s, I believe.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, 270. So like 540 —
Jake Kaminski: 270 out of 330. So decent. And the goal for where you were wanting to be was 252 plus. So you were in excess of your score goal for Lancaster?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I wanted to qualify for the top 64 shooters at Lancaster.
Jake Kaminski: Correct. Yes.
Tim Ferriss: And so we trained using my Jesus take the wheel approach, for up until a few weeks before Lancaster, because I was a little gun shy after having so much trouble with trying to hold the point in one place, or roughly floating around.
Jake Kaminski: And Jesus taking the wheel was working so well.
Tim Ferriss: Was working. It was working really well until we started having really variable lighting conditions, and we started dialing in the technique and the biomechanics for more precision.
Jake Kaminski: And when we went to some test events, essentially. Not a test event, per se, but a local club shoot to see how things are going.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that’s a great point. So Lancaster was — I mean, I don’t recommend this guys, so if you can do a ton of warm-up tournaments before the big tournament, I highly recommend doing that. Just didn’t really work out that way. But we went to a number of league nights, and two small events at the Easton Range in Salt Lake City, which is awesome.
Jake Kaminski: I think you shot Utah State Shoots or something like that as a guest or whatever.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, went in and basically just audited the thing, right?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And to try to get competition condition experience. And there are a few things that we noticed. So one is, in that environment, the bale, so the canvas upon which you put the target, the backstop, is black. And all of a sudden my eyes started doing funny things. And I couldn’t see the arrow tip as well. Now the reason that’s relevant is, I wasn’t trying to place the tip of the arrow in the center of the target, but I would try to see it so that I could tell if I was roughly in the center of the target. So I would pay attention to the left right.
Jake Kaminski: And just really quick, for those that don’t know, with barebow, you use the tip of your arrow as your aiming reference. Part of the game is there is no sight. So you’re using the tip of the arrow as your aiming reference, and then you’re placing that in a particular place every single time to shoot a group in the middle.
Tim Ferriss: Yep. Exactly. So all of a sudden, and thank God we did these test events, which I always have done in any other sport also. You just do not know what’s going to happen and how you’re going to respond in competition conditions until you do it. And so there are a few things I think we did right. There are a lot of things we did. But doing those warm-up tournaments, thank God those were there. And with the black bale, the black background, that ended up being —
Jake Kaminski: It wasn’t just a black bale, It’s also a black stand, and the wall behind it was also black. It was just all out, just dark.
Tim Ferriss: It was dark. And so I could not reliably track because my arrow tip, people who have done barebowing are going to find this funny, it was like three feet below the center of the target. I mean, it was really, really low.
Jake Kaminski: But you could still see it.
Tim Ferriss: I could still see it, but it was hard to discern with that particular black bale and everything around it. And so what ended up happening in competition is I was all over the place.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. It wasn’t even just that the black background that was different. It was also the lighting condition too, because the light was very different compared to other places you shot in. So the way you actually perceived objects in space was slightly different. And you could not adjust.
It was all over the place, as you said. But the main thing was, your first few shots were so low. And with barebow, we do what’s called string walking. For those that don’t know, string walking is essentially, you’re not pulling the string back right next to the arrow. You’re actually going down the string, walking down the string. And that affects the trajectory of the arrow. So you can essentially use the arrow point as your sight. So you sight in by walking up and down the string.
Tim Ferriss: And so to put it another way, if you add a sight on your bow or on your gun or whatever, you take some shots, assuming your technique is decent, and then based on where it, okay, it landed bottom left. And then you adjust the sight to move that point of impact.
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: You can’t do that in barebow.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, there’s no actual aiming reference.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you’re not allowed to use the sight. So what do you do? Well, the first thing is for left right, you do have something called a plunger. You can think of it just as a screw that, it’s much more than that, but it pushes the arrow left or allows it to be more flush right. So you can use that to adjust your left right. But how do you adjust your up down, right?
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: Got a problem. Okay. Well, the way you do that, and there are a lot of different approaches to this, but you’re crawling, so that means you’re using your thumb to basically move your fingers down from the back of the arrow to, let’s just say the further down you go, the further down on the target it’s going to land, and so on. And it needs to be very precise. This is part of what makes barebow so frustrating and so difficult.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: If you’re, I mean, one millimeter above or below a line —
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, you’re using, so you have laser etched marks on your finger tab, the thing that protects your fingers from the string, and it’s a flat piece of metal, and you were trying to be as precise enough to crawl to the top of the laser etched line versus the bottom of the laser etched line, and it’s less than a millimeter wide.
Tim Ferriss: And that makes a difference.
Jake Kaminski: Big difference, absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: In terms of point of impact. Okay, so keeping all this in mind, when I got into those lighting conditions, with everything at play in competition, it was a disaster. I mean, it was all over the place.
Jake Kaminski: It was the worst score you had shot by a long shot.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And I was like, “Oh, fuck me.” Like —
Jake Kaminski: This is three weeks, two weeks before Lancaster.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, maybe three weeks out. And I was like, well, if I keep this up, I’m definitely not going to Lancaster because it’ll just be a complete clown car disaster.
Jake Kaminski: Heather and I, my wife and I, we were looking at each other after that day and we’re like, “I really hope Tim still wants to go to Lancaster.”
Tim Ferriss: That was the most frustrated, I think, you guys have ever seen me. It was probably after that one.
Jake Kaminski: There was a lot of statements you were making in regards to never being on such an emotional roller coaster from day to day.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Because that timeframe was really challenging for you.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, it was wild, because I would go from one setting, and we ended up shooting at a CrossFit gym from 7:30 to 10:30 at night. That was the only time and the only location that we could find. And thank you to those guys, what a lifesaver. Chris Spealler, I think it was.
Jake Kaminski: I believe so.
Tim Ferriss: At Park City Fit. Amazing gym. The cleanest gym I’ve ever seen. It was like —
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, you could eat off that floor.
Tim Ferriss: You could eat off the floor. It was incredible. So thank you to those guys. So we were training late at night, very different lighting conditions, but I would have a day where I’m like, “Man — “
Jake Kaminski: I can’t miss.
Tim Ferriss: ” — I can’t miss.”
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I am so far above, I have so many more points than necessary than I need to qualify for the top 64.
Jake Kaminski: Which was your goal.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And even if I fall, even if I’m 10 percent off of this, I’m good. And then went to this tournament, or mock tournament, in the case of the league nights, and it was an unmitigated disaster.
Jake Kaminski: Like a hundred points under what you wanted to be at.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And I was just like, “What the hell is going on?” So the reason that I sometimes compare it to golf, even though I’ve only played golf a few times, it’s like, you’re looking at this, you’re like, Okay, there are a hundred different checkpoints, which one is it? If it’s even one of those hundred.” And that’s the detective work.
