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Tom

Tom
Nov 27, 2006
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I see numerous mentions of people "training" at Bricketwood or elsewhere... What does a paintball training session look like nowadays?
I'm no expert, but I've seen a few versions of 'training'

Open training, which has consisted of as many teams/people who turn up and try for field time. Most of what I have seen of this is just random skirmishing, which could be just random games (which i don't consider to be training, but is experience) along with getting time on field on the latest layout
Some of this has included people doing a little more structure - practicing specific drills or moves on parts of the field

'Closed' training on a booked field, with exclusive use or a limited number of teams. With this I have seen some skirmishing, but mainly seen some form of plan in use going through drills, certain bunkers and skills training

Then of the more determined people I've seen, they are out on a field as often as they can, even if they are alone just practicing skills
 

Robbo

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I'm no expert, but I've seen a few versions of 'training'

Open training, which has consisted of as many teams/people who turn up and try for field time. Most of what I have seen of this is just random skirmishing, which could be just random games (which i don't consider to be training, but is experience) along with getting time on field on the latest layout
Some of this has included people doing a little more structure - practicing specific drills or moves on parts of the field

'Closed' training on a booked field, with exclusive use or a limited number of teams. With this I have seen some skirmishing, but mainly seen some form of plan in use going through drills, certain bunkers and skills training

Then of the more determined people I've seen, they are out on a field as often as they can, even if they are alone just practicing skills
Tom, you'd think that if a team is prepared to spend money and train then it's implicit they want to improve.
But if training is just an excuse to play paintball because there's no event to attend then as far as I'm concerned, that's not training at all. It's just playing ......
 
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Dusty

Don't run, you'll only die tired....
May 19, 2004
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Playing games has its place, as long as it's for a reason as Robbo has already said.

If you're practicing set pieces in the morning then the aim of the game should be to focus on making those set pieces apply. If you're practicing breakouts, one teams focus should be to shoot as many off the break as they can, the other should be to keep as many alive off the break as possible.

Drills MUST have a point and be applicable otherwise it's just shooting balls.

one thing which always pissed me off was people shooting a hoppers worth of balls into a hedge or a post or a bunker or over the chrono. I've finished games using less paint than that.
 
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Jon S

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Sep 22, 2003
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Re: "training" I wonder what extent of pre-releasing the layouts has had in that. From what I've seen* it makes teams prioritise "learning" the field rather than working on fundamentals.

* as an on and off again player, so admittedly thats a limited viewpoint
 

Stan

Platinum Member
Jul 18, 2001
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How much training is done without paint?
How much training is done mid week without any paintball kit on?

In my post last night i suggested that it would be very easy for a current team to start beating teams of a similar level and move up a division or league or whatever the format is as most people don't actually train... I just don't think paintball is setup in the UK to promote that. There isn't a big enough player base to really get enough motivated people in one small area together to make a difference. Robbo - with Nexus you had guys travelling half the country every weekend to practise and presumably that's similar with the teams at Bricket Wood. That's a killer. Both in terms of time, money and motivation and is not sustainable.

