Paintball Workout Training Routine

Every sport seems to have its own specific workout/excersise routine to help its athletes excel, every sport that is, but paintball.

There have been articles written before about what exercises are best for paintballers, but personally I believe they are all way off track.  The one point they manage to miss is that in paintball, no one exercise can ever be enough for a paintballer.  Paintballers run in every direction, they jump, dive, crawl, squat and lean.  The one thing however that separates paintball from other sports, is that we do all of this while holding a gun and shooting. 

So what kind of exercises can a paintballer do to help his/her game?
Sure speed and agility are important, but perhaps what is more important is stabilization and balance.  If you can't hit anything while you are moving because your body and gun is flailing everywhere then forget it.  People forget how often they use their core muscles.  In fact, there are few movements that do not use the core muscles, and when your core is stronger, those movements become more efficient, more stabilized and more accurate.  Now you have a paintballer that can run and hit what they are shooting at, a player that can keep his gun still while shooting prone, a player that overall performs at a higher level.

What Are The Core Muscles?
The core muscles consist of the trunk and pelvis muscles (back/abs/sides).  These are the muscles that are responsible for transferring energy to smaller muscle groups and for stabilization.  To get an idea of how essential these muscles are in paintball try this little exercise.  While holding your paintball gun pointing it straight ahead keep your arms lose and your elbows away from your side.  Have a friend push down on the top of your barrel, try your hardest to keep it pointed in the same position.  Next tuck in your elbows tight and use your back/abs to stabilize the gun as your friend pushes down on the barrel.  Notice a difference?  The core muscles together are much, much, MUCH stronger than the arms alone, and since your core muscles are the first muscles to stabilize the upper body as you move (not your arms) its important for a paintballer to exercise them regularly.

Core Muscle Exercises
There are plenty of exercise routines you can take on to exercise your core muscles.  Just google "core muscle exercises" to find the perfect routine for you.  If you have any questions you might want to give this article a quick overview, its where I got most of the information and goes much further in depth then I ever could.

What About Core Muscle Workout Machines?
I will say that with all of the possible workout machines you could get to target the core muscles and improve your balance and precision, one of the most interesting machines you could use to do this is the iJoy Core Muscle Balance Board trainer. One of the most important things to remember in building your core muscles is that no one exercise can target all of the muscles in your core, a combination that includes different motion/pitches and resistance is needed to really build them up, and one of the machines that can do this is the iJoy. This may be a pretty off the wall idea for a paintball training routine, but can you imagine getting on this balance board and handing the remote over to a friend while you shoot at targets? Now that would be fun practice, especially since you wouldn't know which way the balance board would move next... hah.