As promised, this is the first of a series of posts/tutorials that I have written and will hopefully help you guys to understand our sport.
I will be asking other contributors as time goes by but in the meantime, here is an attempt to apply scientific thinking to understating our game ...... ........hopefully!
The Science of Paintball
Science has given us many things, not least of which is the ability to provide constructs - or rather frameworks - for understanding the processes and phenomenon that our world offers up. The reason us humans strive to understand things is because understanding helps us negotiate our seemingly unpredictable environment and hopefully make it a better place…or at least that’s the theory, but as so often happens when it comes to practice, theory and practice are sometimes uncomfortable bedfellows.
Still, we can use science to at least try to understand the world around us but ironically, when we attempt to apply the strict constructs that science demands from us upon human behaviour, it all starts to go tits up. Humans do not respond like the forces of nature (excepting of course, quantum mechanics); we are just too damned unpredictable. And even when you can predict actions, it’s almost impossible to nail down the exact nature of that action.
Sport is a human endeavour and as such, the application of any scientific principle in trying to understand sport has a pretty hard time in attempting to remain rigorous enough to give us credible results. In trying to explain these pursuits, science is always going to be held hostage to all of sport’s almost innumerable variables; and science does not like large numbers of variables. (Actually, that is not strictly true: It doesn’t really mind them, but they have to be quantifiable and whilst there is a fair degree of predicative skills and computation we can apply, we can’t and never will be able to be exact.)
Newtonian Paintball
I’ll start by looking at how an ol’ time Brit Isaac Newton, one of the most brilliant scientific thinkers of all time, tried to explain the forces of nature. He knew that a force was needed to move anything but at that time, nobody knew the relationship between force (gravity), mass and acceleration.
At the time, your average Joe realized that when you picked up a turnip and gunned it at some poor sod who had just stolen your dog or shagged your pet pig, then the turnip would whizz toward him like a greyhound with its nuts ablaze, but to formalize that action, whereupon accurate predictions could be made was beyond them.
Or at least it was until ol’ Newton saw that apple fall.
Newton realised that the force needed to propel something was a product of its mass and acceleration i.e. Force = Mass x Acceleration. So far so good, but whilst he could now predict the force needed to accelerate a given mass, if somebody asked Newton to predict the outcome of a game of soccer he might have had a bit more of a problem (not least because soccer hadn’t even been invented then, but you get the point).
In understanding and eventually explaining the relationship between force, mass and acceleration, he only had three frikkin variables to deal with; it was their interrelationship that had to be discovered.
But if you try to discover the interrelationship between 22 players, a ref, a ball, the wind, differing individual abilities, human mistakes and so on, you can begin to appreciate the sheer scale of the problem.
In fact, the most powerful computer in the world right now could not accurately predict the outcome of any game of soccer; it’s all down to the number of variables that can potentially influence the outcome, which of course, is a statistical nightmare to try and formalise.
So what’s the point of this article for us Paintballers?
Well, I honestly believe that while we may not be able to tie down Paintball to anywhere near what Newton did with his second law of motion (F=M.A) we can at least use some of science’s disciplines to try and understand what makes Paintball tick.
And any understanding we achieve, no matter how minor, is going to help us in some way, whether it be through a more sophisticated training programme or an increased understanding of how a game unfolds - thus helping us improve our tactical preparation.
Control tweaks
This all sounds like a grandiose and perhaps pretentious undertaking, but it ain’t; Russian Legion supremo Sergey Leontiev has already started this process and most switched on coaches are already studying and emulating some of his training philosophies. In the early stages of the Russian Legion, Sergei had only been able to choose from a player pool of about 100 guys as against America’s tens of thousands; he took his team to the very top of the Paintball pile.
He achieved this astounding feat because he understands the game’s fundamentals and uses that understanding to construct extensive training schedules and sophisticated tactical plans.
Whenever Sergei comes to London, I get a call and we go out to dinner and afterwards, my brain is fried. His paintball knowledge is as vast as it is deep but the real difference with Sergei as against other owner/coaches is his ability to identify key components of our game, once isolated, he focuses on them to train, and train hard.
