Off the break speed

bobsbarricades · July 28th, 2006, 02:40 PM

Hi all, I'm pretty new here, but I wanted to find out about your opinions on 'off the break' speed. Pure acceleration at the word 'go'

I am a tournament paintballer and I'm trying to work on my acceleration. I am pretty fast, but no matter how much I work on sprints.. my start speed seems sluggish by about 2-3 steps. What sort of exercises can I do to excellerate those first 3 steps?

**Goose102** · July 28th, 2006, 02:58 PM

I have a been a tournament paintball player for a couple of years. I know what your talking about. I used to be the same way. You want to know how i overcame the sluggishly slow start? PRACTICE! Everyone is not gonna make a pro-like start. The people on the otherside of the field are most likely just like you. You should just run some drills with your firends. Have them ref you. You don't have to be playing against anyone. Just have them do they countdown. Just try to have a strong start every time they say "GO GO GO!!!!!"

Pics of me in a tourny:

**bbabb22** · July 28th, 2006, 03:31 PM

hmm from a track runners point of view its probably running form and technique.

Start with short fast steps that gradually get longer. Also try to speed up you step. your feet should touch the ground then immedialty start your next step. its called turnover. hard to explain on the internet.

Work on quauts and deadlifts. those helped me with my starts for track.

bobsbarricades · July 29th, 2006, 12:52 AM

Thanks bbabb - those were two exercises that I would think would help. On form I will try working on the turnover as I've had it explained to me once before... long long before

but I think I remember the gist. I hadn't thought of working on that.

Goose - I do practice quite a bit and whenever I do cardio (every day now) I am constatnly working on paintball related drills. eg - I run more sprints than long distance because sprinting works the same muscle groups, I feel, as playing paintball.

might as well post up a pic of me too

this is when I was playing with the infidels at orlando open last year

beefjake · July 31st, 2006, 06:27 AM

Well if you've ran a lot your technique is propably ok. Adequate at least. After that your start is basically question of pover. Explosive pover.

bobsbarricades · August 2nd, 2006, 11:19 AM

does anybody know about the beep test?? I recently discovered that and I've found that that has helped a lot with my endurance, which I'm also working on. Does anybody know anything about a schedule to maximize the beep tesT?