LordOfWar

XSV's Rich Telford, the unrivaled

by IQ Photography by Michael Neveux

The best players in the world kneel at the feet of

master of racking up the on-field body count.

In a castle of pain, on a pile of scars, Rich Telford sits on a throne of blood. Around him lie the bodies of countless adversaries who foolishly fathomed that they would be the ones who could overthrow his rule. Having been trained in the arts of Aggressive Tactics by members of the original Ironmen, he has carved a path of destruction over the world of competitive paintball for more than a decade. Now, on the eve of a new season, he comes to prepare the select few he has deemed worthy of ushering in a new era of paintball player.

64 April/May 2007

www.splatmagazine.com

www.splatmagazine.com

April/May 2007

65

LordOfWar
1. You're one of the rare few pros left on the circuit today who was lucky enough to be around to compete in the old professional 10-man woods-ball events of the 1990s with legends like Bob Long, Erik Felix and countless others. Did you have to completely revamp and update your own individual skills when the fast style of Sup Air themed fields were introduced, or do many of the old fundamentals still hold true?

LordOfWar

Rich Telford: Fear is not an option.

2. In the 2006 season, XSV proved to the world that more than just one team can become a force to be reckoned with. Were specific changes to your training/ practices responsible for your abilities to consistently keep every single team in the world at bay?
Not really. We have always been the hardestworking team in the industry. The team just finally came together. A lot of people dont understand that it takes awhile to build a really good team. It takes a few seasons of ups and downs before you have the confidence in the players around you to play the best that you can.

3. Being built like a football player and having a reputation as one of the physically largest guys on the field was generally accepted back in the day. With the majority of pros on the tour becoming physically smaller and smaller, do you approach paintball training differently in that you now focus more on weight training/nutrition for competitive play than you would have five years ago?
Well, five years ago you didnt have to do much of anything to compete. The thing is now that if you want to be the best you have to work hard, and the smaller and faster you are, the easier it is to play paintball. Most of the guys work out and try to eat right; a couple of the guys work really hard and eat perfectly.

Paintball is still 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical, so when you can learn to control mind over matter, it's all over. Plus, balancing a gun on your finger is a great ice-breaker at any party.

4. The rumor is that XSV takes physical fitness into account during your paintball training more than practically any other team. What is a typical XSV workout?
We are famous for our hell weeks. You come up to Modesto and play paintball all weekend, then you do two a days all week with Paul Mendoza our personal trainer. The
66 April/May 2007 www.splatmagazine.com

Special thanks to Hollywood Sports in Bellflower, California for their Arena field. www.hollywoodsports.com

Yeah Im old. I get it! No I didnt really change that much. Back in the day, the games were slower and the distances between the bunkers were a lot bigger, but the game was mostly the same. A lot of the stuff that we do now we did back then. There's just less sneaking around, which I was never very good at anyway.

www.splatmagazine.com

April/May 2007

67

LordOfWar
two days consist of 2-3 hours of cardio and weights with some track work and 2-3 hours of paintball drills in the afternoon. Then the weekend rolls around and you play lots of paintball again. Its a tough nine days. It's tough, but it tells you who has the heart and drive to be the best and who thought being pro was easy.

5. How important is the physicality of a player becoming in the sport and looking into the future, and what do you think the new standard of being fit will be in pro paintball?

Incline Dumbbell Press

Dumbbell Curl Sit-Ups Dumbbell Squat on Vibration Plate Paintball Drills/ Scrimmages

I think that its important but not the most important thing. Like I said before, the faster and smaller you are the easier it is, but that doesnt mean you can be big and slow and be a great player.

Hell Week

6. A few issues ago we featured Thomas Taylor in our Pro School section, and he said that when he first joined XSV, you would constantly pound him during the one-on-one sessions you and he would have. Matt Marshall has told us that in any one-on-one situation against anyone in the world, 90 percent of the time youll come out on top. What is your secret of such dominating heads-up play?