Some of these components are trained thousands of times in his Moscow training dome and so you get some idea as to the extent this guy is willing to go, and of course his team.
Understanding something pays dividends - make no mistake about that. The more we understand, the more we can control; the more we can control, the more we win.
It’s a simple relationship, and one to which Newton himself might have given an approving nod.
One of the best ways to tackle this problem in understanding Paintball is to do it in reverse, and if we can keep it basic, then we should touch upon some useful information along the way…well that’s the theory anyway.
Here goes: The game is won by returning the opponent’s flag. This is what constitutes a win. This single action is what all teams strive for.
The next question to be answered is: What was the nature of the flag return?
What happened prior to the flag hang?
The answer to this is not absolute but in a general sense it can be said: The flag is returned when all opponents have been eliminated, but in a few rare cases the flag is returned when some opponents are still alive - but this is not the norm and for the purposes of this article, we can ignore it.
Before I go any further I had better explain something. Science is generally experiment-based; that is, you have a theory, you conduct experiments to collect data, you look at the data produced by that experiment and try to draw conclusions based upon it. Easy peasy!
Now whilst I haven’t got a laboratory set up with a bunch of ballers running around with a test-tube stuck up their ass, I have got a lot of experience in observing games -and it is this knowledge that I will draw upon to collect data. It’s not a perfect scenario, nowhere near it, but it will suffice for the purposes of this post.
The next conclusion we can make is this: If we have to eliminate the opposition but still have players alive to hang the flag then we are looking at creating a positive disparity in numbers (in our favour) between us and our opponents. Now that little conclusion certainly doesn’t need a rocket scientist to work it out, but bear with me a while.
Ballers’ progress
It can easily be seen after watching many games that as most encounters progress, the team which is able to create a disparity between numbers left on field in their favour is generally the team which goes on to win.
A vague shape of what’s really important about the game of Paintball takes form in the mists, because the next logical questions to ask are, ‘What constitutes an elimination’ and ‘how is it achieved?’
We all know what constitutes a hit and therefore an elimination (even though some players have a real problem in acknowledging any shots they get hit with, not mentioning any names of course…Markus Nielsen. Oops, sorry about that, it slipped out - wouldn’t in any way want to tarnish his name) and all we have to do to answer this next question is to analyze how you actually achieve one.
At this point, I think Newton might well be thinking that understanding Paintball wasn’t such a tough proposition, but - and it’s a big ‘but’ - this next question would be where it all starts to go tits up.
There are many different ways a player can get eliminated (we’ll ignore penalty eliminations, 1-4-1s etc.); we’ve got side shots, snap-shooting duels, shots from hell, being bunkered, being shot whilst trying to make a bunker and so on. You may now begin to see the problem, because what a scientist would be forced to ask after acknowledging all these different types of elimination is, what determined those eliminations? The mechanics of eliminations now become crucial to understanding that eventual final flag grab that wins the game. If we can’t unravel the determinant factors that influence which players get their armbands removed and which ones do not then we have no chance in understanding Paintball’s real dynamics.
Now is the time to look at the frequency type of eliminations as they happen on a Paintball field in order to get an idea of their frequency significance. If we were to take a look at a random 100 eliminations across various games we would end up categorizing the eliminations in roughly the following way:
Side shots, with the eliminated player being unaware (or being aware too late to react): 45%
Players eliminated whilst moving between bunkers: 15%
Plays eliminated off the bat on breakout: 15%
Players shot during snapshooting gunfights: 15%
Players Bunkered: 10%
Now these are not definitive figures I know, they are a working approximation that we can use and for the purposes of this analysis will prove practical enough, if not entirely accurate. In fact, this part of the analysis doesn’t have to be that accurate because all it does is tell us relative significances and for that purpose, as long as the figures approximated are reasonably accurate, they are useable.