Jake Kaminski: And so I’m looking at you, and everything going down the list. “Try this, try this, try this, try this, try this, try this.” And then it’s like, “Maybe you should start aiming, I think, because that’s really the only thing that we haven’t done up until this point.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. So we went through the list, it was like, “Nope, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail.” All right, so two weeks out when we start aiming and it started working.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Because you had developed your technique enough that you didn’t have that aiming distracting you from the process, from what you needed to do. And a lot of that work that we did beforehand when you were instinctive aiming, I don’t think we really quite covered that, but instinctive aiming is the tension and direction of the bow arm, and just staring and burning a hole with your eyes, but your subconscious brain takes over and just makes the arrow land in the middle.
It’s like throwing a ball. You don’t have a sight to aim with when you throw something or throw an object at something. Through repeated motion, you make adjustments, and you don’t even do that consciously. Same thing with archery when you’re shooting instinctive, per se.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure. And there’s some amazing instinctive shooters. They don’t tend to go to competition.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: For reasons we could get into. But for instance, I don’t want to name him, I don’t want to dox him, but this amazing guy from Albania at one range I went to, and this guy, all day long with his hunting bow, like a trad hunting bow made out of wood, just drilling the center of this target for two hours straight, every time I saw him.
And he would kind of pull back, and then as soon as he got his finger to the corner of his mouth, he would release. And that was it. And the guy’s just a beast. I mean, incredibly good.
So we finally started aiming, and I want to mention a couple of other things that I think were key to ultimately being very happy with the performance at Lancaster, even though, of course, I always want to do better. But the first I would say is standardizing a handful of things. So obviously, the shot sequence, and anchor, and aiming system, and all of that. The second was experimenting in mock tournament conditions. Because we also discovered, for instance, that when we upgraded from a very, very narrow arrow, so the shaft of the arrow, and therefore the head of the arrow as well, in this particular case, because they’re not broadheads or anything, going from a very, very thin arrow to the maximum allowable, javelin-sized arrow. And what’s the reason for that?
Jake Kaminski: So basically, in archery, when you touch the higher scoring ring where your arrow lands, you get the higher value. So all you have to do is touch that ring. You don’t have to break the line, you don’t even have to be inside out, you just have to touch it. And that’s enough to get you the higher score. And statistically speaking, somebody did a study, an analysis of scores across the board at indoor archery tournaments. And if you’re in that range of score where you were actually targeting to be to be at Lancaster, there’s a very statistically significant impact on your score going up by a tremendous amount, I think it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of eight plus points every 30 shots, which is a massive jump.
Tim Ferriss: That’s a lot.
Jake Kaminski: A massive jump at that 280, 270 range, somewhere in there, the bigger arrows make, statistically speaking, a huge difference. At the highest level, the guys that win the tournaments, when they’re shooting, say, one or two points down from perfect, they do not make any difference at all. Statistically, it’s a zero-sum. There’s no additional benefit to shooting the fat arrows.
Tim Ferriss: But for me.
Jake Kaminski: But for you, statistically, it made sense.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it made a lot of sense. What that meant though is we had to adjust a bunch of the gear. And when you put the arrow on your bow, let’s keep it simple, you have an arrow rest. And we had an arrow rest that had been working great, fantastic.
Jake Kaminski: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: It had been working so well with the little tiny darts that I had been using. Once we put the much heavier arrows on. And I guess, what is the model of those arrows?
Jake Kaminski: So the arrows you were using was the Easton RX7.
Tim Ferriss: RX7.
Jake Kaminski: And before that you were using a Easton Avance, I don’t know how to say it. Basically, you went from an arrow that was smaller than the diameter of your average pen or pencil to something that was three pens combined almost.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah.
Jake Kaminski: As far as the diameter is concerned. So big, big difference there.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And much heavier.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Right?
Jake Kaminski: Not just a heavier arrow, but also a heavier point. Because there’s a lot of technical stuff here, but as an archer, you want your arrow to fly perfect. And you can adjust parameters of the arrow, the stiffness of the arrow, how resistant it is to bending the point weight, the knock weight, the fletching size, the arrow length, all sorts of things to make the arrow work with the bow so they fly perfectly straight. Because ultimately, you don’t want it to have a tendency to go one direction. You want it to have a forgiveness. So if you make a mistake, it’s not going to deviate far from the middle.
Tim Ferriss: And what we discovered, when I did my — I guess it was probably the first time we did the tournament conditions. A few things, number one, my instinctive shooting was not going to work.
Jake Kaminski: Right. Yeah, no.
Tim Ferriss: It was all over the place. No. And on top of that, with the much thicker arrows, which are much heavier, the arrow rest, which in this case, is a fall away, it was a fall away rest. What was the model on this?
Jake Kaminski: So for those barebow listeners out there, it is the Zniper arrow rest, Z-N-I-P-E-R. So it is a magnetically controlled drop away arrow rest. So for those that don’t know archery, a drop away arrow is a rest that holds the arrow and supports it when you’re at hold draw. But the moment you let go, it snaps down out of the way to give the arrow the maximum amount of clearance as it’s going by the bow. For barebow, you use it because of the awful flight of the arrow that happens due to string walking. When you go down the string and you don’t pull it straight back.
So what was happening was, and this is not a design flaw of that rest, it’s just we literally hit the absolute limitations of the system. Because you have to make it stiff enough, hard enough to drop, to hold the arrow up so you don’t accidentally bump it when you’re moving around, but you want it to be soft enough so it drops when you let go of the string. And because the arrow was heavy and more importantly, the point weight was so heavy, it was not dropping. So also barebow shooters that are listening, we were using the 2315 size RX7, so the stiff 420 versions, the 420 spine versions, and we had to run heavy point weights to break the spine down.
Ideally, we should have run the 21 size arrows, I believe that — I forget the exact spine, I think it’s 570 or somewhere in there, much weaker. And we should have shot those light point weights, but I don’t know if they are even available yet. They are or were on backwater at the time, so I couldn’t get you the arrow for the lighter point weight. So we literally just hit a roadblock of the arrow rest not working with that arrow setup.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And how much can it change your impact at 20 yards if the arrow rest does not fall?
Jake Kaminski: Six inches.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: If not more.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, game over.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. That’s it.
Tim Ferriss: You’re done.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, you’re 10 ring again.
Tim Ferriss: So that’s part of the reason, in addition to my instinctive aiming completely shitting the bed and not working, given all the factors we’ve already talked about, I’d say one out of every four shots maybe was not falling.
Jake Kaminski: And so mentally you’re struggling with the aiming, then all of a sudden the equipment’s not working. So it’s just adding insult to injury and it’s just making this mental struggle so much worse.
