By Mike Kepka
August 26, 2013
A recent Friday, 2:31 p.m.: Inka Siefker was packed and ready for a
much-anticipated vacation to Paris when she got the call. A new reality TV 
show featuring potential Guinness World Records challengers invited her 
to try to break the mark for long-distance archery by a contortionist firing 
an arrow with her feet.
The only catch was that she needed to be in Los Angeles in 10 days for a
 taping before an audience of 200 people. And that she'd never tried the 
distance needed to break the record in front of anyone except her training 
partner and teacher.
"I'd never even done it onstage before, let alone a live audience," 
said Siefker, 26.
She took her vacation to Paris, but spent most of it doing something 
few tourists do - shooting arrows while performing handstands.
It wasn't until she was 21 that Siefker moved to San Francisco from a 
small town in Mississippi to learn contortion and circus arts, but the seed 
had been planted early on. When she was 2, she started competitive dance 
class and gymnastics. She also did ballet and played softball and tennis. 
She has been athletic all her life.
Now she makes a living warping her body in strange ways at San Francisco 
clubs like the Monarch in the South of Market neighborhood.
Siefker's basic trick is a mainstay of Mongolian contortion - contortion is big in 
Mongolia - and involves doing a handstand while pulling back a 12-pound, 
recurve bow with her toes, loading an arrow and firing.
The Guinness mark was 18 feet for piercing a balloon fixed to a 4-inch bull's-eye. 
Siefker was going to try for 20 feet.
When she got to the soundstage in L.A., she was nervous. "I've done it at 30 feet, 
but it's just a matter of having Guinness World Record representatives
breathing down my neck," she said.
Mike Kepka, The Chronicle
Inka Siefker practices shooting an arrow with her feet, hoping to break her own record.
Siefker has extreme focus when it comes to her contortion practice. She spends as much time warming up, both physically and mentally, as she does actually shooting. Everything has to be calm.
Because she can't look down the line of the arrow while she is standing on her hands - the arrow is at least a foot or two above her 
head - she needs to approximate its 
distance from the target. She has a process, but she won't reveal it - it's "top secret."
And even when everything comes together, Siefker says, she hits the target 
only 1 out of 4 tries.
The Guinness show insisted she get there early in the morning for hairstyling 
and makeup, and then there was a lot of hurry up and wait. Production people 
kept asking how many chances she needed to make this thing happen. 
That only made her all the more stressed.
The show's producers decided three chances was about right. They gave her 
five minutes to check out the target and the stage - then the crew took another 
hour before finally being ready.
"I'm just like standing next to the platform while they're filming all this 
other stuff," Siefker said. "By the time I got on the platform, I was like,
 'All right, I'm ready to go. Let just do it!'

Mike Kepka, The Chronicle
Siefker's basic trick involves doing a handstand while pulling back a bow with her toes, loading an arrow and firing.
"I put my hand on the floor and kicked into the handstand," Siefker said. "I'd really practiced so hard. I pulled back the arrow and lined it up. ... I held it there for just another second and released the arrow.
"My heart dropped." Pop! went the balloon.
Suddenly, the girl who ran away from Bailey, Miss., to be a contortionist
and circus performer was a world-record holder.
"Everyone was cheering," she said. "Legitimate cheering 
- it wasn't just TV holding up a 
sign for applause."
She added, "I couldn't believe I had done that."
It was her Uncle David who was proudest of her. 
When she was 
a little girl, he took her hunting in Mississippi and 
taught her most of 
what she knows about archery.
"We would set up all sorts of ridiculous targets and 
shoot at them," 
Siefker said.
Now she is trying to one-up herself. Three or four 
days a week, 
she works out at a club in the Excelsior district - the 
Royal Russian 
Kung Fu Circus Training Academy of Heaven 
Mountain. She's determined
 to beat her own record.
"I can always do more. I'm never settled," she said. 
"The next level is to 
do it blindfolded from 30 feet.
"I just want to make people believe in impossible things."
To see a multimedia production of this piece, go to 
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 for the 
City Exposed, e-mail Mike Kepka at 
mkepka@sfchronicle.com.