Taking sides
It would seem then, that the largest area for concern is the side shot – by which I mean the shot where the player is moved upon and is eliminated either through lack of awareness, or not being able to react quickly enough to somebody who has moved against him. Just to be clear on this point, there is one proviso to this type of elimination and before we move on, we need to clarify it. Some players who get side shot do so because it is they who moved up field and ended up crashing into a bunker, not realizing one of their opponents was set up on an angle. Basically, they had run straight into a kill zone without realizing it. For the most part though, side shot eliminations are achieved by players getting positive, moving downfield and opening up new angles of attack on their opponents and shooting them..
If I were a scientist, I would at this stage be thinking to myself, ‘Hmm, it seems like I’ve got a pretty good handle on something here if I can work out how best to move up-field, because if it gets me nigh on half of the kills in a Paintball game and I can consequently understand this area of the game a little better, then I’m well on my way to getting a ‘F=M.A’ for Paintball’.
Now our scientist might be being a tad optimistic if he did think this, because he hasn’t yet begun to ask the even more complex questions of performance dynamics, but we’ll let him off his untimely optimism for the time being. So, let’s start looking at this area of the game where the largest majority of eliminations are achieved in a game of Paintball.
I always told the guys on Nexus that I would much rather they eliminate an opponent with a side shot than a snapshot, even though I used to train the snapshot into them as though it was the be all and end all. The reason I like the idea of the side shot is because it’s easier to stay alive than if you were in a snap-shooting gunfight. I used to like easy kills…it made me sleep better at night knowing the guy I am about to shoot is blissfully unaware my marker is gonna rip him a new *******.
Risky business
Let me explain: Imagine one guy sitting in a bunker, gun fighting with an opponent. Each is equally aware of the other’s location and therefore generally, equally able to eliminate their opponent (if skill levels are equivalent). This is not really a good situation to be in if we are trying to win the game, because handing over the fate of that encounter to Lady Luck is not where it’s at for some of us - we want to be able to control proceedings a little more and hopefully cut down the risk factor..
Some of you may well be thinking, “Robbo you dumbass, that’s bull…that’s what we practice for, to make sure our techniques are better than our opponents - and most gunfights are gonna go in our favour because we train a lot more than those fools”.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of teams train a lot so it’s not a given that your skill set is going to be superior to anybody else’s.
But still, when we continue to do the maths on this comparison it reveals a much safer set of circumstances if we try to achieve the side shot. There is still one slight problem though, and that’s getting to the new position without getting lit up. It’s all well and good me going on about taking out your opponents with side shots when they don’t even know you have slid into a new position, but you’ve gotta get your ass in there without getting shot in the first place - and that now becomes the nub of this particular investigation.
So, we now have to determine the relative risks of:
A) Moving between bunkers
and
B) Staying in a snap-shooting gunfight.
If we do this comparison then we will be able to determine whether it’s worth trying to refine snap-shooting or to emphasize training around movement, because what lies at the very heart of this part of the article is the decision to stay in a snap-shooting duel and hope we win it, or move somewhere and get a side shot. If we can attribute a percentage advantage to one or the other then that knowledge should help direct us to not only make the right decision on the field of play but also help us prioritize training regimes.
However, I would say at this point that experience is trying to nudge us a certain way here because as I said before, if we watch a lot of Paintball, the side-shot is self-evidently the safest and most efficient way of eliminating the opposition (when the opponent is moved upon that is). This suggests that when we do any relative breakdowns, if it doesn’t point toward the side shot being the safest, then we must have our collective finger up our ass.
If we just take a look at those figures quoted earlier, we see that players getting tagged whilst moving is approximately 15% of total kills, but the eliminations players can achieve because of moving is something like 45%. I need say no more to those people who possess even half a brain, but for the sake of I will explain.
If only 15% of the losses of any team are occurring when they move, but as a direct result of that movement, you put yourself in a position where 45% of any team’s eliminations of opponents occurs, then it shouldn’t take too many of them ol’ neurons to fire up in the brain to realise we may be onto something here.
A this point, some bright sparks amongst you may suggest that not every forward movement is gonna result in a potential side-shot and therefore the 45 / 15 % ratio comparison is not applicable but you must remember, it is 15% of those eliminated (approx) in any game are moving and not 15% of those who move who get eliminated, a subtle point that needs clarifying I think.
