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2x Olympic Archery Medalist Jake Kaminski — Behind-the-Scenes Stories of Coaching Tim, What Archery Teaches About High Performance, and Excellence Under Pressure (#811)

“If I were to wave a magic wand, and try to make things better the next time, it would be doing archery more often. 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.”
— Jake Kaminski

Jake Kaminski (@jake_kaminski_) is 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.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the interview on YouTube.

This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep premium mattresses; AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement; and Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business.

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2x Olympic Archery Medalist Jake Kaminski — Behind-the-Scenes Stories of Coaching Tim, What Archery Teaches About High Performance, and Excellence Under Pressure

This episode is brought to you by AG1! I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. 

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Want to hear an episode with MeatEater kingpin Steven Rinella? Listen to our conversation in which we discuss how Steven got me to overcome my lifetime aversion to hunting, why the conservation-minded non-hunting crowd should care about the decline in hunting and fishing license sales in the United States, the politics of reintroducing predator species to popular hunting grounds, close encounters of the grizzly kind, and much more.

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

  • Connect with Jake Kaminski:

Website | YouTube | Patreon | Kaminski Archery Backyard Championship

Archery Concepts, Techniques, & Terminology

  • Olympic Recurve: Specific discipline/bow style used in the Olympics.
  • Barebow: Discipline/bow style with minimal aids, uses string walking.
  • Compound Bow: Bow style using cams/pulleys.
  • Longbow: Simple, traditional bow style.
  • Horse Bow / Asiatic Bow: Shorter recurve bow, often shot with a thumb release.
  • Target Panic: Psychological issue affecting aiming/release.
  • Clicker: Mechanical device used as a draw check and release trigger (primarily recurve).
  • Shot Cycle / Shot Sequence: The repeatable physical and mental process of shooting an arrow.
  • KSL Method: Biomechanically focused archery technique developed by Kisik Lee.
  • Ape Index: The ratio of an individual’s arm span relative to their height.
  • Biomechanics: Study of movement and structure in biological systems.
  • Anchor: Consistent placement of the draw hand on the face/jaw.
  • Let Down: Aborting a shot before release.
  • Follow Through: Maintaining tension and direction after the arrow is released.
  • Tension and Direction: Key principle of maintaining force towards the target (bow hand) and away (draw hand).
  • Release: The act of letting the string go (viewed by KSL as a result of follow through).
  • Blank Bale Practice: Shooting at a target butt with no face/aiming point, focusing on form.
  • String Walking: Technique in barebow where the archer moves their fingers down the string to adjust elevation.
  • Instinctive Aiming: Aiming without a dedicated sight or aiming reference point, relying on subconscious coordination.
  • Cross Eye Dominant: When a person’s dominant eye is opposite their dominant hand.
  • Hook: Specific placement and tension of fingers on the bowstring.
  • Grouping: The proximity of arrows to each other on the target.
  • Khatra: Specific movement/technique used in thumb draw/horse bow shooting.

Archery Equipment

  • Indo Board: Balance training tool.
  • Stabilizers: Rods attached to bows (Olympic recurve, compound) to add weight and reduce vibration.
  • Riser: The central handle section of a bow.
  • Limbs: The flexible parts of the bow that store energy.
  • Arrow Rest: Device that supports the arrow before/during the shot.
  • Plunger / Button: Adjustable device on recurve/barebow risers that helps tune arrow flight.
  • Finger Tab: Protective leather/material worn on draw fingers.
  • Peep Sight: Small aperture on compound bow string used as a rear sight.
  • Mechanical Release / Release Aid: Device used to draw and release the string on compound bows.
  • Arrows: Projectiles shot from the bow.
    • Easton RX7: Specific model of large-diameter aluminum arrow.
    • Easton Avance: Specific model of smaller-diameter carbon arrow.
  • Fletching: Feathers or vanes on the back of an arrow for stabilization.
  • Nock: Attachment point on the back of the arrow that clips onto the string.
  • Sight: Aiming device (used on Olympic recurve and compound).
  • Bowstring: Cord connecting the limb tips.
  • Bag Target: Type of archery target filled with material.
  • Target Bale: The backstop material archery targets are attached to.
  • TheraBand: Elastic resistance band used for training.

