*promote
Also *related=http://videosift.com/video/A-New-Level-Of-Amazing-Archery-Skills
and
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Lars-Andersen-shoots-arrows-the-fastest

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Saturday, February 7th, 2015 9:16am PST - promote requested by original submitter RFlagg.

A New Level Of Archery Skills has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

Lars Andersen shoots arrows the fastest has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

This was really good! It's pretty obvious now that most or all the history was invented by Lars, instead of studied. However, there are a few points that she didn't touch on or completely dismissed.

She makes a quite unsubstantiated claim that ancient people cannot measure time, and dismisses the entire speed advantage of the technique Lars is using. I would have liked to see how she would have addressed the account on the native american chief's abilities at speedshooting, where Lars pulled (invented?) an account that the chief could shoot 10 arrows into the air before the first one hit the ground, and Lars managed to break that record. Despite that a great deal of historical drawings are indeed poor at describing technique (just look at how many drawings depict the horse's gallop incorrectly), this is a metric that is easily recorded. Unless another modern archer has managed to come close to shooting 10 arrows into the air before the first hits the ground, the chief's technique has indeed been lost, and has potentially been revived through Lars.

Additionally, she mocked Lars a bit, calling out, 'where's his horse?', as if his technique wouldn't work on a horse. But, she then showed videos of people rapidly firing at targets while riding on horseback. Again, Lars' technique has a tremendous speed advantage, and he makes it obvious many times over that this firing technique can be performed during acrobatic stunts. If archery truly is about 'what works', this would work better.

Finally, she did a great job at pointing out how Lars was shooting with relatively little force compared to full draw on heavy bows. Indeed, where Lars shows he can pierce chainmail, he was shooting substantially slower, likely to pull back more weight. However, against unarmored or lightly armored opponents, it may not be necessary to pull back 80+ pounds. Instead of trying to invalidate his entire technique by saying he wouldn't be able to pierce full platemail without extremely high force, it would be more accurate to say that the tremendous speed comes at the price of lower force per arrow.

While Anna Maltese brought up many great points about historical fabrication and showed that Lars is overly sensationalizing his technique, she is committing the opposite sin by entirely dismissing the technique's advantages.

I don't know... I think she did a pretty good job. I mean, your solution is as only as good as the seriousness of the problem you are trying to solve, and Lars did a good job of selling the problem. A problem which... has little basis in reality. So his solution is for a problem that didn't actually exist.

More of a lesson on how to create a viral video or become a successful salesmen rather than a lesson on archery. (All honesty considerations aside.)

I don't know. Her "debunking" itself is pretty weak. Seems more like sour grapes than real critique.

But... but I already enrolled in his 12 week course "horseback archery on foot." And what do I do about this LARS tattoo? I just don't think my friends will ever take me seriously again after I invested so much in Lars.

Goddamn you, Lars, you fucking piece of shit I hope you choke on piss and DIE. My whole goddamn life is a whore-mongering lie, imagined as the solipsistic plunge of a physically and mentally inferior charlatan in a shitty and superficial world, but which is more likely the dying thoughts of a misshapen and misfiring synapse in a soup of decaying matter once thought alive.

No it is pretty legit. She's not saying "He can't shoot like that," just that he's full of shit that everyone used to shoot like that and he's managed to rediscover the technique that was somehow lost yet available on Google.

Her points are very accurate, particularly the "what works" point. Different archers in different nations used different tactics based on what worked with their given military's tactics and available materials.

No different than modern militaries for that matter. They all do various things a little different, what works for one setup doesn't necessarily work for all.

I completely agree with her about Lars on many points. He often (very often actually) makes his technique seem "the best in the world" when compared to ANY other technique (as there are A LOT of shooting techniques; some that need different bows, materials, and setups).