Ok, so we can do a relative assessment here easy enough and to put it mildly, it pays huge dividends if we can concentrate on movement as against sitting in some Godforsaken bunker with some twitching fool a mere 20-yards away trying to blast your frikkin head off. Ah, don’t you just love the smell of logic when it finally descends upon your scrawny ass!
Anyway, once this has been acknowledged, it now remains to refine the act of moving as a technique because although accuracy is also an integral part of that ‘easy’ kill after you have moved, it’s more important at this stage to concentrate on getting there without getting shot, thus decreasing that 15% opportunity of being eliminated as we go for that forward or more lateral bunker.
Rolex movement
Timing now rears its head like a spectre in the foreground, because without proper timing you might as well stick your marker up your jacksy and pull the trigger.
Of course, speed and technical execution of the move are crucial to proceedings also, but timing is where it’s at for the most part because with the correct timing, speed and execution become secondary considerations, but if you get the timing wrong, no amount of speed and degree of execution are gonna get you out of trouble with 10,000 balls coming your way at 300 fps...No matter how fast your little whippet like legs are gonna run, I have yet to see a baller who could outrun just one accurate paintball, let alone the bucket-load that you get in today’s games.
Conclusion: Training should now begin to focus on practicing movement as one of the most important aspects of the modern game, and that training should refine the correct timing of any movement. The game as it stands now is a much more athletic and demanding endeavour, and as such has pushed the emphasis of training towards movement as one of its primary requirements, rather than say snap-shooting.
It’s always helpful to know what the correct importance of each aspect of our sport is and in that way, all training should follow a pretty strict adherence to what we have found out. All this tends to undermine some traditional thinking with regards to the relative importance between snap-shooting and moving but then again, isn’t that what science is all about? I mean, if it didn’t overturn traditional thinking, we would never progress - and that’s exactly what we are trying to do in Paintball.
..and never forget the following:- Have fun, don't cheat, respect refs and don't leave anything lying around jeff abbott, he's a thief! ....Oooops, it slipped out, how naughty of me.
I will be asking other contributors as time goes by but in the meantime, here is an attempt to apply scientific thinking to understating our game ...... ........hopefully!
The Science of Paintball
Science has given us many things, not least of which is the ability to provide constructs - or rather frameworks - for understanding the processes and phenomenon that our world offers up. The reason us humans strive to understand things is because understanding helps us negotiate our seemingly unpredictable environment and hopefully make it a better place…or at least that’s the theory, but as so often happens when it comes to practice, theory and practice are sometimes uncomfortable bedfellows.
Still, we can use science to at least try to understand the world around us but ironically, when we attempt to apply the strict constructs that science demands from us upon human behaviour, it all starts to go tits up. Humans do not respond like the forces of nature (excepting of course, quantum mechanics); we are just too damned unpredictable. And even when you can predict actions, it’s almost impossible to nail down the exact nature of that action.
Sport is a human endeavour and as such, the application of any scientific principle in trying to understand sport has a pretty hard time in attempting to remain rigorous enough to give us credible results. In trying to explain these pursuits, science is always going to be held hostage to all of sport’s almost innumerable variables; and science does not like large numbers of variables. (Actually, that is not strictly true: It doesn’t really mind them, but they have to be quantifiable and whilst there is a fair degree of predicative skills and computation we can apply, we can’t and never will be able to be exact.)
Newtonian Paintball
I’ll start by looking at how an ol’ time Brit Isaac Newton, one of the most brilliant scientific thinkers of all time, tried to explain the forces of nature. He knew that a force was needed to move anything but at that time, nobody knew the relationship between force (gravity), mass and acceleration.
At the time, your average Joe realized that when you picked up a turnip and gunned it at some poor sod who had just stolen your dog or shagged your pet pig, then the turnip would whizz toward him like a greyhound with its nuts ablaze, but to formalize that action, whereupon accurate predictions could be made was beyond them.
Or at least it was until ol’ Newton saw that apple fall.