Tim Ferriss: And then I should highlight that there’s so many reasons in any sport to mimic or rehearse competition conditions. But in the case of archery, one is you want to get used to being crowded. If you’re training by yourself, that’s not the way it works at any of these larger tournaments. You’re going to be on a line and literally could have somebody, I don’t know, how far away were folks with me?
Jake Kaminski: Less than a foot.
Tim Ferriss: Less than a foot.
Jake Kaminski: Probably.
Tim Ferriss: In front of me and behind me.
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: You just want to hope, if you’re right-handed, you don’t have a left handed person right next to you on your right side because you’re going to basically be eye-gazing them the whole time. It’s really distracting.
Jake Kaminski: Although I encourage you during your training at Gotham —
Tim Ferriss: Try it out.
Jake Kaminski: Go find a left-handed guy and stand right in front of him.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. So I did that. So I had the practice, but that is one reason. Another is to see what happens to your mental state, if and when. I guess it’s not really if, I mean at my level, when you make mistakes.
Jake Kaminski: At my level too.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s like what happens, right? And for those who play poker, do you go go tilt, monkey tilt, how bad does it get and can you recover if and when that happens? And I was just, the wheels came off.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, it did.
Tim Ferriss: The wheels came off. I was like, “Aren’t you stupid? Fuck this game.” I didn’t say that, but I was —
Jake Kaminski: I think you did inside.
Tim Ferriss: Inside, I was definitely, I was not happy. And then, I mean it was really, I think, a combination of, so I mentioned a few things. We talked about the tournament conditions and with each mock tournament or league night that I did, the scores went up. So everything was trending in the right direction. And I was trying, I mean I used AI and all these tools to find every possible shop within an hour and a half driving distance. And what kind of targets did they use? Can I bring my own target? Which we ended up doing, right?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. You went and shot a blue and white face league night, an NFA league night, and shot a colored face. So instead of shooting the five arrows that everyone else shot, you were shooting three arrows. I was running a timer manually behind you keeping tabs on your actual pacing. Because within tournaments, a simple little added change is just a time limitation. And even though you may never even remotely come close to running out of time, just knowing that there’s a time limitation is enough to make you panic.
Tim Ferriss: Well, that’s another thing that happened to me, right? So given, let’s just say six months of serious practice, now it’s like two weeks out starting to aim, and I still have a lot that is manual. It’s not yet automatic. So I am a pretty slow shooter.
Jake Kaminski: Well, because you have to think through everything.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And so how much time do you have for how many shots?
Jake Kaminski: You have two minutes to shoot three arrows.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, which sounds like a lot.
Jake Kaminski: I mean, oftentimes you had three to five seconds left.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Which is not a good feeling because you’ll see the timer. It’s like what happens when it goes from green to yellow?
Jake Kaminski: So 30 seconds less, a yellow light comes on that’s way brighter than the green light. Green is meaning your — just standard time left.
Tim Ferriss: And what happens to a lot of people, what happened to me initially is I would rush through that shot and let rip, and I would still have 15 seconds left, but I rushed it and it would not be a good shot.
Jake Kaminski: It was a change to your process.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. All right, so other things, mentioned standardizing as much as possible. So one was, and look guys, I’m not proud of this, but I’ll admit it. Figuring out expedient fuel that you can get or bring with you everywhere, especially with the amount of travel I was doing, that was actually very good practice. And it’s like okay, let me know how much caffeine I can tolerate. What am I going to use? And does it help at all? Because oodles and oodles of liquid anxiety does not help you shoot better.
Which is why also why beta blockers are not allowed in competition unless you get deliberately fat enough that you have a prescription for them. That’s a whole separate story. There are actually people who do that, just like the sprinters in the Olympics who, oh, my God, happen to all be narcoleptics so they can take modafinil. What a coincidence. All right, putting all that aside. So what does that mean? That means that I wanted to be able to fuel myself from things I could get at any convenience store, almost any gas station. So it would be some form of basic protein, don’t judge me, but maybe it’s like Muscle Milk or whatever. And then having almonds, I had tolerated Maui Nui venison sticks really well. We knew that I could digest that reasonably quickly. So always traveling with that, then figured out a couple of other things. I’ll give a couple of shoutouts because these products end up being really, really helpful. So Pique tea, P-I-Q-U-E, which are basically, if you think about matcha as whole leaf, these are pu-erh, oolong, they’re all whole leaf, they’re powdered, so you can mix them instantly.
Jake Kaminski: Even in cold water.
Tim Ferriss: Even in cold water and even if you’re combining it with other things. So I figured out the timing for using that, using glutamine, which is incredibly cheap. And I use momentous glutamine also, the next one I’ll talk about. And for muscle recovery and soreness, it is incredibly effective. I wrote about this in The 4-Hour Body, and I know you’re pretty skeptical at first of the glutamine.
Jake Kaminski: I mean the amount you were taking was insane.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it was a lot.
Jake Kaminski: But after doing a little bit of research on my own, and with the help of Heather, we saw that it was good for people with leaky gut syndrome at very high doses. So if it’s okay for that, then it’s got to be all right for the overall GI system. So it’s like let’s give it a try. And we started trying it as well after seeing you pretty much taking an entire bottle of it in a day. Well, it actually makes a massive difference for muscle soreness. And it’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s wild. So I would say when we were doing hard training and look, talk to your medical professional, I’m not giving medical advice here, but I was using a scoop, which is say five grams of creatine, three or four times over the course of a full training session, I would say. And then what we figured out reasonably late, this was a lucky discovery, ended up playing around because I had used this actually on very, very long hikes, which is something called Fuel, also by Momentous. And that is a combination of electrolytes and let’s just call them more slowly digested carbohydrate and a handful of other things. But it’s basically like Bugatti Kool-Aid for mental and physical performance. And it was visibly noticeable when I was on this cocktail and when I was not, I would start getting shaky. And then if I had, and I timed this, if I had everything on a schedule and I knew how long it took me to digest, because the last thing you want to do is have three protein bars and then get up to shoot and you have all this blood in your stomach.
Jake Kaminski: Or even worse, a crash. And then you’re like “Ugh, emergency fuel.” How long does it take to come back to?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So figuring all that out was key. And I would just travel. I would have the Fuel, the glutamine, the Pique, I would have bottles of water so I could mix all of that on my own with a shaker bottle. And these ended up being, I think, really key to also reducing the decision fatigue and possibility for logistics challenges.
Jake Kaminski: For sure.
Tim Ferriss: And that’s why with Lancaster, so most high-level competitors, how early, how far before their first shooting do they arrive at Lancaster?
Jake Kaminski: Most pro shooters?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: 45 minutes. Half hour, an hour, it depends.
Tim Ferriss: But when would their plane land?
