Running & Gunning: a Guide for Beginners

Can you hit a traffic cone from across the field?

Probably.

Can you hit a traffic cone from across the field while running perpendicular to your shot?

As DBS Kidz, this is something that we practice extensively. It allows us to be effective as killers when many players would not expect us to be. We can take the shots that our opposition never thought plausible. Running and shooting is a difficult art to master though, but I’ll do my best to start you out with the basics from the top down.

      First, take a look at how your tank is mounted on your gun. Do you have a drop forward on your gun? For the vast, vast, majority of paintball guns, this is not only unnecessary, but it also hurts your ability to play. Your gun should be far out in front of you and your arms shouldn’t be much less than 90 degrees when holding it. Most players on the DBS Kidz actually use just a drop down rail underneath their Luxes. This makes moving with our weapons much easier.

   Take a look at your gun and shoulder it. The way your eyes and the barrel lines up is very important. While paintball markers don’t actually have sights, we unconsciously use the barrel as a sight. Go ahead and test this, take your barrel off and try to aim at something and pay attention to your confidence in your accuracy. Put your barrel back on and shoulder your gun again, this time, take note of where your eyes are relative to the barrel. Ideally, you should have the barrel directly between both of your eyes or slightly below (an inch or so). With your eyes in this position, it should be very easy to see where your shots will land because you don’t have to do any of the guesswork that is caused by having your barrel away from your eyes.

     Now, when you shoulder your marker, the tank should be firm against your shoulder. Not on top! When I say firm though, I mean fiiiirm. I see too many players who are not holding onto there guns tight enough. The result is that it goes all over the place when they run & gun. With your tank firmly in the pocket of your shoulder, your upper body should be one unit from the pecks up. Your head, gun, arms, neck, shoulders and chest should move as a single piece.

     Now that your upper body has become a machine gun platform ready to target and shoot anything in front of it, you are ready to start moving this platform. The key to good running and gunning is to keep your upper body as stable as possible. A good exercise to do is to imagine yourself running with a cup of water held to your chest, how would you run so that the water didn’t spill out? The key is to shorten your stride so that you spend less time in the air and to never lock your legs. This allows your legs to always support your body and keep it from rising or falling. Another hint to help you find the right form, is to run lower than you would otherwise be running. This is more difficult but it is not like we are running marathons in paintball anyways.

      This is probably the hardest part of running and gunning. You don’t actually shoot at the thing you are shooting at. Why? Because you are running, and the velocity of your running is added to the paintball’s. In most cases, the velocity of your running will not be in the same direction as the paintball’s so you have to compensate. For the most part, this means shooting behind your target if it is stationary. The amount that you have to shoot behind your target is complicated though and you just have to get a feel for it. Off break though, this compensation can be as much as 20 or 25 feet behind your target if you are a fast runner.

The best way to get better at running and gunning is obviously a lot of practice. I would encourage you to get to your local field and practice as soon as you can. Especially in D5, D4, D3, this skill can easily be the difference between taking 1^st and not making the podium.