Kind of like being able to shoot through plate-mail... Lars would NEVER be able to pull that off (of course no one, with a shortbow and the wrong arrow--or tip--will be doing it either; the crossbow is as close as you can get to being small and puncturing plate) as it requires a huge amount of pull force to puncture plate (even heavy English oaken wood shields). The type of bow is a big issue, because that is where you get your draw strength. But, what type of tip you have on your arrow will determine whether or not it even goes into or just bounces off the armor...

However, for the most part, archers didn't try to puncture plate armor--because to be honest about it: it was HARD, it required a VERY heavy bow and expensive tips (of course the bows were also expensive, because they would not be made out of normal material--it might be a specially imported type of wood that could hold up to extreme forces; the string may also be made of something a bit different than normal). So, you didn't have very many people walking around with the innate ability to puncture plate. BUT, what most archers trained a VERY long time to accomplish was extreme accuracy, for one reason alone: armor.

Instead of trying to puncture plate or even chain, archers instead aimed for gaps or areas were there was no coverage (basically anywhere you bend or connect the armor to another piece or tie/connect itself together; so places like under the armpit or along the side of the body were the armor is pulled together and tied shut). Then they may not have to go through anything at all, or they will only have light leather or heavy cloth armor in the way--either way they will penetrate, and they will slowly kill their target by slowing them down and immobilizing them, then moving in for the finishing blow OR if they hit the right place they can just let blood loss finish them off...

But, this requires extreme accuracy, especially in battle AND especially so if you are firing from a horse (if you were lucky you were able to ride behind someone and concentrate solely on firing your shots, then you could add a bit of speed as well). This is the one place that Lars has horribly mislead people--OR he has made a really great breakthrough. But, if Lars never bothers to really demonstrate this stuff, we have no idea how great an archer he really is.

His entire video is one gigantic edit. Every shot and "trick" has been setup with the camera in the right place. The biggest problem is we don't know if it took Lars 1000 attempts to accomplish some of these feats (he makes it sound in some areas that it happens VERY fast, however...but due to the editing, or how he edited it, we actually have no idea if his claims are true) or if he did it in ten...or right off the bat...

That is why I said we needed to wait for Lars to actually talk to us about this whole thing, and to clear various areas up (records and competition). Because he has set a very high bar for himself, and from his own video he seems to be amazing--but, I like many know that if you edit enough and try something over and over again, you can make yourself look like an expert *whatever* whenever you wish to do it...

I agree heavily with her about his historic claims (and also mocking him on his "super clumsy" shots and setups to make fun of "modern" archers); she also points out, correctly, how wrong he is on some of those claims. Like everyone shooting from the left side; which somehow Lars, in ALL his studying completely and utterly missed. Which tells me one thing: she knows more about archery history than Lars actually does.

But, is Lars actually a great archer? Would Lars be a good archer in a battle, or more specifically his "technique"? Lastly, is he really an unique archer more than worth praising? We won't know until Lars does what I mentioned above; he must meet these criticisms head on.

If we allow Lars time to learn how to ride a horse; or it might be a bit more fair to just allow him to ride behind someone controlling the horse, which was a common practice even in battle (then make sure Lars knows how to also fire properly from a horse, since it requires controlling a horse--if you're alone--and staying on the horse using your thigh muscles...which is actually a pretty hard thing to do...and requires expert horsemanship; asking Lars to accomplish this is laughable, as this type of thing would have been a lifetime achievement in the past AND any archer that could fire fast, accurate, and ride a horse by himself...would have been a horrific force on the battlefield; then give him a sword/melee skill--make sure they have a lot of upper body strength--and a very well made, thick steel buckler and he'd be godlike; and then enough armor to protect from arrows...BUT this means you have to be very strong...otherwise you will never be able to accomplish ANY of the feats with the bow mentioned above; BTW, I'm mentioning a superhero right here, there "may" have been a few people like this in history, but they would've been very few and far apart...and more than likely used sparingly).