Jake Kaminski: Oh, sorry, A few days. Well, it depends on the season, because if the season’s really crammed in, you may land the night before the competition starts because one just ended somewhere across the world. But ideally, you’d try to get there a couple days early so that way you shake off the jet lag, you get used to the bed, you just get used to where everything’s laid out and you kind of just see how things are going. But if you’ve been to the event before —
Tim Ferriss: How early did we get there?
Jake Kaminski: 10 days, 12 days early, I think. Something like that.
Tim Ferriss: And so again, this is just, if it’s helpful for folks, I do this whenever I’m competing in anything new. So figure out where you are, figure out your food options, figure out your bed. For instance, I slept really poorly on the hotel mattress, so I ordered a pillow topper, got that all figured out. Where are you going to practice?
Jake Kaminski: How long does it take to drive from your hotel to the venue?
Tim Ferriss: How does that differ with different times of day?
Jake Kaminski: What does it look like, the venue? So we did a lot of different things too. We went to the venue early and checked it out after hours when no one was there. We’re the only ones walking around except for the Zamboni cleaning the floor. And so we’re checking it out. And so you get an idea of what the field looks like, what the lighting looks like, where the bathrooms are located.
Tim Ferriss: Figuring out where the bathrooms are. This is not a small thing, right? Because when you’re shooting at this particular tournament, on each bale you have four targets, A, B, C, D. So you’re shooting with three other people, you all score one another. And I’m simplifying things a little bit, but basically you are switching back and forth. Two people shoot, and then the next two people shoot and then the next people shoot and you alternate back and forth. So you may not have a whole lot of time to get to the bathroom. How crowded is the bathroom? Where is the least crowded bathroom? Where is the secret bathroom? Figuring all this out ahead of time because I recognized, look, I don’t have a lot of time under my belt. I’ve trained my ass off to the extent that my body would handle it, like I pushed my body.
And I do need to give a huge thank you, Heather, who is a top-tier manual therapist, magician with soft tissue, and no way that I could have made it to Lancaster without her help with —
Jake Kaminski: You were on the ragged edge.
Tim Ferriss: I was run pretty ragged. Yeah. I mean I had kinesiology tape all over me. A couple of other recovery tools that were really helpful. One I really didn’t anticipate because I had no exposure to it, but this is, I guess, full-spectrum cannabis oil — and was it Rick Simpson?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, RSO, Rick Simpson Oil, I believe, is the name of the guy that came up with this.
Tim Ferriss: And what was fascinating for me, you did not feel any psychoactive effects whatsoever. Topical, to be clear.
Jake Kaminski: Topical, yes. It does not cross the blood brain barrier.
Tim Ferriss: Not suppositories. Don’t fall for the marketing campaigns for the archery THC spots. And you don’t feel any psychoactive effect. Obviously do not break the law where you live. So pay attention. But in terms of reducing or eliminating muscle spasms, incredible.
Jake Kaminski: It’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Incredibly effective. And also if you’re going to get, let’s just say massage therapy, do not get, necessarily, Heather would be able to speak more intelligently to this, but incredibly deep, hardcore work right before you’re going to train, right? I mean there are different types of massage for flushing.
Jake Kaminski: Sure. You don’t want to overly lengthen the muscle because then you can lead that joint that it’s supporting or around to become potentially unstable, which results in a potential, serious potential for an injury to the joint, like an actual injury.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. You can also get really sore, as Heather was saying, and —
Jake Kaminski: Increase your inflammation.
Tim Ferriss: Which does not help with anything. My main issue was my shoulder or my wrist or my forearms would just be on fire and they’d be all swollen like a puffer fish. And it’s like, okay, this is our first day of four days of training. We need to fix this. How do we fix this?
Jake Kaminski: From an outsider’s perspective, it was fascinating to see, with an unlimited ability to just make things happen, what you can do to maximize your potential to perform. So what can you control? Can you get that bed topper? Can you get there 10 days early? Can you see the venue? Can you have the Bugatti of electrolytes? Can you get the things that actually make a difference? And have you experimented enough leading up to the event to know how you respond? And if you take enough detailed notes, you know exactly how you’re going to respond. What is the lag time? What is the delay? How many days after I shoot this 300 arrow day am I going to be sore and unable to shoot properly?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly.
Jake Kaminski: So many different things.
Tim Ferriss: And actually this is as good a point as any to mention the glue that holds us all together, which is note-taking and training logs.
Jake Kaminski: Yes, entirely.
Tim Ferriss: Right?
Jake Kaminski: This is such a pivotal thing to consistently performing under pressure. You might get hot once and shoot great and win a tournament, but if you didn’t know what you did that led up to that, how are you going to repeat it? And so you have to blueprint, as Joel says in his system, the Shot IQ. How do you blueprint an ideal shot or an ideal tournament? And leading up to that, a training session, whatever it may be, what can you do to replicate that every time?
Tim Ferriss: Yep, and so a few things that were surprising to me, for instance, if I felt like I’d just been put through a meat grinder, I would maybe, if left to my own devices, look back one training session, maybe two training sessions, but often it’s five days ago, five training sessions ago, you have to look back further than I would’ve expected. That is going to be beyond your memory.
Jake Kaminski: For sure. How many arrows did you shoot? What did you do that day? Did you strength train as well? How about massage therapy? Whatever, what did you eat? Whatever it is you’ve got to know. If you don’t know, you’re guessing.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. And also we’re mentioning a lot of these different things. Most of these are not expensive in the grand scheme of things.
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: Actually, I mean the only one that might be out of range that I used quite a bit is the low intensity continuous ultrasound. There are these devices that basically put a very light ultrasound stimulus through these electrodes, and there’s a SAM device. There are a number of other ones that is LICUS, L-I-C-U-S, low intensity continuous ultrasound. People can look it up. That one’s a little pricey, but there’s a whole lot you can do that is not expensive. Almost everything I’ve mentioned is well within reach.
Jake Kaminski: I mean, you’re doing it right now, you’ve got a pen and a paper. That’s like the weapon right there. That is so important. I’ve encouraged so many people I work with that come to me for coaching to take detailed notes. And I can’t tell you how few do, and you’re the only one that I’ve ever seen take a sufficient level of detail of notes on how the training session went, what you did and how you ultimately felt. And then just being able to look back and see. I can’t tell you how many times you pulled it out and said, “Let me look back to San Diego when I went and visited Coach Lee and he told me to go away after 45 minutes. Oh, yeah, this is what we worked on. Interesting. Okay, let’s make sure I’m doing that today,” three months later or more than that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. That ended up being such an important key to everything. And I would log the workout, give you just a couple of tips. I mean, this is going to seem really rudimentary. And it’s like, yeah, duh. But very few people do it. When did you work out? When did you do your training?
