Cold Weather Water Warfare Training

[isoaker]

Anyone here do any sort of water warfare training during colder weather/off-season months? Doing general exercise is ok to mention, but I'm curious if anyone actually does any training exercises involving their blasters in some way (i.e. weight training with loaded water blasters, indoor/outdoor target practice, or even limited battling). If you do, share your thoughts and experiences doing cold weather training to offer ideas to help others train during the fall/winter months.

Soak on!

[SEAL]

Well, I go to the gym 3 times a week, but as far as actual battle training goes, I don't really do anything in the winter.

I do have snowball fights however. That actually may help with running and dodging, because wearing all that heavy winter stuff could sort of simulate running and jumping with a loaded water gun. It is definitely good training for baseball.

[HBWW]

Does indoor Nerfing count? Heh.

[isoaker]

Does indoor Nerfing count? Heh.

Of course!

[martianshark]

I was planning on doing nerf training this winter, but that's for nerf, not water warfare.

[HBWW]

Well, indoor Nerf wars are pretty tame compared to outdoor water wars. It mostly becomes cover usage, timing rushes, and using shields. Its more fun than a "large scale combat game" if you will, and since I don't have enough modded Nerf blasters to have proper outdoor wars, I'm mostly constrained to indoors. (Outdoors there's not enough cover for low range stock blasters and nowhere I can play that does.) I don't think of it as training because not a lot of physical movement is needed in the cramped CQB we play in. Training for me would be practicing sprinting, evading, and running while carrying heavy backpacks to classes. (I live at home; much nicer than those dorms, though that also means you can't organize water/nerf wars with them.)

[SEAL]

I never really liked Nerf that much, mostly because you're always running around picking up ammo, and when you shoot at someone, you're basically just giving them free ammo (That is, if your darts are compatible with your opponent's gun.). Also, if your gun uses a certain type of dart that no one else has, when you unload your entire mag at your opponent, you're probably screwed unless you have a back-up gun, or if you use those foam N-Force swords in your battles.

My brothers like Nerf guns though, so we have quite a collection. We don't really battle with them much though, mostly because we don't really have any good places to fight. If we had some kind of arena or something, I could really get into it.

But for now, I only have snowball wars.

[HBWW]

You can easily buy refill darts and replacement mags though. (Clips are a different story, I haven't seen them sell any clips for the Magstrike.) And of course, you can put in rules about picking up ammo if thats a problem, but the real problem is that its so difficult to hit anyone from any reasonable range if they're behind cover. With 4 or 6 people, one can easily have an indoor Nerf war.

As for snowball fights, I haven't had one for quite a while. People generally don't seem to like the cold and I myself am very suceptible to them.

[isoaker]

While it's definitely gotten a lot colder where I am, oddly these days I've found myself wanting to pull out some blasters and making use of them, even if only indoors in confined areas able to get wet (typically the bathtub ).

Granted, while space is limited, I can still set up some fun little target practice games and get a feel on how particular blasters behave. For target practice, I stick up small pieces of paper (sometimes drawn on or not) onto the bathtub/shower wall, then stand as far away as possible and practice blasting 'em with short, controlled bursts.

This training also lets me test how straight a particular blaster's stream is and gives me a better, natural understanding of how much effort it takes to repump up a blaster to good firing strength.

As snow comes, I do hope to take a blaster or two outside for some fun winter water warfare pic taking!

[martianshark]

I feel the same way... I'm suddenly way into water warfare again and have been fixing, modifying, building, and shooting water warfare stuff.

[GJIV]

Haha, let the water warfare never end

I am also modifying, repairing and firing water guns, althoug we have -9 degrees today...

Already mentioned on SSC, I installed a big ball valve at the vanquisher, to power 20 X:: streams or even more

Here are pics :






I need a new nozzle selector(with real X:: ... )

The PC is also K-modded, and it holds an incredible ammount of 1,7 litre ??? I have removed kind of a net inside, which stops the bladder from expanding too much but the bladder was only able to hold about 500 ml, so I just removed it, and now the bladder fills the whole space of the PC(front reservoir). I was scared that the bladder may explode but it works well without problems

The gun is finished soon, I have to change the trigger mechanism and other stuff, but then I have built a crazy gun, well balanced as the CPS 1500 but with a tracked pump, and a nearly twice as big PC as it

Ooo, I love water guns ! isoaker_com, once I will get to the USA and then I soak you with this new blaster ;D The day will come, I just do not know when...