General Brands & Products

Institutions, Organizations, & Places

Events & Competitions

Books & Media

People

Relevant Resources

SHOW NOTES

  • [00:00:00] Start.
  • [00:06:50] A glimpse into the high-precision world of Olympic archery.
  • [00:11:04] How Jake and I connected.
  • [00:18:27] Jake’s auspicious introduction to archery.
  • [00:21:15] Why you (Yes! You!) should try archery.
  • [00:22:01] The differences between bows.
  • [00:25:19] The admirable proficiency of Shot IQ’s Bodie and Joel Turner.
  • [00:26:24] Ethical bow hunting, performing under pressure, and transitioning from rifle to bow.
  • [00:29:22] Why I wouldn’t have cut it as a competitive archer in Korea.
  • [00:30:14] Mindful archery and training hard to make competition easy.
  • [00:37:00] What Jake did when compound bow archery started to get boring.
  • [00:40:00] Meeting legendary Coach Kisik Lee (KSL).
  • [00:43:06] The upsides of having no social life as a kid.
  • [00:45:20] The welcoming weirdness of archery communities.
  • [00:46:33] For the sake of form, Coach Lee shakes things up.
  • [00:51:21] “I am.” — an affirmation for apathy adjustment.
  • [00:58:11] London, 2012 Olypmics: when it all starts coming together.
  • [01:08:28] How does teamwork play out in archery?
  • [01:15:40] My own experience with Coach Lee.
  • [01:19:23] The trials of training and traveling.
  • [01:27:33] Blank bale practice.
  • [01:31:14] Layering, biomechanics, and other early points of focus.
  • [01:33:03] The underrated importance of follow through.
  • [01:36:40] Coach Lee’s take on follow through vs. release.
  • [01:37:29] Gauging tension and intention as an instructor.
  • [01:38:52] Attention to grouping over hitting the bullseye.
  • [01:40:57] Making adaptations for physical limitations.
  • [01:43:30] The ups and downs of our patented “Jesus take the wheel” instinctive approach.
  • [01:46:24] Warm-up tournaments, barebowing, black bales, and string walking.
  • [01:50:54] Recovering from the disaster that made me rethink Lancaster.
  • [01:55:15] Rebalancing gear: arrows and arrow rests.
  • [02:00:50] The importance of practicing in tournament-like conditions.
  • [02:04:03] Securing convenient fuel.
  • [02:08:17] Lancaster preparation logistics (with special thanks to Heather Kaminski and Rick Simpson Oil).
  • [02:13:17] The glue that holds us together: note-taking and training logs.
  • [02:16:47] Even counterintuitive consistency is key.
  • [02:18:45] Our experience at Lancaster.
  • [02:28:00] “The goal is to do the least necessary, not the most possible.” — Henk Kraaijenhof
  • [02:31:44] Learning by observation and conversation on the practice range.
  • [02:35:35] What’s the Kaminski Archery Backyard Championship, and why should you get involved?
  • [02:40:30] How can you (and why should you) get started with archery today?
  • [02:42:48] Parting thoughts.

MORE JAKE KAMINSKI QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“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. 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.”
— Jake Kaminski

“Practice scores don’t matter.”
— Jake Kaminski

“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.”
— Jake Kaminski

“If I were to wave a magic wand, and try to make things better the next time, it would be doing archery more often. 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.”
— Jake Kaminski

“You look experienced from experience. You don’t just get it. You’ve got to make that groove 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.”
— Jake Kaminski

The post 2x Olympic Archery Medalist Jake Kaminski — Behind-the-Scenes Stories of Coaching Tim, What Archery Teaches About High Performance, and Excellence Under Pressure (#811) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.