Local Gay Uncle

Slavic Cossack dancing known as Hopak 

Everything movies taught me about archery is wrong. This is a complete mind-blower. 8D

My favorite part?

He learned this doing research for LARPs (Live Action Role Playing):

Lars Andersen originally started using bow and arrow to fight in pretend battles during Larps (live action role play) events, where he played a soldier in a medieval-inspired army. While Larps can be about anything – the Danish/Polish Harry Potter inspired larp College of Wizardry (cowlarp.com) recently got world-wide media attention and there wasn’t a rubber sword in sight there – many Larps take place in fantasy worlds inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. And it was at one of these Larps, that Lars started to learn to shoot fast while moving.

In 2012, Lars Andersen released his video, “Reinventing the fastest forgotten archery”, where he showed how he had learned to shoot from old archery manuscripts. Using these old, forgotten techniques, Lars demonstrated how he was now the fastest archer on the planet, and after its release, the video got 3 million hits on YouTube in two days.

Since the 2012 video was released, Lars has studied and practiced, and he is now able to fire three arrows in 0.6 seconds – a truly stunning feat making him much faster than the legendary fictional archer Legolas (played by Orlando Bloom in the Lord of the Rings movies).

The time benchmark he was trying to achieve, according to the video, was the expectation of the speed at which “Saracen” archers were expected to shoot. In fact, most of the source material as far as I can see isn’t European.

Okay, so let’s get one thing out of the way now: this is not overnight. You’ll have to discipline yourself to do this for weeks until you get your desired result. After some time it will just come naturally.

STEP 1:

Stand against a wall or door with your feet together and heels touching the wall. Stand up STRAIGHT. If your posture is impotent, then this ain’t happening.

(if you can’t stand, sit as straight as you can)

STEP 2:

RELAX. Don’t tense up your whole body, especially not your shoulders. This is so easy to do.

STEP 3:

Press the back of your neck against the wall (it’s fine if it doesn’t actually touch, we’re just working the muscles)

STEP 4:

Start speaking for 10 minutes. Find a magazine, book, article or even recite a monologue if you know any. You’ll notice your voice is already dropping two octaves.

STEP 5:

DRINK!! WATER!!!! If you feel your throat scatching or at all painful, STOP!! Take a break! And drink water, no ice.

STEP 6:

After ten minutes (or however long you can do) lay down flat. Keep your body straight. Relax your whole body. Try a visualisation where you relax from your feet up into your head. Doing this will give your throats a chance to cool down (it’s still a muscle!!)

**Bonus Tips**

HONEY - it coats your throats and protects it from damage. Use it before and/or after this exercise.

HOT TEA - I suggest ginger, but you can really pick whatever kind you want. As long it’s not coffee.

WATER!!!!

A CORK - if you’re wanting to go the extra mile, put a cork in your mouth and speak. This helps enunciation and can really help.

DON’T FORCE - if you force your voice to sound low it will sound very artificial

BE PATIENT - It’s gonna take time! Take it as a challenge.

I have tried humming while moving my head, singing to Panic! At The Disco and literally EVERY other thing to lower my voice and this is the only thing that has worked.

LISTEN / in the mood for songs that make me ache for love, and give me such deep beautiful repressed love feelings. i don’t know if straight ears can hear this actually? we’re eating at pining tonight!

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(W. Gurney BenHam)

Part 2: Cartomancy