I was wrong - instinctive archery does not exist!

Lars Andersen and author Jes Lysgaard discuss Lars world record "7 arrows through a keyhole" and whether instinctive archery exist.
Since I made the world record "7 arrows through a keyhole" many have asked questions about how I do this.
So I decided to make a longer video and talk about it.
I asked my friend Jes if he wanted to participate, he writes books and gives lectures on archery
But the conversation turned out differently than expected and ended up being about whether, contrary to what I thought, I actually did not do instinctive archery and whether it is possible to do instinctive archery at all.

I have always been convinced I did instinctive archery
I was wrong

Sincerely
Lars Andersen

[BrassStacks]

Before I watch another second of this video I want to thank you for making the effort to speak english. It is very much appreciated.

[saillife]

So instinctive archery is basically a misnomer; its actually reflexive archery! What a wonderfully wholesome conversation!

[Zekian]

Thank you lars, It is refreshing to hear someone actually change their mind.
This is wonderful.

[CharlieBrownsApocalypse]

I just assumed you were using the English word instinctive to describe Reflexive shooting. Figured it was a language problem. You are directionally correct

[cemguzel]

Hey Lars, I've been following you for a long time now even though I haven't tried archery once in my life because your videos are so interesting and informative. Firstly I would like to thank you both for making such an effort to speak English for your audience too even though you could speak Danish and talk much easier!

It is really amazing to see how well you trained your body and muscle memory through years to become this good with a non-professional bow and arrow. Seeing Jes breaking down your learned and habitualized methods of archery and explaining what you are doing unconsciously really shows archery is a skill that can be honed to extremes to be almost "instinctiual."
Seeing you two talk about archery as "trained muscle memory" vs "more conscious and methodological process" is amazing as we get to see two different perpectives of two very good archers.

Also what caught my attention is how you looked at Jes as he was explaining the methods to you. It is awesome to see you look so excited as you're still so eager to learn more about archery even though you're already so well at it and it reflects in your videos too!
Thank you for making this video once again. It was an amazing watch. And happy new years!

[Paddeltroll]

A genius who has the size to question himself - wonderful!

[niksutherland]

This video makes me feel very fortunate. Two of arguably the best shooters of our time pouring out golden information and thought process for 20 minutes about our sport. Thank you guys Happy New Year, huge fan

[Catonius]

this is really just a matter of semantics, whether you call it 'instinctive' or reflexive archery or whatever you want, it amounts to the same thing. Good discussion.

[herbertgearing]

Yes God bless you two for deliberately slowing down your minds in order to have these conversations in English so that we can learn so much from you. Thank you for your patience, generosity, and understanding, it is greatly appreciated.

[LarsAgerbk]

Lars Andersen does what he usually does. Something completely impossible. Something you would see in a Hollywood movie and scoff at for being unrealistic. In this case he shoots arrows through a keyhole seven times in a row and breaks the world record. Then he sits down with a professional archer and lets him try at less than half the distance. The professional archer misses the target-dish three times in a row.
Before I watched this movie I pondered whether Lars is from another planet. Now I'm wondering if he's from the another age.

[gurglejug]

I'm really happy that you're studying the interrelationship between the conscious mind and the subconscious and their effects on aiming and manual skills. I'm sitting here with a young Danish friend who used my heavy old compound bow some 3 to 4 years ago and loosed perhaps 100 arrows, all at a range of around 10m. Six weeks ago he took the same bow and shot it at a distance of some 35-40m - the first six arrows were in perfect grouping - about 15cm, from then on it was terrible (sometimes even missing the 1.5 x 1.5m butt). The thing is I have taught a lot of manual skills to a lot of people and knew basically what would happen, though the extremity of it surprised me: It's nice to have some measurement of the effect of inbuilt skill or muscle memory. I would say that for the first three days skills at almost anything will start reasonably good and get worse over three days, then they get suddenly far better in one jump, and then changes are small after that. But I will take care to measure the effect in future. I know from running a business some years ago that my subconscious mind could tell me in my sleep exactly what materials to buy for a complex project with thousands of variables and measurements (I would wake up and write them down, these estimations were perfect every time and reduced waste to almost zero and led to a very high efficiency and so high profitability) whereas my conscious mind could not get even close to this. If workers asked me to deviate from my subconsciously formed plan, it would not work so well, but if I stuck to the plan stubbornly it would end up 'perfect'. This was frustrating for workers/others around me as they often had good arguments at the time for doing what looked like a good alternative, and only people I had worked with a long time were ok with it as it could easily seem arrogant if they didn't know me. The whole topic really interests me and you could take research to an entire next level with your years of experience and skill and teaching. Thanks for doing so many videos in English and doing your best to show us your findings, it's really appreciated: I remember you struggling at the start. Mange tak og rigtige go' førnøjelser.

[blairphilip]

This was very refreshing. Two experts maturely sharing and listening/thinking. Learning is so exciting, even just to witness.

[ScottWConvid]

Not only have they correctly identified the unconscious process of muscle memory for consistent shooting, but they were both able to communicate that very well in English!!! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
As with anything that is spot on and mostly truthful, this is not going to be recieved by a lot of people that have calcified themselves into believing the contrary notion that instinctive archery exists.

You two should rethink what you've been programmed to believe about how old mankind really is, as the entire earth was made about six thousand years ago and even the oldest writings we have were found to be about 4, 000 years ago, about the time of the confounding of the languages at Mesopotamia (Shinar).

But we are living in a world that has so much deception, people genuinely hate the truth because lies are what they've built their entire worldview up on.
Keep em coming Lars!!!! This was great

[passiononfire]

I'm completely unaware of who these people are. But I just sat here for the last half hour or so and listen to some of the best conversation I've ever heard in my life. Kudos y'all. Keep up the good work You are absolute spirits of the earth!

[LycielleHerself]

To me it is really interesting to follow your conversation because not only did you identified the origins and tools Lars' archery method uses but also compared it to traditional archery.
I am so thankful for this information and the input you gave because I myself would love to improve my archery skills but unfortunally I'm living not only too far away for a teaching lesson but also there might be no opportunity to get tought by you, too.

It would be so interesting to have a quick video of you, Lars, explaining how your trainees start to learn your archery style to get even more into it. <3

Great video! Happy new year, Lars.

[DraxTube]

Well, that's just semantics. Perhaps the right word for your extraordinary style Lars, is "intuitive"

[ErikGsson]

This is amazing, Loved your conversations

[TriggaPleas]

14:31...I do believe so...I once read that humans have a natural ability to accurately point the index finger at a target from around 1-200m(distance is from memory) It makes sense seeing as pointing in the direction of either a threat or a resource surely predates verbal communication and projectile weapons... A rifle or a bow is held at arms length along the line of sight in exactly the same way that a finger is pointed. There is a instinctive archer in all of us even if the archery isn't truly instinctive.

[mrunique]

I've done a few sports and I have always performed best when actually not thinking too much about what I'm doing and instead becoming one mind and body and just kind of letting it happen, obviously practicing for many hours is necessary but there does become a point when the two things just seems to click .

[marcoengelbracht]

Many thanks to both of you, first for taking the time, second for discussing in english and third for being so open!
I agree that somehow we may have inherited something about archery from our ancestors. I have no other explanation why kid's adopt to archery that easy. When I was a kid, I did not have one single string slap on my forearm, only when I started as a grown up, started thinking about everything that happened the first time. I think as long as you are not thinking, you have a good chance to be better, to use what has been handed over from long gone archers.