Frank Al-Mahdy
This month I am going to go through paintball drills. These drills will help on your accuracy and aggressiveness. We all know drills aren't as fun as actually playing. They also require you to use alot of paint. People would rather just go out and play and learn from their mistakes. This is a very good way of learning but sometimes you will keep reinforcing bad habits. Some of these drills require the use of 2 people others more or less. One this to note is these drills may make you feel kind of stupid and may bore you a little. Once you learn how to do these drills effectively and do them over and over you will use them naturally on the field. In the first half of this we will learn how to make you a better shooter. Second half will teach you how to improve your game through different drills. One of the best drills you can do is to learn how to snap shoot effectively. The best thing to use would be old hoppers or pods as you will see these on the field often and you want to be familiar with them. You could really use anything from a milk carton to a Frisbee but I find that the hopper or pods will be easier to learn from. Now you should place the objects on top and on both sides of several different bunkers. The objects should be set up and a bunker/s far away and in-between. You want to position yourself at a bunker were you can see the bunker/s were you put your objects and you also want to see all the objects. You want to practice snapshooting at each target you have set up. Now that you have done all this you will need to position yourself on your knees or knee and line up your barrel roughly in the same area as your target but behind your bunker. This is called lining up your shot. If your marker is roughly in the same area as your target then you wont have to adjust your aim as much when you pop out saving you from dreaded gogs and marker and hopper shots. Tuck you arm under your marker and your legs behind the bunker. You should only show half of your goggles part of your marker and maybe some of your upper body. This is giving the opponent as little target to shoot as possible thus making you harder to hit. You can also practice shooting left handed when going out the left side of a bunker and right when going out the right so less of your body is visible. You don't need to look with both eyes just one will do fine. Now when you are going to snap shoot slowly lean out your body till you see the smallest bit of your apponent. Now fire one or two shots max. Keep doing this time after time slowly at the start then you can start to go quicker. Try to vary the times you come out to confuse your opponent. After you get used to were the target is you can pop out faster and fire a couple more times (depending on your rate of fire). After you have tried this with a target get a friend to be your target and practice on each other. You can tell each other what part of your body is the most visible and if they are leaning out too long. Try and stay as far in your bunker as possible. If you shoot your bunker because you are too close this is a common mistake even done by pros. People may laugh at you but don't let it hit you. Don't watch were your paint is flying or if you're hitting your opponent this just makes you visible for a longer amount of time. Keep playing if you get hit, this is just a drill you can tally up the marks after your done. Snap shooting is one of the most effective techniques used and will probably make you a better player. Some people may want to get drop forwards so you can get into your bunker tighter but others think it makes your profile bigger by dropping the tank down. Now you can bring this on the field and learn from your mistakes. And as a great rule of thumb don't play people worse than you. You want to play players better than you or at your skill level. If you keep playing newbies you will get used to how newbies play then up comes the tournament and all your skills are gone to waste. If you do have to play newbies play more than one, seriously that's just being mean to them and most of all yourself. Hope this works and helps make you a better player.