Those guys are just saying that because I owe them money. I think that gunfighting is huge so I try to be good at it. I do drills almost every week of the year to be a good gunfighter. When others are taking vacations or stay inside because its raining, I go out and get shot over and over again until I feel like I'm where I need to be. Also Im not going to be as fast as Thomas or as smart as Matt so if I want to compete, I have to focus on what Im good at.

XSV stepped up the bar for paintball physical fitness when they introduced Hell Week to their roster. Meant to assault the physicality and mental preparedness of the players, Hell Week consists of playing paintball for two days straight (Sat, Sun), then spending six hours a day during the week (Mon-Fri) working on cardio/fitness exercises in the morning and paintball drills in the afternoon. Finally, you push your body to the limit with two more full days of Paintball practice (Sat, Sun). After nine straight days of nonstop paintball endurance training, you'll know if becoming a pro player is something you really want to consider. Gone are the days of practicing once a month. Welcome to the future.

Do professional football players pack it up when it rains during practice? No, and neither should you. You will inevitably have to play a tournament in hazardous weather at some point in your career, so preparing will only be to your advantage during a real game.

Jump-Overs Cardio/Sprint Training

www.splatmagazine.com April/May 2007 69

68 April/May 2007

www.splatmagazine.com

Not all game plans are created equal. Instead of sticking to one strategy for each team, learn to adjust and tweak your plays according to what teams and players you're going up against for maximum effect.

Learn to lean with the upper half of your body when shooting out of a bunker, as opposed to over-extending your leg, which can lead to you being taken out.

Bad

Good

7. Teams like XSV and Dynasty have made a name for themselves through sheer field domination, mainly because all seven players they put on the field at any given time possess the ability to take down more than half of the opposing team, a quality that's rare to find in even just one or two players on any of the other pro squads. What qualities and fundamentals are staples of the XSV paintball training program, and are there any special abilities you guys work hard at developing to ensure that your entire squad is made of high-body-count players?
I think its important to have those highbody-count players but its also important to let those guy do their thing. If they try and make a move and it doesnt work out and you chew their ass out, they arent likely to make that move the next time they see it. So first you have to get the players that are capable of making those moves; then you have to foster that aggressive style of play both in practice and tournaments.

Bad
70 April/May 2007 www.splatmagazine.com

Good

LordOfWar

Back-to-Basics Accuracy Training:

Forget the fancy-schmancy training techniques of other so-called pros. Improving your accuracy is as easy as setting up a cone behind a bunker and shooting a year's worth of paint at it. There's no point in wasting your time with other hard drills if you can't hit what you're shooting at.

RIOT AD
8. Your individual ability to see and sense weakness in other teams' game plans and field positions has become hard to defend against. What do you look for during a game and what are some telltale signs that one side of a field is weaker than another that gives you the green light to push the hell out of it? 9. You also are known to be able to punish the best players when they get careless or make a sloppy play, thanks to your dead-on accuracy. What should our readers be looking for during a game that will allow them to pick up the easy elimination or even completely blow a side away thanks to amateur mistakes.

The biggest mistake that I see players Well, like everyone I look for a make is that they dont understand the couple of different things. I look game. What I mean by that is there for tendency. Do specific players is a time for offense and for defense. or teams play specific fields or Sometimes we are losing a game and scenarios certain ways? If its the player on the other end of the field Dynasty and there is a snake, doesnt know they are winning, so how do you keep Angel out of they dont drop the hammer. A minute it and who are they going to later we are back up on bodies. use to try and get Angel in the Sometimes we are winning and the snake? Against teams that have player on the other team doesnt a dominant player, where are they know that if we shoot him we are most likely to go and what will going to roll right through his team, they do? Against the Ironmen, so he gunfights three guys, gets shot where is Oliver going to go and and loses the game because he didnt what is he going to do? Can you know he should have been playing All the training in the world is shut him down and what do you offense. Assuming that all players are useless if your marker is chopping have to do to do it? These are the the same skill-wise, it really comes paint. That's why Rich uses only kind of things that you consider down to the decisions that they make the best from the likes of Planet when you make your game plan. and those decisions are often made Eclipse, Draxxus and Viewloader. Always play your game, always based on where in the game you are control the tempo of the game and do your homework. and how you should react to that.
72 April/May 2007 www.splatmagazine.com