Jake Kaminski: The time of day?
Tim Ferriss: When was your last meal prior to that? Write this stuff down. You are not going to remember. And then going through training, it’s like, well, if you had a period of shooting really poorly and then you tested a number of things to fix it, what happened? So for instance, that pulling back on the pinky of the bow hand ended up being something, when I got fatigued, I would start to lose that tension and it would have a whole cascade of negative effects. And I was like, “Okay, interesting. For whatever reason, that cue seems to fix a lot.” And there were a handful of things that you’re only going to discover if you are taking those types of notes.
Jake Kaminski: Correct. And I think this applies to way more than archery. If you’re not really paying attention to what you’re doing and maximizing your chances for success and ultimately maintaining what you’re doing in training or leading up to an event, whatever it may be, if you change everything at the event, because “I’m at the event; I should probably clean up my diet.” Why would you do that?
Tim Ferriss: It’s too late.
Jake Kaminski: It’s too late. If you’re eating Cheetos at home, as much as you shouldn’t be eating Cheetos at home, you should probably just do it at the tournament. If you drink 7 Up or you have a beer the night before or whatever it is, you should probably continue to do that. You don’t want to all of a sudden sober up at the event, deal with withdrawal syndromes from not having enough sugar because you used to have whatever, Cap’n Crunch for breakfast. I don’t know, whatever it may be. You might want to just maintain the same thing. And so this applies to so many things, not just archery, I think.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, absolutely. And also, if it’s helpful to people, when I would take notes, I mean you can even, I won’t show off all this because some of these are top secret in this one, but I also basically draw a little square, you’ve seen these, in the bottom right of each page in this training log. And my training log is actually this big, it’s a larger paper.
Jake Kaminski: It’s bigger than an eight and a half by 11 sheet.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s a large notebook. And in that bottom right corner, I am not only taking notes, I’m also reviewing all of those notes after the session. And in the bottom right, I am putting my next actions or key takeaways to focus on for the next workout. And so when I land at the gym, or in this case the range, the next day or two days later, I know exactly where I’m picking up. I do not have to spend any time on that. And all right, so we’re doing all this stuff, chugging Muscle Milks and fuel and glutamine and Pique and learning to aim.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Like a big boy.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Then what happens at Lancaster?
Jake Kaminski: Well, at Lancaster —
Tim Ferriss: And what’s the goal? What were the expectations, hopes, from your perspective? I’d be curious to hear.
Jake Kaminski: I would say my number one hope was just that you’d be happy with how it went no matter what. Because ultimately there’s no way to know how it’s going to go. Would it be great if you made the cut? Would it be great if you won the event? Sure, that’d be cool. But how is it going to go? No one knows. Competition is very interesting. It really is. It is just unknown until you do it.
Tim Ferriss: So just a quick side note. So I remember, I don’t want to mention his name, but I was training somewhere and I saw my first barebow shooter who was in my eyes, really good and in practice, just incredible. And do you remember what you said to me after that? I can tell you.
Jake Kaminski: Go for it.
Tim Ferriss: Practice scores don’t matter.
Jake Kaminski: Oh, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Now, on some level, yes. I mean, consistent practice scores are one indicator, but competition is just a different —
Jake Kaminski: It’s a totally different animal.
Tim Ferriss: Different animal.
Jake Kaminski: And so you can expect to falter, you hope to do well, but ultimately it’s, looking at where you were, you really hit rock bottom three weeks before the event. So from there, there was an upward trajectory and you were heading in the right direction. So that’s a lot of stuff that I remember I was reminding you about. You’re headed in the right direction, you just have to maintain your focus on these things, do not get distracted by anything else. Each arrow is its own. You give it the care that it deserves. The arrow that you just shot does not affect the next, and the arrow that you’re about to shoot doesn’t affect anything.
It’s just its own individual thing. Treat it with care. It’s a 60 arrow round, not a one arrow round. So it’s really unimportant what happens on each individual arrow. Ultimately, it’s how you control the whole event, how you maintain focus, whatever it may be. Just composure ultimately is what’s required to succeed. It’s not about being perfect, it’s just about maintaining what you do in practice better than the next guy. That’s who wins. And so that was just the main focus that I was trying to hammer home to really say, “This is what you need to lean into and avoid any of this other distracting thoughts.” It’s not Lancaster, it’s nothing. It’s just another venue. You’re just shooting arrows. Nobody’s interfering with you. It’s you and the bow and no one else.
So ultimately, nobody’s going to prevent you from succeeding or failing except for yourself. So you’ve just got to get out of your own way and let it happen. You’ve already put in the time, you put in the effort, just go have fun, just shoot some arrows, and maintain composure.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And I was, of course I was nervous, but I also came into it feeling like I cannot imagine with the limitations that I have, having taken this more seriously, I’ve done the prep I was humanly capable of doing.
Jake Kaminski: So ultimately it was just, there was no expectations. I don’t like to have expectations when it comes to competition because it adds a level of pressure, distraction.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, well I can also say for myself, and I hadn’t done a proper large competition in a super long time. Right?
Jake Kaminski: You said 20 years.
Tim Ferriss: 20 years, 20 plus years. And for me, I was so curious. I’m like, “Is that gear going to click? Is there going to be another gear?” Ultimately there was, and I was very happy to see it because I had not seen it in the mock tournaments.
Jake Kaminski: No, me neither, for the record.
Tim Ferriss: And part of that though, for me was, okay, now this is a real competition. This is what we’ve been training for. Adding extra pressure to myself now, much like changing your diet last minute, is not going to help.
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: The training has been done. And so coming into it, I don’t even know if I’ve told you guys this, maybe I did, but I basically just told myself, “Just treat this like training with distraction. That’s it. This is just another training session with a lot of distractions.”
Jake Kaminski: It’s healthy.
Tim Ferriss: And I have had my best competition performances, whether it was going to the World’s in Tango or the National Championships in Sanshou, Chinese kickboxing. When I’ve done that and having high hopes, certainly, but the mental prep that I did for that was, “My pass/fail here is not the score. It’s how well I can recover and keep my calm.”
Jake Kaminski: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: That was it. And I was like, “Okay, I have a lot of room for improvement,” because I remember throwing a tantrum of epic proportions when everything went sideways at Easton. In fairness, that was pretty rough.
Jake Kaminski: It was rough.
Tim Ferriss: That was rough.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, I felt bad too.
Tim Ferriss: It was bad. It was really bad. And I was like, okay, so this is it. This is like a meditation practice, and success is viewing it as training with distraction and just keeping calm. And if I get excited, that’s okay, just like reeling it back in.
Jake Kaminski: It’s part of it. Yep. Everyone’s going to get it.