Here's a vision of how one person could make an impact:
- choose a university
- setup a student union paintball club with two tiers of membership - social and competitive. Get as many social members as possible and organise one paintball trip a year. Charge them whatever membership you want and then take that off the price of the paintball trip so they feel like they're getting a discount. Use a local site and bring them inside what you're trying to do and get a discount for bringing a large number to the site and promise to do the same the next year. Use the money generated by the discount to fund the team a little bit (eg-if you take 100 punters and get the site to knowck a fiver off the entry fee, put that £500 towards the team.)
- in freshers week hold trials for the competitive paintball team and have promotional flyers and a social media campaign showing the big US tournaments like Huntington Beach, etc. Have a calendar with the competitions that you will be attending the following summer. Have an example training programme drawn up.
- aggressively go after the demographic that you want and try and poach people from athletics, football, combat sports... ignore the bulk of the rugby players, swimmers, tennis players, etc
- format the trials along the physical demands of paintball - short sprints, core/trunk strength tests, etc
- apply to the Student's union for a budget in line with the number of social members that you have and buy a load of reballs and 2006 Ego's and some cheap air systems and goggles, hoppers, etc. Normally, the bigger the club, the more money you can ask from the SU.
- use the engineering department to supply the compressed air and fix stuff when it breaks
- use the multitude of sports facilities available on most university campuses - indoor training in a sportshall, outdoor training on a rugby pitch
- use the sports analyst who's sick of coding hockey videos to come up with some analysis of the stuff Robbo listed earlier in this thread
- drill and train from September to February:
Monday AM 60' run, PM 90' drills
Tuesday AM weights, PM 90' drills
Wednesday AM 60' circuit training, PM 3hrs drills and mock games with at least a half hour break in the middle somewhere
Thursday AM weights, PM off
Friday AM off, PM off
Saturday AM 2x90' drills and mock games (start 0800-0930 then hour break, then 1030-1200) PM off
Sunday (every third sunday off) AM 2x90' drills and mock games as per Saturday

- enter a tournament or two in the summer.

Repeat for a year or two...
Most university students stay at the uni for 3-5 years. They live together, they study together, there are loads of facilities to use and funding to access. If you're using reballs and free air and the Student's Union stump up the cash for the basic kit your average poor student isn't going to struggle to train and can save up for £60 or whatever a tournament costs nowadays getting a bar job in the evenings to help pay the way.

Within three years you have a bulk of players who have gone through the same system and as i said above, live, train and play together. A high proportion of uni students continue to live near their university after graduation and could do their own personal training in the week and practice on weekend mornings with the rest of the group... or step up into a more leading role, coaching, assisting, recruiting other players, etc.

(Now i'll sit back and wait to get shot down in flames!)
 
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Robbo

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Stan - I hope nobody shoots you down in flames because it's obvious you've thought about your answer.
You are right in stating the original Nexus guys did come from all over the UK and all of them incurred significant expense and trouble to make training twice a month .... you suggest it's not sustainable, well, that's as maybe but I think it depends upon the mindset of the players you have in your squad.
Not everything was prepared on a silver platter for the original Nexus guys; yes, we were heavily supported but without the player's dedication and commitment, the money meant nothing .... absolutely nothing !!

However, you've suggested your player-base should come from a demographic that's not particularly recognised as being well-funded; undergrads are not known for having too much money to splash around especially for something like paintball.

You've listed a lot of details in an attempt to qualify/justify your idea but the bottom line is, I don't think you'd have the right mindset/financial disposition if you populated your team exclusively full of undergraduates.

I'm sure you might be able to discover the odd undergrad who would be up for it but we'd need players/individuals who were committed and dedicated enough to see it through.

You made some good points though but in my opinion they were predicated upon the wrong demographic.
 

Stan

Platinum Member
Jul 18, 2001
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The guys you had and the work you put in were far more important in achieving the level and success Nexus reached than any cash or equipment or external help. What did the guys do between those two weekends of training a month?

The model above is one that has worked in sport although i appreciate it is a long way away from paintball and the historical demographic.

I'm thinking back to your original question, "can a team make it by training for a year" - a model like this has more of a chance of working than a bunch of mates who already play who work 9-5 jobs, some have a mortgage, some rely on heir parents, some live 200miles from the others, etc, etc who are going to train together two weekends a month. If an action requires somewhere in the region of 10,000 quality repetitions to become 'automatic', the quality of practice has to be high and the exposure to that practice has to be frequent. Training 4 days out of 30 should actually have had minimal impact in the grand scheme of human performance so what Nexus achieved is even more impressive.
 