LordOfWar
10. Speaking of dead-on accuracy, many of XSVs best, including Matt Marshall, are the best shooters in the game. What kind of training do you guys put yourself through purely on an accuracy level, and is being accurate still important in a time where everyone can shoot 10-plus balls a second? 13. For the old 10-man teams, scrimmaging other 10-man was really the only type of practice they were able to get in every month. Now with practically every tournament player having access to at least some sort of practice area, has scrimmaging other teams become less important when compared to having the ability to just focus on using drills to advance your techniques?

LordOfWar
15. What are some good XSV teambased drills?
A really good place to start is having a game plan and making everyone play according to the game plan. Sounds easy but you would be surprised. Back players play without guns, good for the communication. First team to the 50 wins.

1-on-1 "No Hide" Drill: Take your basic one-on-one snap-out

drill but add the extra element that no player is allowed to hide in a bunker, waiting out his opponent. Instead, they must be forced to come and firefight to try to regain control of the gunfight.

First off, Matt is very accurate, but like most of the West Coasters I think a lot of that comes from shooting a cocker back in the day. Dont get me wrong, Matt is a great shot now, but he was even more deadly when he was rocking the cocker. When kids e-mail me about what they can do to become a good player, I tell them to go get a cocker, man up and shoot those kids who are shooting 22 bps in the goggles with a cocker. Then when you get a fast gun you will be unstoppable.

16. What type of 2007 do you see XSV having?

I think drills help players, but games help teams. Both are important. You want to have the best players you can and have them be on the best teams they can be on. So we do drills that help hone individual skills and scrimmage against teams to work on teamwork.

We are going to have to start over again cuz our sponsor backed out on us. The guys that were only there for the money left but all the guys who started the team are still here, so we are going to pick up some young, talented players and take another run at it.

After your first major victory, all that hard work and suffering will seem like nothing compared to the feel of a win.

14. What are some great individual drills XSV does that you would like to recommend?

Run team drills where your back players aren't allowed to use their markers and instead must rely on communication and relaying information to their teammates to survive and win.

11. Looking at your overall training regimen and considering that XSV plays both Xball and 7-man formats, are you constantly having to relearn/forget skills and abilities that work well in one format but not the other, or do you find that the way you train allows you to stay on top of both worlds?
First of all, if you are good at paintball you are good. There are some skills that are better for one style or the other but if you are good in one you should be able to get good in the other. We do a lot of drills for Xball and we play a lot of paintball for 7-man. Those are probably the biggest differences.

Gunfighting, close. 15 feet one-on-one. No one hides. Running and shooting. Three-on-five, five have to push. Breakout drills.

Yeah, all the guys that started the team, my wife Gina and the sponsors that have stuck with the team. I would also like to thank all of the guys who throughout the years have helped me. Bob Long, Shane, Marty, Dave and Brian, Oliver, Yoshio, Matt Micah, Magued, Ron Kilbornre, Sam. The list is endless. Sorry If I missed you, I'll get you next time.

17. Anyone you would like to thank?

12. For the young player just getting into tournament paintball today who more than likely wont have the chance to turn pro for maybe another 4-5 years, what should he be focusing on during practice to help him prepare for what the new level of demands will be for pro paintball in the coming years?

Alex and his boys on Dynasty didn't become the most dominant team in paintball history by using rookie-level gear. When paired together with their Smart Parts Shocker, Halo loaders and JT playing gear, the skills and abilities of the boys go from pro level to world-class. You need to use the best to be the best.

The first thing they should do is practice all of the time. Dont take weekends off and dont not play because it's raining. Practice all of the time. The only time you shouldnt be practicing is when you are playing. And events. Any event: local, national; just learn how to win and at any level. Not get second or third, Win. Dont get a big head and dont be an jerk-off. Go to clinics and play against the best people you can find. You should lose 50 percent of all the games you play. If you are smashing, then find someone better to play against.
74 April/May 2007 www.splatmagazine.com