Tim Ferriss: So Heather was sitting there with a mutual friend, and what Heather was saying is she was looking at me and she’s like, “Wow, Tim is overstimulated.” And —
Tim Ferriss: It’s very easy to be overstimulated there. I mean, it’s —
Jake Kaminski: So loud.
Tim Ferriss: It’s so loud. It is a cavernous space. There are how many shooters?
Jake Kaminski: There was close to 600 shooters on the line at one time.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. And what Heather was saying is that when I crossed the line to straddle the line to shoot, there was just this calm that washed over me. And she was saying that —
Jake Kaminski: You were just pie-eyed, walking around.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. My eyes were saucers beforehand.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. The moment you crossed it was just like, “This is what I do. This is how it’s going to go.” And it was the first time, genuinely the first time where it was just like you held your shit together.
Tim Ferriss: And so that was an experience, and I was like, “Oh, oh, yeah, I’ve done this before.” Because I guess, and we will get to this, but it’s like historically, I know I don’t have a technical advantage over everyone there. Some of these guys have been shooting forever. And I was like, “Okay, well how can I try to stack the deck?” We already talked about a lot, nutrition, sleep, taking away handicaps that I can easily remove. Then it was like, okay, well, being consistent for 60 arrows, which means trying to contain the fluctuations in energy and also contain the fluctuations in emotional reaction.
And I remember taking the first few shots, and I’m standing on the line and there’s a person 12 inches in front of me and sweet, sweet people, but her arrows are sticking out and literally jabbing me in the stomach, like the knocks, the back of the arrow. And I’m like, “That’s distracting.” And then there’s a guy right behind me who has a huge longbow. He’s in the longbow division, he’s holding it sideways and he’s holding it right in front of me, so I can’t even lift my bow.
Meanwhile, the timer’s going and I’m like, “Oh, man, okay.” But then I was able to, I think in part from visiting the venue, in part from doing the Easton comp prep and having the black bales, which they also had at Lancaster, walking in that late night when the Zamboni was there, because it’s indoor lighting, to see what the lighting is like, let my eyes adjust and feel it out. Not worrying about the bathroom, not worrying about nutrition. And it took a little bit of shooting to get comfortable with the process and the turnaround speed from one pair to the next pair, shooting on the same bale, but ultimately ended up with a — I think it was exactly 500 points, right?
Jake Kaminski: I think so. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I think it was exactly. Look, somebody could find it online. It’s easy enough to find. But ended up with 500 points. It’s not anywhere close to my practice high scores, but that’s fine. But it was my best tournament scoring.
Jake Kaminski: Most importantly, in my opinion, the best performance you’ve had. It’s not about the outcome. It’s about the performance. If I shoot beautifully, in my opinion, and someone else out shoot me —
Tim Ferriss: So be it.
Jake Kaminski: I have to be happy with that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So be it.
Jake Kaminski: I did the best I can.
Tim Ferriss: And so, what does that mean? I think I’d have to go back and look. I don’t know what number I’m ranking.
Jake Kaminski: I think you were 80th something.
Tim Ferriss: 80 something?
Jake Kaminski: 80s, in there.
Tim Ferriss: I don’t know.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. So you’re not quite at 64 where you wanted to be.
Tim Ferriss: It was really fun, and just the fact that I didn’t lose it irrecoverably was a huge highlight. And also, we ended up, because a glutton for punishment, doing — I guess it was the next day maybe. Maybe it was a day later. But doing a bunch of practice, and figuring some stuff out.
Where it’s like, “Oh, okay.” I feel, automatically, some of these tweaks would lead to a higher score. And if I can basically just get my practice scores closer to my competition scores, or maybe you frame it the other way. Then, if I’m able to maintain my composure, it’s like, “Okay. I think, certainly, a 540, or something like that should be enough to get into the top 64 for sure.”
Jake Kaminski: You would think so. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: You would think so. So, great experience. Thanks so much for the amazing coaching.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Heather, thank you for keeping my body in one piece. And I’m just trying to think of what else we could mention just in terms of approach, or anything else that’s worth adding. And this is particularly given some of my orthopedic issues, and just tendinosis limitations, and so on. This isn’t totally right, and I’ll explain the modification. But this actually comes from a very famous track coach with many, many world records to his athlete’s credit. Henk Kraaijenhof, or something like that.
I believe he’s Dutch. I’m sure I’m messing up that. But it’s in The 4-Hour Body, if people are looking for the actual name. And he said, “The goal is to do the least necessary, not the most possible.” And the way that ties into the training is I found if I really, really overdid it, then I might need four or five days off. If my shoulder’s really inflamed, and problematic. So it’s like, “Okay. How can we use smaller doses with higher frequency to make this work?”
Jake Kaminski: Ultimately, that’s super beneficial in archery. So if I were to wave a magic wand, and try to make things better the next time, it would be doing archery more often. So it’s not about how many arrows you do in one session. It’s how many sessions in a week can you do, and how many days in between each session are there? Anything more than one is too many, in my opinion. So if you could standardize your schedule better. Better for the sake of archery performance. That, of course, requires sacrifice elsewhere. Time hanging out, time working, whatever it may be. It’s a challenge.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, for the competition, that was a commitment, right?
Jake Kaminski: Oh, 100 percent.
Tim Ferriss: It was like, unless my body failed for a period of time, which happened with alarming regularity. But I mean, certainly when we’re looking at the training in Utah, and a lot of other places. I mean, certainly in person. I mean, it was two and a half to three hour sessions.
Jake Kaminski: It was intense sessions, and in Tim’s famous last words, “One more end.”
Tim Ferriss: One more end. Yeah, one more end. It’s one more bunch of arrows, and I’d be like, “One more end. Okay.”
Jake Kaminski: Three hours later.
Tim Ferriss: “All right. One more end.” Three hours later, “Okay. One more end. One more end.”
Jake Kaminski: It’s hard.
Tim Ferriss: Which, by the way, that ended up, for solo training, being important to me. You gave me the advice of, and this might sound a little counterintuitive. But not setting a minimum number of arrows you need to shoot, but a maximum number of arrows.
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: And it’s like, “When you hit that, you are done.”
Jake Kaminski: Yes. No matter what. No matter if it’s your best day ever, and you cannot miss, and you’re just enjoying archery more than you’ve ever enjoyed in your entire life. You have to stop. But also, if you’re struggling. You’ve got to push towards that upper end of that limit. You need to put in the best.
Tim Ferriss: Well, where I got into trouble was, let’s just say, I wanted to shoot 100 arrows as a minimum. If I were shooting poorly, and I got to 100, I would be like, “I’m not ending on that.”
