Do You Even NEED Khatra? | Asiatic Archery 

I’m assuming you use weak spine arrow?

@@pyramid_scheme_termination3655 They'd be considered stiff by most people's standards. If I need to adjust technique to compensate for spine in any way, I do it with subtle changes to draw length.

Your morning coffee tastes bad? KHATRA! 😂😂☺️

@@RoyMcAvoy 😆😁👍

@@RoyMcAvoy 🤣🤣🤣

Probably not khatra then. There is a natural tendency to move the hand open slightly when you have good expansion.

i use arch btw 😂

i used to think that way. then i watched a slow mo video of a korean archer and the bow definitely moved before the arrow left. they actually shoot arrows with plastic vanes instead of feathers. off their hand too. ive started shooting that way and now i too can shoot plastic vaned arrows without cutting my hand. eventually went even further by shooting 300 spine bare shafts down 20 yd range with a 40 lb bow. wayyy over spined. still managed to stick them perpendicular to the target. so yeah khatra can definitely help. but i dont think its a mystical solution for everything and people give wayyyy too much credit. its not gonna give extra 30 fps or an over night solution.

If they used it in their normal method of shooting, it would stand to reason that they would have used it in practical application, be it for warfare or hunting. The point is that the archer wants to achieve a clean arrow flight. If they achieve it by using khatra, then they would have no reason to _not_ use it for hunting.

There is very little extra movement if Khatra is done correctly. The flamboyant follow through is unnecessary. What you do after the arrow has left the bow has no effect.

Pretty much.

@@NUSensei hey, do you still check your emails to your google account? Maybe mine is in the junk bin.... please check. Tassie guy who makes risers...

The bow doesn't have so much mass that it would cause you to fall off a horse. You are not shifting your weight when doing khatra any more than you would when doing any kind of shooting from horseback. A general mistake that learners may encounter is leaning too heavily into the shot, which would not be suitable on horseback. The weight should be even on the feet, but the lean happens at the hips. This has nothing to do with the release and khatra. You learn the fundamentals of the stable platform in your shooting stance, which translates to the position while mounted.

@@NUSensei I agree. The goal is to turn yourself into a stable weapons platform. That is the zen of archery. Form and economy of motion are important. Breathing is also important to any type of shooting so you can keep your mark. A one inch deviation can cause you to miss by several feet. The follow-through actually puts the nock of the next arrow in your bow hand closer to the string so there is a continuous shooting cycle. The more you train the faster you'll be able to adjust and adapt to new conditions. Poor form leads to poor performance. Good form leads to consistency, balance and harmony.

One thing to keep in mind is whether you are watching khatra performed correctly or incorrectly. _Most_ people who do khatra - I dare say - do it incorrectly, either because they are doing a cosmetic post-shot flick, or they are not correctly gripping the bow and the shot is not synchronised. Khatra is not a _reaction,_ it is a result of the pressure on the grip. The archer doesn't need to time their "flick" - that is impossible. They need to understand how to grip the bow to get it to move in the desired way for arrow flight. The point about the archer's paradox is exactly the point being raised: one solution to arrow clearance is to match the arrow spine. That's something we can more easily do today with modern manufacturing. Historically, it was less likely that you could match arrows that consistently, and khatra was at least one method to address that problem, which is why it was documented in historical texts. Not every culture did it this way. It's also the reason why many modern-day archers might not even need khatra. If using modern materials and modern arrows, they may have already solved the problem of arrow clearance, and khatra may be an unnecessary relic of the historical art. Part of the problem now is that people learn it or imitate it without understanding why it was done and create a new mythos around it.

@@NUSensei Nice one cheers for explaining man :)

​@@NUSensei Predpokladám že khatra je momentálne nepochopená technika streľby z luku určená prevažne pre bojové účely. V boji keď lukostrelec minul všetky svoje šípy musel sa spoľahnúť na šípy popadané po zemi pozbierať ich a strieľať s nimi. Tieto šípy mohli byť od nepriateľa alebo spolubojovníka a môhli mať rozdielnu váhou a spin. Dovolím si tvrdiť že bez použitia khatry by s pozbieranými šípmi nedokázal presne strieľať.

Torba is a shot distance as a training and diagnostic tool. While a skilled shooter can launch a bare shaft true out to 50 metres, you can no longer see the flight of the arrow. 5 shots might have been on camera, but I can do it a hundred times with similar result. The point is that the arrow does not lie. Slow motion cameras will capture the deflection of the arrow when khatra is not executed well vs. clean execution.

@@NUSensei thanks for your answer Sensei. I do appreciate your videos and the tone of value your are giving us. I ve seen many slowmo videos I know what you mean. But think about it.. What is a bad Khatra? best case the arrows do not touch the bow (clean Khatra), worst case on a bad Khatra, it does touch the bow like any non Khatra shot does. So to me, Khatra is better but only if you are super consistent with it. One more question and please tell me your opinion: I've seen people using Khatra (vertically) with split finger and the arrow to the left. Even on horseback. Does this even make sense to you?

This is a fair point, but after a few hundred videos, I can't repeatedly go over the same basic fundamentals in every video. These are lengthy as they are, and going over every step will only add 5-10 minutes of old information. The entire first minute already frames the topic and not only demonstrates khatra, but includes screenshots of explanations of khatra. There is a level of assumed knowledge when creating specific niche topics, and khatra is one of the more well known (and controversial) concepts in Asiatic archery. Half the time I get questions over why I shoot on the outside of the bow.

@@NUSensei sorry for by boldness, thats my thing. i love your channel and it made me buy a boy and start myself. i find you can explain this very good and i can feel you know alot and have ypur heart in it. im absolutly a loyal follower :-)

buy a bow, not a boy

Yeah, it's a scam I've seen reported on other channels too. I'm flattered.

I mean, uh, give me money plz.