Mounted archers are extremely powerful against all units that are mounted yet slower than them and of course those on foot and without a long range means of attacking them (at least shorter than the mounted archer's range), this I will always agree with. We already know that mounted archery units could create absolute havoc in the past, see: Alexander The Great. However, eventually people figured out how to deal with this type of threat as well... But, horse mounted archers do have their "nemeses", namely foot archers--since they can take some time (if an arrow comes their way, they block it--it is much harder for a horse archer to carry around a big shield or at least just have on sitting nearby--or you can aim for their horse, which is why above I said that "superhero" like warrior would need a melee skill, because eventually they WILL be on the ground).

So, again, we have to wait and see if Lars bothers to respond to this video and to ALL of the others that have also been made (he did make a lot of people angry; as he did make some stuff up and possibly "overshoot" the mark on other claims and possibly even his own abilities...). I won't hold my breath though.

I think we can all come to a fairly logical conclusion on this. If Lars NEVER responds to anything, then we will have to assume that a lot of his "super-speed" with "accuracy" was due to one thing alone: editing.

Phew, I think that covers everything...it certainly was long enough!!!!

How so?

She's not debunking his archery "style", she's debunking his assertions that he's the only guy to rediscover it, that his style was widespread etc.

At multiple points, she says that archery is about what works, so she's not denying him his right to shoot however he wants to, but she's bang on about a lot of the things he does.

Doesn't sound like sour grapes to me, just a reasoned analysis.

I particularly agree with the bits about his demos of 'failed' techniques being like watching morons in an infomercial fall to pieces because they can't put a blanket over their legs and use a phone. If something is flawed, you shouldn't need to exaggerate to show flaw, it should be self evident.

I came to say this after reading other posts. Well put.

But he wants SO badly to feel special...and it's ever so much easier if you just ignore those pesky little things like facts that get in the way. Actual research and dedication is so much work.

Or perhaps the stories of the Native American chief's feat are exaggerated and/or made up.

Out of interest, does anyone here have any expertise in archery?

I certainly don't, and my lay opinion of Lars was that it looked like "trick shooting".

I have much more experience than the average person. Lars seems to invent and conjecture as much historical evidence as some other posters here, but what he does is very impressive. You could accurately classify it as trick shooting, but since archery is now a sport instead of a practical thing...it's all pretty gray.

What's neat is that Lars' technique works significantly better than current common practices...albeit in what are currently uncommon situations, such as riding horseback or running & shooting. There are 2 things that makes these kinds of situations difficult:

1) Keeping the arrow resting against the side of the bow and the handle. If you've ever shot before, most beginning shooters will have their arrow accidentally drop to the ground many times before they fire a successful shot. Even for someone who is more than a novice, a strong breeze can easily knock your arrow away from this notch. Shooting while on horseback or running is a whole new level of difficult.

2) Firing rapidly. Firing off many arrows in succession is a difficult thing, seriously. Despite Anna Maltese's dismissal of Lars' demonstration on why firing on the 'wrong' side of the bow is faster, it truly does remove many of the steps, and speeds up the entire process. In modern archery, Right handed people fire the arrow on the left side of the bow, and left handed people fire the arrow on the Right side of the bow. Reasons for this could be conjectured, but from personal experience, learning how to shoot the arrow from the wrong side of the bow is almost like learning archery all over again...it feels weird. From watching related videos, the way Lars holds many arrows in his hand, making sure to rotate each arrow into the appropriate knocked position each time, is a significant achievement that Anna did not touch on.

What's particularly impressive is that Lars has achieved improvements in both categories simultaneously by firing from the wrong side of the bow. To my knowledge, modern trick shooting is the typical shooting style simply with impressive feats of accuracy, or at best being able to throw an object into the air and hit it with one arrow. In comparison, Lars changed the way he shoots his arrows, and has been able to significantly upgrade the art because of it (throwing an object in the air and hitting it with 3 arrows before reaching the ground). In my opinion, this is beyond regular trick shooting, and warrants a reinvestigation on why modern archery is the way it is.

