Jake Kaminski — Olympic recurve archer and instructor demonstrating beginner archery fundamentals at Archery Country in Austin, Texas, alongside Tim Ferriss.
The gist
Filmed at Archery Country in Austin, Texas, this episode is a hands-on Archery 101 walkthrough where Jake Kaminski teaches the absolute basics of recurve shooting. He covers safety gear (arm guard, finger tab/glove), target setup and distance, and the never-dry-fire rule. The bulk of the lesson breaks down proper form: standing like the letter T, the relaxed bow grip, consistent anchor point, loading the arrow, aiming by adjusting the arrow point, and following through. Tim adds a beginner's perspective, including his own cross-eye-dominance workaround, while both demonstrate common mistakes like crossbow-loading, squeezing the grip, and moving the head to the string. The throughline is that archery is a sport of replication and consistency, and that beginners (and burly grown men especially) should start light and keep it simple.
Big reveals
- Just because you can move heavy weight in the gym does not mean your archery stabilizing muscles are developed; many people get real shoulder injuries by starting with too heavy a bow.
- Start with a light 16-pound bow and learn it; you can later swap in heavier limbs cheaply and easily while keeping the same riser.
- At full draw you should look like the letter T: standing straight, no leaning back, elbow level, facing the target.
- The anchor point is critical because there's no rear sight; placing your hand on your face the exact same way every shot directly determines accuracy.
- Keep the bow grip only on the thumb side of your palm's lifeline; crossing it introduces torque that throws off the shot.
- Don't aim until you reach full draw; pull the bow back using the shoulder and back, treating the fingers as just a hook, then aim after anchoring.
- Tim is cross-eye dominant (right-handed but not right-eye dominant), so he blocks his left eye with cardboard on a hat to keep both eyes open comfortably.
- Always draw the bow to your face, not your head to the bow; archery is a game of replication and consistency, so eliminate variables.
Things worth remembering
- A beginner target distance is 10 yards (most ranges have a line there), while 20 yards is too far for beginners.
- Mobile targets on wheels can be moved to about five yards so beginners are close enough not to miss and enjoy putting arrows in the target.
- Dry-firing (releasing the string with no arrow) traps kinetic energy in the bow and can violently tear it apart, scattering parts everywhere.
- You cradle rather than grip the bow because torquing it sends arrows in different directions and fatigues the bow arm, making a 16-pound bow feel like 61 pounds.
- A finger sling can be made from a simple shoelace to keep the bow from dropping out of your relaxed hand.
- The odd-colored fletching (here one green among two white) should face away from the bow so the arrow clears the bow undisturbed.
- Hook the string on your fingertips like a Boy Scout salute, never past the first knuckle, rather than grabbing deep like a bear claw.
- Eye dominance and aiming eye aren't always the same; the triangle hand test works about 80% of the time to identify your dominant eye.
- Tim competed at the end of January in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in a tightly packed lineup, which is why he practices self-contained loading.
- To train a clean release, stand on a stretch band held in the release hand and let it push your fingers out of the way for an instantaneous let-go.