Newton realised that the force needed to propel something was a product of its mass and acceleration i.e. Force = Mass x Acceleration. So far so good, but whilst he could now predict the force needed to accelerate a given mass, if somebody asked Newton to predict the outcome of a game of soccer he might have had a bit more of a problem (not least because soccer hadn’t even been invented then, but you get the point).
In understanding and eventually explaining the relationship between force, mass and acceleration, he only had three frikkin variables to deal with; it was their interrelationship that had to be discovered.
But if you try to discover the interrelationship between 22 players, a ref, a ball, the wind, differing individual abilities, human mistakes and so on, you can begin to appreciate the sheer scale of the problem.
In fact, the most powerful computer in the world right now could not accurately predict the outcome of any game of soccer; it’s all down to the number of variables that can potentially influence the outcome, which of course, is a statistical nightmare to try and formalise.
So what’s the point of this article for us Paintballers?
Well, I honestly believe that while we may not be able to tie down Paintball to anywhere near what Newton did with his second law of motion (F=M.A) we can at least use some of science’s disciplines to try and understand what makes Paintball tick.
And any understanding we achieve, no matter how minor, is going to help us in some way, whether it be through a more sophisticated training programme or an increased understanding of how a game unfolds - thus helping us improve our tactical preparation.
Control tweaks
This all sounds like a grandiose and perhaps pretentious undertaking, but it ain’t; Russian Legion supremo Sergey Leontiev has already started this process and most switched on coaches are already studying and emulating some of his training philosophies. In the early stages of the Russian Legion, Sergei had only been able to choose from a player pool of about 100 guys as against America’s tens of thousands; he took his team to the very top of the Paintball pile.
He achieved this astounding feat because he understands the game’s fundamentals and uses that understanding to construct extensive training schedules and sophisticated tactical plans.
Whenever Sergei comes to London, I get a call and we go out to dinner and afterwards, my brain is fried. His paintball knowledge is as vast as it is deep but the real difference with Sergei as against other owner/coaches is his ability to identify key components of our game, once isolated, he focuses on them to train, and train hard.
Some of these components are trained thousands of times in his Moscow training dome and so you get some idea as to the extent this guy is willing to go, and of course his team.
Understanding something pays dividends - make no mistake about that. The more we understand, the more we can control; the more we can control, the more we win.
It’s a simple relationship, and one to which Newton himself might have given an approving nod.
One of the best ways to tackle this problem in understanding Paintball is to do it in reverse, and if we can keep it basic, then we should touch upon some useful information along the way…well that’s the theory anyway.
Here goes: The game is won by returning the opponent’s flag. This is what constitutes a win. This single action is what all teams strive for.
The next question to be answered is: What was the nature of the flag return?
What happened prior to the flag hang?
The answer to this is not absolute but in a general sense it can be said: The flag is returned when all opponents have been eliminated, but in a few rare cases the flag is returned when some opponents are still alive - but this is not the norm and for the purposes of this article, we can ignore it.
Before I go any further I had better explain something. Science is generally experiment-based; that is, you have a theory, you conduct experiments to collect data, you look at the data produced by that experiment and try to draw conclusions based upon it. Easy peasy!
Now whilst I haven’t got a laboratory set up with a bunch of ballers running around with a test-tube stuck up their ass, I have got a lot of experience in observing games -and it is this knowledge that I will draw upon to collect data. It’s not a perfect scenario, nowhere near it, but it will suffice for the purposes of this post.
The next conclusion we can make is this: If we have to eliminate the opposition but still have players alive to hang the flag then we are looking at creating a positive disparity in numbers (in our favour) between us and our opponents. Now that little conclusion certainly doesn’t need a rocket scientist to work it out, but bear with me a while.
Ballers’ progress
It can easily be seen after watching many games that as most encounters progress, the team which is able to create a disparity between numbers left on field in their favour is generally the team which goes on to win.
A vague shape of what’s really important about the game of Paintball takes form in the mists, because the next logical questions to ask are, ‘What constitutes an elimination’ and ‘how is it achieved?’