Jake Kaminski: “It’s terrible.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. Whip my back. I’m not ending on that terrible, shitty end. There’s no way. I want to end on a good rep, and so I push, and push, and push. And more often than not, it would just continue to deteriorate. And then I would end up with some type of inflamed shoulder, inflamed X, Y, or Z that now keeps me out of training for three or four days.
Jake Kaminski: Or potentially hit you real hard five days later as you start to compete.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly.
Jake Kaminski: Yep.
Tim Ferriss: So, not worth it, but that takes a lot. And to beat a dead horse, it comes back to, also, the journal. The notes. Training logs.
Jake Kaminski: But something that was interesting that you kind of discovered watching people on the practice range the day after you competed, or whenever that was. And you learned some things. You were watching a couple of different shooters out there. There was, I think, the number one ranked barebow shooter that won the ranking round that year, and set the new Lancaster record for the ranking round. You were watching him shoot.
And you first pointed him out to me, and said, “Hey, keep an eye on him. See if there’s anything that he’s doing that maybe I should start to work on. Just maybe there’s something I’m missing.” And I watched him for two arrows, and I think I just walked right over to him. I said, “Hey, how’s it going? What’s your name? How long you been shooting?” “Oh, I was a successful recurve archer.” His form looked recurve-like. There’s a very distinct look to that. And he shot as a junior competitively nationally, I believe, for Canada if I remember correctly.
And then he shot all through college shooting recurve competitively. And then he started shooting compound for a while, and set down the bow. Came back to it four or five years later, and started shooting barebow. And so, he already had a decade plus of archery experience doing, essentially, the same thing. The same kind of form. And then you pointed out some 13, 14-year-old Korean kids, or something like that. Korean American kids that were just pounding. They were just stacking the arrows in at the center.
Tim Ferriss: And when you say, “Stacking,” it’s –
Jake Kaminski: Shooting six arrow ends in the size of the, “Okay,” symbol that you can make with your fingers, basically. And that’s impressive, especially at that age. And so, same kind of thing. I pointed them out. “Look at these guys. I bet you they’re shooting X amount of arrows a day for 300 plus arrows. I’m just guessing. They shoot a lot, I can tell.” So I went over to their coach, who didn’t really want to respond to me. So then I went to the kids directly. I was just like, “How much do you shoot? How long have you been shooting?”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, which is possible because we have to go pull our arrows at the same time. Right?
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: So you can have a conversation.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. And even if not, it’s the practice range, and it’s fine. Again, we talked about the community. They’re very welcoming. People are willing to discuss, and communicate. It’s just everybody is in the same game. They’re all struggling, quote, unquote, with the same thing that you’re struggling with. And so, they’re just in a different stage. And so you can learn from their experience, if you ask them the right questions. And hopefully, they’re willing to share.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. The kids were super friendly, too.
Jake Kaminski: Super friendly. And so you’re, “Hey, how long have you been shooting?” “Five years.” “How many days a week do you shoot?” Six days a week.” “How many arrows a day do you shoot?” “200 to 300 arrows every single day.” That’s why they’re good, Tim.
Tim Ferriss: Well, now, okay. Now, I’m going to get back on the witness stand, and defend myself. Not defend myself, but —
Jake Kaminski: Not that you weren’t good. It’s just there’s a stage, right?
Tim Ferriss: No, no, no, it’s not saying that I’m good. I mean, they’re doing a lot of volume, but that was despite having technique that was not great.
Jake Kaminski: Sure. I also want to —
Tim Ferriss: Now, to my untrained eye, I’m like, “I can’t tell.”
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, but I said, “This, this, and that. They should do these things.” Despite these issues, they’re still able to do well because they’ve put in sustained reps for a very long period of time. So they’re able to just default to what they do, and you had six months. They had five years. There’s a —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s a different thing.
Jake Kaminski: — huge difference.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s a different thing.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, and it’s just you look experienced from experience. You don’t just get it. You’ve got to make that groove, as you said, in the brain. And really make that neuromotor connection strong enough to where it just fluidly happens. That’s why an expert is an expert. They’ve done the same thing thousands and thousands and thousands of times. I’m well over a million shots the same way. Same technique, same thought process, same thought at full draw. So it’s an immense amount of effort and work over time. Sustained effort is what really makes you good.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, but that’s true for everything.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Well, it’s been a hell of a journey. It’s not over. It’s not over. But we might bounce around, might ask you some more questions, but do you want to talk about the Backyard Championship?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: What the hell is the Backyard Championship?
Jake Kaminski: So everybody loves to be a backyard world champion, per se. Like I said, practice scores don’t matter. Everybody can shoot well in their backyard. Everybody’s happy to tell you how they’ve shot so well in their backyard, and post their pictures of their targets all over social media.
Or potentially not just their backyard, but the range they shoot at, or their club. And that’s great. I’m all for it. I love that people are proud, and passionate about what they’re doing. And so we’re forming this thing that we’re calling the Backyard Championships, which is essentially a digital tournament. We’re going to have two events this year. An indoor event, and an outdoor event. And essentially, you will, with an honor code and a buddy system, hopefully, submit your scores after you sign up for the actual event.
And after you submit your scores, we’ll have a digital leaderboard that people can, essentially, rank themselves amongst other people throughout the world. And it’ll be bracketed, male/female, adult/kid, different disciplines, compound, recurve, barebow. You name it. Just stick bow, horse bow, whatever it may be. Well, as we identify important disciplines, we will make sure to have that available so you can compete against other people shooting a similar bow. So this kind of ties into encouraging others to pick up a bow, and shoot archery. And as Joel Turner told me, “It’s archery. Try it.” Meaning, it doesn’t matter what style of bow you shoot, you could shoot horse bow with your thumb. You could shoot a trad bow.
You could shoot a compound with a scope, and a level, and a release aid, and huge stabilizers. It’s archery, and it’s really, really fun. And this is, hopefully, going to make it more accessible to more people to show up at their local range, rent a bow, go shoot some arrows, get a score, get it posted on the internet, and just see how it goes. It’s really fun to build a community. And then within that, we’re going to have a Discord server that is exclusive for people who are competing at the event. So we’ll be able to have people discussing back and forth, maybe bragging rights, things like that. And ultimately, it’s nothing really being awarded other than bragging rights of being a Backyard Champion.
Tim Ferriss: All right. So I’m excited about this. I want to recommend everybody, “Archery, try it.”
Jake Kaminski: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: I’ll echo Joel who, by the way, is an amazing — we don’t have time for this, but an amazing thumb shooter. He’s got a gnarled Frankenthumb because he does it so often, but you can check that out. In fact, the oldest way of shooting probably, I would say —
Jake Kaminski: Probably, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: — is his thumb release. So you can check out Joel, and his monster thumb, and his system as well. Shot IQ. But coming back to this. So the Backyard Championship, a few things I want to say. Number one, this is an opportunity to have an end goal. It doesn’t have to be Lancaster, as it was in my case. Which, also, it’s not where I started out. I just wanted the meditative practice, and quite frankly, this sort of blast from the past of using a tool granted with some modern materials that humans have used for thousands of years upon thousands upon thousands.
