Fitness for Paintball<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Playing paintball<\/a> is great for your health. Running, jumping, climbing, crawling and getting your heart rate up and socialising are all solid benefits for you. Once you get serious about playing paintball, you’ll see how fitness plays a key role in how well you can play. If the opposing team turn up fitter, faster, stronger and more agile, they’ll have an advantage over you in the field, regardless of your skill level. I’ve put together a few tips on how you can maximise your fitness levels for competitive paintball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to the great physical-health benefits; paintball possesses some fantastic mental-health benefits. Not only thanks to the social aspect (proven to alleviate depression<\/a> in many people); the fear of getting shot in the backside (or worse, the neck), is a fantastic catylst for putting you into flow state<\/a>. Fear is fantastic for focus!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back to the physical aspects, and the strength and conditioning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A slow target is an easy target, and if you want to get successful at paintball you’ve to get quick. Sprinting is the key to building your speed<\/a> over short to medium distances, and that starts with technique. Once your technique is sorted out at low speed, start building your sprints. You can start off building over a four week period of high-intensity intervals<\/a> going from 10 metres to sixty metres, and adjust your training from there to keep maximising your fitness and speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tabata intervals are fantastic for most sports, and this includes paintball. Specificity is key, so if you can train sprints with your paintball gun, then do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2 Tabata intervals, twice a week, will be plenty to build speed and specific fitness. Use an app, or a youtube video as your timer<\/p>\n\n\n\nSpeed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nTabata intervals involve 20 second bursts of all-out work, followed by 10 seconds rest.
\nThis is repeated for 8 rounds, so that you do a total of 4 minutes work. It’s an absolute killer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n