We all know what constitutes a hit and therefore an elimination (even though some players have a real problem in acknowledging any shots they get hit with, not mentioning any names of course…Markus Nielsen. Oops, sorry about that, it slipped out - wouldn’t in any way want to tarnish his name) and all we have to do to answer this next question is to analyze how you actually achieve one.
At this point, I think Newton might well be thinking that understanding Paintball wasn’t such a tough proposition, but - and it’s a big ‘but’ - this next question would be where it all starts to go tits up.
There are many different ways a player can get eliminated (we’ll ignore penalty eliminations, 1-4-1s etc.); we’ve got side shots, snap-shooting duels, shots from hell, being bunkered, being shot whilst trying to make a bunker and so on. You may now begin to see the problem, because what a scientist would be forced to ask after acknowledging all these different types of elimination is, what determined those eliminations? The mechanics of eliminations now become crucial to understanding that eventual final flag grab that wins the game. If we can’t unravel the determinant factors that influence which players get their armbands removed and which ones do not then we have no chance in understanding Paintball’s real dynamics.
Now is the time to look at the frequency type of eliminations as they happen on a Paintball field in order to get an idea of their frequency significance. If we were to take a look at a random 100 eliminations across various games we would end up categorizing the eliminations in roughly the following way:
Side shots, with the eliminated player being unaware (or being aware too late to react): 45%
Players eliminated whilst moving between bunkers: 15%
Plays eliminated off the bat on breakout: 15%
Players shot during snapshooting gunfights: 15%
Players Bunkered: 10%
Now these are not definitive figures I know, they are a working approximation that we can use and for the purposes of this analysis will prove practical enough, if not entirely accurate. In fact, this part of the analysis doesn’t have to be that accurate because all it does is tell us relative significances and for that purpose, as long as the figures approximated are reasonably accurate, they are useable.
Taking sides
It would seem then, that the largest area for concern is the side shot – by which I mean the shot where the player is moved upon and is eliminated either through lack of awareness, or not being able to react quickly enough to somebody who has moved against him. Just to be clear on this point, there is one proviso to this type of elimination and before we move on, we need to clarify it. Some players who get side shot do so because it is they who moved up field and ended up crashing into a bunker, not realizing one of their opponents was set up on an angle. Basically, they had run straight into a kill zone without realizing it. For the most part though, side shot eliminations are achieved by players getting positive, moving downfield and opening up new angles of attack on their opponents and shooting them..
If I were a scientist, I would at this stage be thinking to myself, ‘Hmm, it seems like I’ve got a pretty good handle on something here if I can work out how best to move up-field, because if it gets me nigh on half of the kills in a Paintball game and I can consequently understand this area of the game a little better, then I’m well on my way to getting a ‘F=M.A’ for Paintball’.
Now our scientist might be being a tad optimistic if he did think this, because he hasn’t yet begun to ask the even more complex questions of performance dynamics, but we’ll let him off his untimely optimism for the time being. So, let’s start looking at this area of the game where the largest majority of eliminations are achieved in a game of Paintball.
I always told the guys on Nexus that I would much rather they eliminate an opponent with a side shot than a snapshot, even though I used to train the snapshot into them as though it was the be all and end all. The reason I like the idea of the side shot is because it’s easier to stay alive than if you were in a snap-shooting gunfight. I used to like easy kills…it made me sleep better at night knowing the guy I am about to shoot is blissfully unaware my marker is gonna rip him a new *******.
Risky business
Let me explain: Imagine one guy sitting in a bunker, gun fighting with an opponent. Each is equally aware of the other’s location and therefore generally, equally able to eliminate their opponent (if skill levels are equivalent). This is not really a good situation to be in if we are trying to win the game, because handing over the fate of that encounter to Lady Luck is not where it’s at for some of us - we want to be able to control proceedings a little more and hopefully cut down the risk factor..
Some of you may well be thinking, “Robbo you dumbass, that’s bull…that’s what we practice for, to make sure our techniques are better than our opponents - and most gunfights are gonna go in our favour because we train a lot more than those fools”.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of teams train a lot so it’s not a given that your skill set is going to be superior to anybody else’s.