And I think it is really therapeutic for a lot of people who try it, and it’s just fun. It’s really fun. So now you have the chance to have some type of goal related to giving archery a shot. And if you don’t have your Backyard Championship set-up, and you don’t have your own gear, that’s no problem whatsoever. I didn’t buy my own gear for a long time. And you can go to a local range, and the folks are almost always incredibly welcoming. Ready to help. Try a bunch of different stuff, right?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, try a compound. Try a recurve. Try a horse bow. Whatever.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Try them all out. At the very least, I mean this is going to sound like an oversell, but it will give you a regular meditation practice. Maybe you have trouble sitting on a cushion, closing your eyes, and doing it that way. A lot of people do. Try this. It, for me, was such an unlock for tabling my monkey mind for an hour or two. It’s really remarkable. So I encourage people to try it out.
Jake Kaminski: And the Backyard Championship allows you to shoot multiple different disciplines, and submit multiple different scores. So if you have a compound, a recurve, a barebow, a longbow, a horse bow. Whatever you’ve got, you can submit a score for each discipline for indoor, and outdoor. And once you submit your score, we have these really awesome quiver pins that we’ll send to you as well. So you can show that you actually participated in the Backyard Championship.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Where should people go?
Jake Kaminski: Just head to my website, JakeKaminski.com. Everything will be available there as far as the info, the leaderboard, all that info. It’ll just be all right there.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Perfect.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Everybody check it out. At the very least, go to a range, pick up a bow.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, have a good time.
Tim Ferriss: Take some intro classes. They do fun stuff. Some places, they’ll blow up balloons, or throw on the black lights. There’s a lot of fun to be had. Also, if you have kids, this is an awesome activity to do with your kids.
Jake Kaminski: Absolutely. And on your YouTube channel, we recorded a video that’ll be coming out soon, or will be already I’m sure.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And that will show Gear 101 from Jake, and then also Technique 101.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. So if you’re really not sure, and there’s nobody nearby, or they’re not sure how to help you, you’ll at least have a basic understanding of the equipment to be safe. And to also have a lot of fun, too. So it’ll be great.
Tim Ferriss: So check that out. JakeKaminski.com, folks. YouTube channel, I guess people can find it through the website? Is that the best way to do it?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, it’s on the website. You can just search Jake Kaminski as well. It’ll pop up on YouTube direct. It’ll pop up on any internet search as well. Very prevalent, as far as the search engine results.
Tim Ferriss: Easy to find.
Jake Kaminski: Yep.
Tim Ferriss: Jake Kaminski. K-A-M-I-N-S-K-I?
Jake Kaminski: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: Kaminski.com?
Jake Kaminski: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: And once again, thanks so much to you and Heather. It’s been a hell of a —
Jake Kaminski: Quite a journey.
Tim Ferriss: — awesome adventure, and trip. And has reinvigorated me in so many different ways. And also, I will say, it’s given me so much energy, in a sense. It’s been such a recharging activity that it’s given me a lot that I can then apply to other places.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I cannot tell you. I’ve had some challenging family issues, meaning medical issues, over the last, let’s call it, six months. In particular, a year. And having this as a way, again, to just take a break from that for a period of time. To have a constant. I don’t need to rely on an entire team of people to gather for a rec soccer game.
It’s like, no, I can just book time. Often, these lanes. Meaning, where you would stand, and practice at a range. I mean, sometimes it’s like $10.00 an hour. I mean, it’s not going to break the bank, and rentals are generally very, very affordable. And I can just take a break. I can go in two hours, just quiet my mind. And it’s been such an incredible tool. So I want to thank both of you guys again —
Jake Kaminski: Yeah. Thank you.
Tim Ferriss: — for that.
Jake Kaminski: It’s been fun.
Tim Ferriss: Anything else you’d like to add? Any closing comments before we wind to a close?
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, archery’s difficult. It’s single-sided, rotational, and static. So it’s not exactly good for you. I mean, it’s great because it clears your mind. It’s activity. You’ve got something to focus on, but it can be a bit much for the body. So taking care of yourself is super important.
Tim Ferriss: And part of that, I’ll give it another plug, JakeKaminski.com. Watch Jake’s videos on technique. If you are doing the same thing over, and over, and over again. Just imagine you had a pebble in your shoe, and you refuse to take it out. And you take 10 steps, okay, you’re fine. Maybe you walk to Starbucks, and back. You’re fine.
Jake Kaminski: 1,000.
Tim Ferriss: You walk 1,000 miles with that, you’re going to have a big problem with your foot.
Jake Kaminski: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: And that is true with really any repetitive motion. There are a lot of sports with repetitive motions. Also, applies to archery. And the problems, I think, are very easy to avoid with a few basic pointers that you follow religiously.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, and I’ve got an academy of sorts coming out. It’s like a Jake Kaminski academy that’ll teach you the technique. It is currently available as far as form advice that I give on my YouTube channel. But this academy is an ultra premium, high production quality that, once you buy into the system, you have lifetime access.
So as you develop as an archer, you can come back and check it out as often as you’d like. So that’s something that is in the works, and we’re getting very close to launching. That’ll also be available on JakeKaminski.com as well. And as Joel Turner said, “Either way, it’s archery. You should try it.”
Tim Ferriss: Oh, amazing.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Well, thanks again, Jake.
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, yeah, appreciate it.
Tim Ferriss: So nice to see you —
Jake Kaminski: Yeah, same.
Tim Ferriss: — and train with you.
Jake Kaminski: It’s been a lot of fun.
Tim Ferriss: Heather, thank you again. And folks listening, show notes. We’re going to have links to everything, as per usual, tim.blog/podcast. I can pretty much guarantee you there will not be another Kaminski on the podcast as of yet. So you can check that out, or just search Jake. I don’t think there are many Jakes in the podcast library.
And until next time, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others. Also, to yourself. If you’re on the line, and shoot a terrible shot, don’t go full monkey tilt and punch yourself in the groin. Not worth it. Be kind. And I appreciate the other hidden chuckle from behind the pillar. And until next time, thanks for tuning in.
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Tim, awesome interview, so many juicy mental health concepts that can apply well outside of archery. I’m a psychiatrist practicing TMS and outpatient med management as well as a trained ACT therapist, and you just seem to get what we need to move our mental health outcomes forward. I know you’re busy and dealing with a lot in life right now, but check out my email I sent you about TMS and the field of psychiatry/mental health if you have a chance. Thanks for everything you do, it’s so damn important!