[DX]

Outdoor Nerf is very good off-season training if you can find venues and players. I typically go to 3-6 cold weather Nerf wars in the winter, sometimes in a bit of snow. The skill set is not exactly the same, but similar enough that you get useful experience, such as dodging. When you come back to a water war after nerfing for a while, it may be virtually impossible for an opponent to hit you with a stream of water. That's what I found during the twilight of my water warfare career...getting hit once was really embarrassing. It was possible to go 4 or more wars without being hit because you get so used to the split-second speed of powerful Nerf guns. In that regard, nerfing is one of the best activities you can do to improve physical skills. That and running. Much of my old team was composed of track athletes for our speed and agility. We were racking up serious mileage in the places we fought...10-24 miles in a single 3 hour war.

It is also quite possible to fight water wars in colder weather if everyone is fine with it. My old team once had a skirmish in December. The actual season does not matter, only one's willingness to do battle.

[GJIV]

That is right The only one who stops you from water battles in winter is yourself...

[martianshark]

I while back in November or something, it was getting cold, and then it was suddenly 110 degrees! I should have had a water fight...

[GJIV]

I just went out yesterday and soaked my Neighbour from Distance with a CPS 2000 We had -5 degrees Celsius, I hope he is not getting a cold...

[scottthewaterwarrior]

I think the water freezing in your guns pressiure tank might stop a water war in winter, if it doesn't freeze in the hose first. I normaly spend my winters planing wars, not actuly having them, I might be willing but my friends shure arn't, if it drops below 80 they don't wana fight. I do do a little nerfing during the winter as training though, mostly indor 1 on 1s, I don't mind the cold but I have enough troble finding the darts again in my house.

[DX]

Water can't freeze during a war, even if it is very cold out. The motion of it sloshing around in the reservoirs and PCs prevents any freezing. It's why the inflow/outflow areas of a lake may be open water even if the rest is iced - the energy of moving water won't allow it to freeze. 80 is way too warm for a cutoff, 50 is still game for a war, 50 right now would be unbelievably warm here, considering the wind chill last night reached 1 degree. There is actually an upper limit where I'd be hesitant to fight a water war...around 90 and up it gets dangerous. If you're running more than 10 miles in that heat with a heavy gun full of water and a backpack, in humidity, it's risky for your health. I had a high heat war where I had to retreat for 1.5 miles and it felt like I was going to pass out for a few minutes at the end of that, my head was totally on fire. I ended up shooting myself several times and that didn't help because even the water had gone hot.

[HBWW]

I've had a war at about 89-91 once. Our field is fairly small, though the heat caused pressure buildup in one of my hoses which broke part of my VHS. Some of those who attended got sunburns too.

70° is the official cutoff for me. (Though down to 65° may be negotiable.) There's too much to worry about both personally and with others when people get completely drenched in colder conditions. And yes, this 70° cutoff is coming from someone who lives in Michigan.

[scottthewaterwarrior]

80* is the cut off for most of my friends not me, though a few will do it down to 70*. I agree with C-A_99, 70* is the cutoff for me too, I find it to cold below that and either way there isn't any one willing to fight if it is colder anyway. I sometimes do some training when it's below 70* like that one where you load up your gear and run between targets wile pumping your gun. I might do some of that today, it’s 50* out right now. A few days ago I had a small 1 on 1 Nerf battle, Nerf might help train my reflexes a little but I really just use it as a pathetic excuse for a replacement of Water Warfare during the cold months, don’t like Nerf any where near as much. On really hot days I usably do not have battles were you try to not get hit, my friends and I just blast each other, it's the only way to stay cool. Some times it is fun to set up a sprinkler in the middle of the battle field too, on a hot day the battle normally doesn't go beyond its range.