But still, when we continue to do the maths on this comparison it reveals a much safer set of circumstances if we try to achieve the side shot. There is still one slight problem though, and that’s getting to the new position without getting lit up. It’s all well and good me going on about taking out your opponents with side shots when they don’t even know you have slid into a new position, but you’ve gotta get your ass in there without getting shot in the first place - and that now becomes the nub of this particular investigation.
So, we now have to determine the relative risks of:
A) Moving between bunkers
and
B) Staying in a snap-shooting gunfight.
If we do this comparison then we will be able to determine whether it’s worth trying to refine snap-shooting or to emphasize training around movement, because what lies at the very heart of this part of the article is the decision to stay in a snap-shooting duel and hope we win it, or move somewhere and get a side shot. If we can attribute a percentage advantage to one or the other then that knowledge should help direct us to not only make the right decision on the field of play but also help us prioritize training regimes.
However, I would say at this point that experience is trying to nudge us a certain way here because as I said before, if we watch a lot of Paintball, the side-shot is self-evidently the safest and most efficient way of eliminating the opposition (when the opponent is moved upon that is). This suggests that when we do any relative breakdowns, if it doesn’t point toward the side shot being the safest, then we must have our collective finger up our ass.
If we just take a look at those figures quoted earlier, we see that players getting tagged whilst moving is approximately 15% of total kills, but the eliminations players can achieve because of moving is something like 45%. I need say no more to those people who possess even half a brain, but for the sake of I will explain.
If only 15% of the losses of any team are occurring when they move, but as a direct result of that movement, you put yourself in a position where 45% of any team’s eliminations of opponents occurs, then it shouldn’t take too many of them ol’ neurons to fire up in the brain to realise we may be onto something here.
A this point, some bright sparks amongst you may suggest that not every forward movement is gonna result in a potential side-shot and therefore the 45 / 15 % ratio comparison is not applicable but you must remember, it is 15% of those eliminated (approx) in any game are moving and not 15% of those who move who get eliminated, a subtle point that needs clarifying I think.
Ok, so we can do a relative assessment here easy enough and to put it mildly, it pays huge dividends if we can concentrate on movement as against sitting in some Godforsaken bunker with some twitching fool a mere 20-yards away trying to blast your frikkin head off. Ah, don’t you just love the smell of logic when it finally descends upon your scrawny ass!
Anyway, once this has been acknowledged, it now remains to refine the act of moving as a technique because although accuracy is also an integral part of that ‘easy’ kill after you have moved, it’s more important at this stage to concentrate on getting there without getting shot, thus decreasing that 15% opportunity of being eliminated as we go for that forward or more lateral bunker.
Rolex movement
Timing now rears its head like a spectre in the foreground, because without proper timing you might as well stick your marker up your jacksy and pull the trigger.
Of course, speed and technical execution of the move are crucial to proceedings also, but timing is where it’s at for the most part because with the correct timing, speed and execution become secondary considerations, but if you get the timing wrong, no amount of speed and degree of execution are gonna get you out of trouble with 10,000 balls coming your way at 300 fps...No matter how fast your little whippet like legs are gonna run, I have yet to see a baller who could outrun just one accurate paintball, let alone the bucket-load that you get in today’s games.
Conclusion: Training should now begin to focus on practicing movement as one of the most important aspects of the modern game, and that training should refine the correct timing of any movement. The game as it stands now is a much more athletic and demanding endeavour, and as such has pushed the emphasis of training towards movement as one of its primary requirements, rather than say snap-shooting.
It’s always helpful to know what the correct importance of each aspect of our sport is and in that way, all training should follow a pretty strict adherence to what we have found out. All this tends to undermine some traditional thinking with regards to the relative importance between snap-shooting and moving but then again, isn’t that what science is all about? I mean, if it didn’t overturn traditional thinking, we would never progress - and that’s exactly what we are trying to do in Paintball.
..and never forget the following:- Have fun, don't cheat, respect refs and don't leave anything lying around jeff abbott, he's a thief! ....Oooops, it slipped out, how naughty of me.
