General Note for All Drills: The whole point of drills is to make you accurate and comfortable while performing an action, to get you to the point where the skill is learned and can be performed as a reflex. If you see a run-through opportunity, a snapshot, any paintball moment, and have to think about the skills you’re going to use, the window will close, or you’ll miss your shot, and you will lose. You shouldn’t have to think about the skill; it should come out of you at the speed of consciousness. That way you can focus solely on the run-though, on the shot, on the game situation, on putting paint on your opposition.
You can do these drills at the field or in your backyard or anywhere you can find space and people who won’t call the cops. If you have the luxury of a field, that’s great, but not having one is no excuse. Find somewhere. Be resourceful. Remember: Conditioning breeds confidence.

Another Drill: Take a teammate or friend and go head to head. Get in the two bunkers and go at it. What makes this a drill is you should be helping each other out. A lot of guys telegraph their moves, or their snapshot, before they do it. Maybe they lead with their hopper, or maybe it’s their elbow, or the tip of their goggles. It’s hard to know what your tell is without somebody there to go against you and see what it is. Grind left-handed and right-handed, until you few comfortable with both hands.

Running and Shooting
It’s the new rock ‘n’ roll. It’s everywhere, it’s here to stay, and you can’t overstate its importance. The new guns make this skill easier to acquire, because it’s easy to shoot fast. The new guns make you into a walking bunker. You have to think like that, like your gun is a walking bunker. The best players are the ones who have running and shooting down to the point where they shoot every time they run to a bunker. A few guys can run and shoot while going to the 50-yard line at full speed. Think of running and shooting like dribbling; you can’t move in basketball unless you’re dribbling the ball. You shouldn’t move in paintball unless your gun is up and firing.

Think of it this way. Most people, if they’re getting shot in the face, will tuck back in the bunker, ‘cuz they don’t want to die. So even if you’re out in the open and you’re shooting accurately back at them, they won’t be able to shoot back at you without getting shot themselves. If you do this, you can make moves on the field much easier than if you weren’t using your gun to cover yourself. These are two drills that will help you most with improving your running and shooting.

Another Drill: This drill simulates the breakout of the game, when running and shooting can have the greatest impact on the number of players you start off with or against. Teams that shoot people off the break have a greater chance of winning. It’s best done with eight players, but can be done with as few as two. Have four people go to each starting station. Two will be running out to the corners and two will be staying in the starting station. The two in the starting station will be shooting at the opposing players running to corners, and the players running to the corners will be shooting back at the guys shooting at them from the center. Two running, two staying, everybody shooting. You can switch up players and positions for variety.

drill: Set up boxes on the field behind bunkers. Run down the field, switching hands and shooting the boxes. Go slowly at first and work on your form. In the beginning of your training, form is more important than speed. Speed will come with mastery of the form. This is the most widely used drill in paintball, and is essential for your running and shooting development. This drill is our sport’s version of taking jump shots or fielding fly balls or tackling. It will help you perfect the form so it’s second nature, instinctive knowledge. Practice all of this until it’s second nature and you will be well on your way to a championship career.
Another thing to remember is that we as paintballers don’t play/practice nearly enough. Professional athletes train almost every day at their given sport, particularly when they do weight training and such. Practicing twice a week on your own and once a month as a full team is NOT going to cut it. If you want to be an Ultimate Paintballer, it’s time you started practicing like one. Get your butt out there as often as possible, and work on drills, scrimmage, even set up some boxes in your backyard and shoot the new Reballs at them, just as long as you’re working on paintball skills.Get to it. You’ve got a lot of work to do.