How Low Can You Go? w/ Grayson Goff

How To Increase Flexibility to Play the Snake

You know when you see people playing the snake laying on their stomach with their legs fully extended behind them? Ya, those people are usually not the first snake guy and that’s for a reason. They are too big or not flexible enough to get in tight on their knees. When you can play the snake on your knees and able to get your upper body low enough to hide your pack you have the best advantage. You are mobile to snap shoot and ready to move to the next spot in a split second. Sure can’t snap shoot on your stomach and its going to add a few extra seconds to get up and make a bump.

Here are the examples of being on your stomach vs on your knees.

How can you improve your flexibility?

Improving your flexibility in a few specific areas can drastically improve your play in the snake.

• Quads
• Hips
• Lower back

The quad is the major muscle that will prevent your heal from touching your butt. The hips have to be able to bend and open up so that you can bring your knee to your chest. The lower back must be able to lay flat or even hunch over as you are down in the snake on your knees.

Stretches For Snake Flexibility

Here are three easy at home stretching that will help you improve your flexibility for the snake.

Perform these every day. Hold each position for 15-20 seconds.

Quad Stretch

Hip 

Lower back

Note from Grayson:

The snake bunker is by far, the most important bunker on a paintball field. Most of the kills come from it, most of the action is seen near it, and it’s one of the most important spots to play. In the new era of the RaceTo format, almost every player at one point in time can be forced to become a snake player. Specified roles no longer exist and you must be comfortable playing every single bunker on a paintball field.

I remember a point back in ’07 or ’08 at a World Cup at Disney’s Sports Complex. We were playing Strange on a heavily dominate snake side layout. I started the game as the #2 on the dorito side. We also took dorito corner who was suppose to be our attacker. He got stuck out in the corner engaged in a battle with his mirror so I came underneath him to the first dorito. This made me the dorito attacker now. After only being there a few moments, I heard the dreaded “Factor 3!” call. We had 3 bodies left, myself in dorito 1, our dorito corner player, and the snake corner player. Seeing the situation we found ourselves in, I knew how important the snake side was on this particular layout and knew I would only live for so long in any of the doritos if we just gave them the snake. One by one I progressed bunkers from dorito 1 all the way into the snake to slow them down and we ended up winning the game.

Moral of the story? No matter where you play, you need to be comfortable in every position. I started that game off as a support dorito player, soon became the dorito attacker, then ended up winning the game from the snake.