Robbo

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How did you go about picking the nexus guys then robbo? Is a recollection about something to do with England x ball right or way off haha?
The original reason for selecting the players was because of the Inaugural International X-Ball event in Pittsburgh - I held trials up and down the UK and I had been told about some of the players who people thought might be good enough but I ended up selecting most of them within about 30 seconds of seeing them play.
This may sound ridiculous but there is a certain style that's immediately recognisable when good players play - the way they run, the way they slide in, the way they hold their gun and the way they shoot.
I already had Ledzy, Jack Wood nailed on along with Mark Toye and Nicky Truter because I had played against them for a few years and knew their ability.
I just had to pick the remainder and it was one of the easiest things to do - if you look at Justin Wheeler or any great player, there is a commonality of style - watch them, let their style of play burn itself into your head and then you'll see what I mean.

Some people said that you can't pick players after only watching them for 30 secs but they were talking out their ass because my players proved them wrong by breaking into the world's top ten in their first year.
People who have no idea what they are fuhking talking about, talk - It's a team's results that does the walking - And those original Nexus guys walked all the way across the Atlantic, they played, they competed and then claimed their rightful position in the top ten.
 
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Robbo

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The guys you had and the work you put in were far more important in achieving the level and success Nexus reached than any cash or equipment or external help. What did the guys do between those two weekends of training a month?

The model above is one that has worked in sport although i appreciate it is a long way away from paintball and the historical demographic.

I'm thinking back to your original question, "can a team make it by training for a year" - a model like this has more of a chance of working than a bunch of mates who already play who work 9-5 jobs, some have a mortgage, some rely on heir parents, some live 200miles from the others, etc, etc who are going to train together two weekends a month. If an action requires somewhere in the region of 10,000 quality repetitions to become 'automatic', the quality of practice has to be high and the exposure to that practice has to be frequent. Training 4 days out of 30 should actually have had minimal impact in the grand scheme of human performance so what Nexus achieved is even more impressive.
@Stan - With no disrespect intended whatsoever - One of the many aspects of paintball that gets in the way of a team/player's progress is BS .. I've mentioned this before when people who think they know about paintball indulge themselves and the people listening to it have no real way of knowing its BS - if it sounds good, it must be good is the current way of deciding ....
And one of these nuggets is the idea that muscle memory needs 10,000 repetitions [or whatever number people wish to plug in] to engrain it into your technical portfolio.
I think it's because people tend to accept what sounds ok because it's much easier to do rather than question it and then have to do the necessary research.

You give me a player on Saturday morning and by end of Sunday he's be able to execute the snap-shot to the required standard ... And if what I say is true then the real number isn't 10,000, it's around 100 plus or minus 25 ...

However, that 100 practice actions need to be set up correctly such that each action is separate from the one before. If you do this then it prevents players from mindlessly repeating the required action one after another like a metronome on cocaine.
You optimise [steepen] your learning curve by ensuring players don't just do it mechanically - each practice action has to be done individually.

And IMHO, there's no such thing as 'muscle memory' in the way it's portrayed by some people ... it's true to say that after 10,000 repetitions your muscle-set would have gotten used to performing the same action but that action is wholly controlled by a bunch of neurons extending from the brain/mind down through the spinal cord ... the muscles cannot move in a controlled fashion unless the mind is doing the controlling.
It's not muscle memory at all that underwrites improvement, it's the brain/mind memory of someone who's been prepared to listen and do what's asked of him/her.

Think about this - the way that language is processed and executed is an extremely complex set of neuronal actions because it recruits multiple areas of the brain that all need to be executed perfectly if the words are to come out correctly ... the sheer complexity of muscle control of the vocal chords, mouth and tongue is mind-boggling when you think about how easily we all do it.

Now, if I ask you to learn a phrase in French with the appropriate pronunciation [accent] then how many times do you think it would take before you did a reasonable job in mastering that phrase?
It would take no more than 20 minutes if you concentrate ...it may not be perfect but it will be good enough for a French person to understand
And so, when you compare that with trying to master a snap-shot - the snap-shot involves nowhere near the complexity of neuronal action required to talk like a frog.
This means, if you wish to improve then it's not as hard as some people think if you know what you are doing and you have players with the right mindset.