I used to be an archery instructor. And I don't have any expertise in what Lars is doing because I did the "standing still" variety.

She was referring to the quote from that Arabic text at 3:15 which states that the practitioner must master horsemanship as well.

Essentially Lars video was the archery-equivalent of those trick-shot basketball videos where you know that what was done required skill, luck, and several takes - if those basketball videos also had a voice-over explaining how hundreds of years ago legendary b-ballers mastered the skill of blindfolded trick shots over buildings while skateboarding downhill... but sadly their secret technique was lost to history.

Not sure if I gave the wrong impression with my post; I wasn't suggesting that Archery on horseback was a bizarre thing to do, I was suggesting that it's bizarre to say a technique that's demonstrably robust to movement wouldn't work on a horse.

i agree. she's overly dismissive while ignoring some undeniably effective shooting. i'm not an archery expert, but even the speed shooters she shows are nowhere near as fast as lars. yes his video was goofy, but don't ignore his innovations just cuz he's bad at video production.

I took her video to be more skeptical of his historical claims, his assertions that he rediscovered them, and that modern techniques isn't valid, than if the trick shots work or not. She goes to show many of his techniques are still in use in some cultures.

Like others said, even from a fairly small knowledge window, it looked like trick shots. Back in the day you would have had to film on expensive film making hundreds of shots to get one that worked, it would have been more complicated to do this. Now with video, it is easier than ever to record it as many times as you need to get the shot that worked.

Would his technique work while hunting or on the battlefield is the main question. Take an arrow through the armor joints in the knee or whatever from his technique won't kill, but probably will hurt enough to take you out of the battle, which would be the point. Would it put a deer down though? Doesn't seem there's enough draw strength to really kill the deer or large game, rather it would torture the animal for an overly long period of time before it might finally die. My understanding of modern archery is to put the game down as quick as possible to minimize suffering.

We need to see him doing his things live. Don't let the myth busters do it, have him do it, in situations that would represent a battlefield. Have armored mannequins moving, some still, have him use his techniques, see how many of his shots would have taken that soldier out of the battle. Unfortunately, you can't safely test having him under fire at the same time since that puts a level of stress on top of everything. Have a deer mannequin and see if his technique would be effective at the sort of range you need to be at to avoid startling the deer, again at a stand still and in motion (generally you are going to wait for it to be still enough to fire anyhow in that case since it is rarely a matter of life and death to kill the deer or other game).

That all said she keeps saying archery is about what works, and it does seem to work for the situation he's in. The question is as I noted above would it work in hunting or the battlefield and even if not, would it work on regular archery targets live without many repeated filming attempts. Would it work at an Olympic style event better than modern techniques? If it could do better, or even near as good, as modern ones at competitions, then, even if it fails at hunting and battlefield situations, it could still be valid.

As an aside, the videos I saw of him weren't trying to sell anything specific beyond him perhaps. I haven't bothered to Google him up to see if he's selling stuff, or just demonstrating things for now. If he's not selling people on teaching in person or via video or whatever, then all the more reason to suspect he's just showing off trick shots the same way basketball trick shot videos do. In which case the historical research could have been lazy just because it was more in jest than anything meant to be taken serious. He could have been pulling a poe in that regards.

Her question of 'how did the Saracens count seconds' may be a little mocking but it's also incredibly apt. The idea of 'seconds' or even 'minutes' would have been completely foreign to them. The first clocks to measure seconds were invented in the late 17th century, and wasn't a common feature in clocks for another century +.

Despite that measures of time may not be so analytically robust, there are reasonably good relative measures. Throw a stone into the air or drop it from a fixed height, and see how many arrows you can shoot before it hits the ground. Even if it were as long as 3 seconds, that's still an impressively short time to shoot 3 arrows in.

Lars Andersen, world's fastest archer, responds to critics has been added as a related post - related requested by kulpims on that post.