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The Next Level: A Complete Training Guide to Help You be a Faster, Smarter, More Agile and Explosive Player

by Garrin Clark

100 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-2480; ISBN 1-4120-2001-8; US$16.99, C$22.00, EUR14.30, £9.91

A comprehensive guide to help improve your overall athleticism and elevate your paintball game. Geared to improve physical attributes key to success in competition paintball.

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About the book      About the author      Introduction      Catalogue info

About the Book The Next Level is the first training guide dedicated to the individual athlete in the sport of competition paintball. In the couse of the last ten years, competition paintball has gone from playing in the woods (running and crawling through the bushes while wearing camoflage) to being played in venues like the Toronto Skydome (running diving, sliding and hiding behind air filled, vinyl bunkers while wearing loud clothing spoecifically designed for paintball). The game itself is getting faster and more exciting every year. Due to the elevation in speed and aggresiveness in the game, there are greater physical demands being placed on the athletes. Competition paintball is no longer for the out of shape individual. The Next Level is a training guide to help increase the overall athleticism of the competition player. In the course of a game, players might have to: sprint repeatedly over short distances, power slide, dive, make very quick abrupt movements (dodging flying paintballs), hold awkward positions (for minutes at a time), and to be able to think and react rapidly. To address all of the physical and mental demands of the game, The Next Level, with the use of clear diagrams and detailed descriptions, shows athletes how to increase their abilities in the following: flexibility, explosiveness, running speed, reaction speed, hand and eye coordination, agility, and game related vision. All of the exercises and techniques have been specifically selected, for the physical and mental demands of competition paintball. Last but definitely not least, the athletes aspire to the perfect performance, also known as, "performing in the zone." The Next Level addresses the state of being, "in the zone," and theories on how to acheive it.

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About the Author

Garrin Clark is a professional paintball player on the team, Brimstone Smoke. Garrin, along with Smoke were the 5 man Amateur World Champions in 2002. The same year they won the largest cash payout in the history of competition paintball in a single event, $50,000, at the Draxxus International Open. In 2003, Smoke moved up to the 10 man Pro/Am Division where they won the Chicago Open and took third at World Cup in Orlando, Florida. Brimstone Smoke finished up the season ranking fourth in the world. What is so amazing about those feats, is that the team was assembled in 2001.

Garrin has been playing competition paintball for about 8 years and has been an athelete all of his life. Although he has been invovled in many sports, his background in Track & Field has been the strongest. He was an all state sprinter and held three different high school records. At the age of 35, Garrin still can run the 40-yard dash in less than 4.3 seconds. When he is not competing with Smoke, Garrin enjoys competing with the Champion, Ford Motor Company Track Club.

Garrin's vast knowledge of sport performance and athletics also comes from his experience as a fitness consultant and personal trainer.

Presently, Garrin is one of the founders and creative minds behind Endcode Media Group and Decode Magazine. These organizations are mainstream media groups dedicated in covering the world of entertainment. With his passion for the sport of paintball, his ties to mainstream media, and his overall positive spirit, Garrin is one of the forces dedicated to making competition paintball, a household known sport.

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Introduction

The sport of competition paintball is like no other. There are many skills you need to have to be a player of world class caliber. 1) You need to be quick, able to make fast explosive sprints from bunker to bunker. 2) You need to be agile in order to: jump, dive and slide into or over bunkers. 3) You need to be flexible. Once you are in your bunker there may be many times you find yourself in contorted positions, whether trying not to get eliminated, or when posting (keeping your marker pointed at a specific opponent or bunker) on someone. 4) You need to have quick reflexes and be able to think quickly. In the course of a game, you're dodging paintballs, and/ or reacting to a constantly changing situation. 5) You need to have great hand-eye coordination. You could be the best athlete physically in the world, but if you can't shoot what you're aiming at then you shouldn't be playing competition paintball.

There have been great changes to the game in the last eight years. I am not specifically talking about the obvious: playing in the woods, crawling around in swamps, to now playing in venues like the Toronto Skydome behind blow up air bunkers. I am talking about the speed of the game and the people playing it. Back in the day, 10 man in the woods had a 25 to 30 minute time limit. The game itself was slower, sniper style tactics were commonly incorporated into the format, and 98% of the Individuals playing at the time were white males with the average age of 25 to 35. There were not a lot of true athletes, you really didn't have to be. It seemed like every team had two or three players that were over 250 pounds. Now, every nationality you can think of is being represented in competition paintball. There are female players blowin the heads off of some of their male counter parts and the average age now is 18 to 25. The players of today are younger, faster, and more agile. I still see some of the same faces around from eight years ago competing today. If they didn't adapt to the new school of playing then they are being out ran, out gunned and just simply out played. Within the last year the game has turned up another notch. When you hear about pro teams like Baltimore Trauma hiring a personal trainer and see Team Strange doing group warm ups and stretching, you know the game is changing. It's not a surprise that both of those squads are world champions.

There are new formats which are more spectator friendly, more exciting because you get to see two teams go at it for over an hour (like in X-ball), lots of scoring, bunkering (eliminating an opponent at point blank range) and just flat out more action. There are penalty boxes, half times and some events even have cheerleaders. The game is changing, and it has to if we want the ultimate platform... television coverage. I've been playing competition paintball for about eight years and have been an athlete since I can remember. When I first started playing, it was strictly recreational. After a year, some friends and I started a team and entered a tournament, "and that was all she wrote!" Even though we didn't place, we beat half the teams we played. Beating those teams wasn't the most important thing that came out of that tournament, it was the thrill of competition. Like almost every paintball player I have met, the thrill to compete and win just sucked me right in. Watching the sport become more athletic over the years has furthered my motivation to get in tip top shape, so I decided to implement all of my training in Track & Field, Football and Basketball. Using the training techniques from these three different sports helped to make me more physically prepared for competition paintball, but they didn't cover all of the bases. There is a lot of sliding involved in paintball, I had never played a sport in high school or college that required me to do that. After injuring my knee once sliding incorrectly, I decided to research the proper technique for sliding. I also started studying yoga for stretching techniques and for the stamina to hold awkward positions. I did all of this; 1) because Ilike being healthy and physically fit, and 2) because I wanted to have an edge while playing paintball. Paintball has so many different elements, there wasn't one book I could go and get that would help me train for this specific sport. If you go to any large bookstore, you can find books on training for football, basketball, hockey, bodybuilding, etc. I even saw a book for miniature golf, but no paintball. I have put together a personal training schedule with exercises that have physically and mentally made me a much sharper, faster, explosive and agile player.

Many that know me, know of my speed. When people approach me and ask what they can do to get faster, I never hesitate to share my knowledge. Because of the many questions I get from players on how to improve their performance, I saw a need for our own training book. The purpose of this book is a one-stop training guide for bettering your personal physical attributes for the sport of paintball. No matter if you are a front, mid or back player, a beginner, intermediate or advanced player you will be able to improve your game. You know, I only wish I had a book like this to use as a resource eight years ago.

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Catalogue Information

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