#811: 2x Olympic Archery Medalist Jake Kaminski — Lessons Learned and Mantras Used After 1,000,000 Arrows
Episode
170 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Fundraising & VC, Psychology & Behavior
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Precision Requirements: Olympic recurve archery demands hitting a 12.2 centimeter target from 70 meters with margin of error smaller than a ballpoint pen tip. Competitive archers must hit this 10-ring 40-plus times out of 72 arrows while managing wind, precipitation, and mental pressure without magnification or rear sights.
- ✓Present-Tense Affirmations: Jake transformed performance by replacing future-oriented goals with present-tense statements like "I am 2012 Olympic champion period" tied to specific actions. This SMART goal integration changed habits and mindset during a three-to-four year rebuilding period after Coach Kisik Lee overhauled his entire technique two weeks before Junior Worlds.
- ✓Deliberate Difficulty Training: Making practice harder than competition accelerates skill development. Jake chose lanes nearest walls for crowded conditions, shot in rain and wind, and trained with metal ashtrays thrown during full draw. This approach prepares athletes for unpredictable competition environments and builds mental resilience under actual pressure.
- ✓Blank Bale Practice: Shooting at a target without aiming marks from eight feet away removes performance anxiety and ingrains proper biomechanics through repetition. Starting and ending sessions with blank bale allows focus on technique details like finger hook placement and back tension without the distraction of scoring or target panic.
- ✓Team Backup Strategy: The 2012 Olympic team used each other's primary bows as backups, learning to aim eight to ten inches off-center to compensate for different setups. This unprecedented intimacy included understanding individual shot cycles, communication preferences at full draw, and wind-reading collaboration that no other international team replicated.
What It Covers
Two-time Olympic silver medalist Jake Kaminski shares technical archery training methods, mental performance strategies, and coaching approaches that helped Tim Ferriss compete at Lancaster Classic after six months of focused barebow training despite physical limitations and travel constraints.
Key Questions Answered
- •Precision Requirements: Olympic recurve archery demands hitting a 12.2 centimeter target from 70 meters with margin of error smaller than a ballpoint pen tip. Competitive archers must hit this 10-ring 40-plus times out of 72 arrows while managing wind, precipitation, and mental pressure without magnification or rear sights.
- •Present-Tense Affirmations: Jake transformed performance by replacing future-oriented goals with present-tense statements like "I am 2012 Olympic champion period" tied to specific actions. This SMART goal integration changed habits and mindset during a three-to-four year rebuilding period after Coach Kisik Lee overhauled his entire technique two weeks before Junior Worlds.
- •Deliberate Difficulty Training: Making practice harder than competition accelerates skill development. Jake chose lanes nearest walls for crowded conditions, shot in rain and wind, and trained with metal ashtrays thrown during full draw. This approach prepares athletes for unpredictable competition environments and builds mental resilience under actual pressure.
- •Blank Bale Practice: Shooting at a target without aiming marks from eight feet away removes performance anxiety and ingrains proper biomechanics through repetition. Starting and ending sessions with blank bale allows focus on technique details like finger hook placement and back tension without the distraction of scoring or target panic.
- •Team Backup Strategy: The 2012 Olympic team used each other's primary bows as backups, learning to aim eight to ten inches off-center to compensate for different setups. This unprecedented intimacy included understanding individual shot cycles, communication preferences at full draw, and wind-reading collaboration that no other international team replicated.
Notable Moment
Korea's archery dominance is so absolute that their women's team hasn't lost an Olympic gold medal in individual or team competition for roughly 28 years. A random Korean man in a Puerto Rico sauna recognized Coach Kisik Lee's name and expressed shock at his celebrity-level cultural importance to the country.
Episode Transcript
Hey, folks. Tim here. My best selling card game, Coyote, which I made with the amazing team at Exploding Kittens, just won the pop insider best geeky game of 2025 and also best stocking filler in the made for moms toy awards '20 twenty '5. It is on sale everywhere. It's cheap. It's fast to learn. It has 4.8 stars out of five. People are loving it. Coyotegame.com will take you to all the retailers, but you can find it everywhere. It is a game of thinking fast and laughing faster. Think charades meets hot potato meets a bunch of brain fun. It's good for your head. It's perfect for families with kids age 10 or adults who are kids at heart or don't take themselves too seriously. A lot of adults love this game. And as I said, it's available everywhere. Amazon, Walmart, Target, 8,000 plus retail locations, you name it. So please check it out. I loved making it. People are really enjoying it. It has 300 or 400,000,000 plus social views of gameplay online. And try it. Enjoy it this holiday season. Check it out, coyotegame.com one more time. That's coyotegame.com or anywhere you buy your games. Now back to the episode. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers, to tease out how they do what they do, the routines, the belief structures, the training programs that you can apply to your own life. And I say training programs because my guest today is one of the best teachers and trainers I have found in the last several years in any discipline whatsoever. His name is Jake Kaminsky. Jake Kaminsky is a two time Olympic silver medalist in archery and a long time member of the US archery team with more than a decade of international competition experience. He is very well known for his technical precision. He is meticulous with gear and tuning, also with biomechanics, his deep knowledge of the sport. And with all of that, Jake helped lead The US to team silver medals at both the twenty twelve London and twenty sixteen 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, which is kind of the de facto archery technical channel. People from all over the world have seen this over and over again. He is like the Taylor Swift meets, you name it, Brad Pitt of the archery world when I've gone to events with him because he was my coach and is my coach in archery. I had my first competition January. We'll talk about that. So he, in addition to that, writes training guides and develops high performance gear, which he manufactures in Austria. It is as precise as you expect Jake Kaminski to …
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