Teamwork ???? Yeah right !!!....

[Dr Fingers]

It does sound a tad pretentious to me I must say but I doubt Rich made it up, I think he maybe believing it's more profound than it actually is but I'm gonna have a nose around and make sure it's not another one of those ready-made Americanisms that promises to answer everything.

Pretentious moi?! You try to raise the level of debate and get an accusation like that you wonder why psychologists don't work with paintballers

This is basic team cohesion sport psych that is taught to BTEC National Diploma students in the UK. To get a full explanation of Bruce Tuckman's (1965) theory of group development take a look at Weinberg & Gould's "Foundations of Sport & Exercise Psychology"

 

[Robbo]

Pretentious moi?! You try to raise the level of debate and get an accusation like that you wonder why psychologists don't work with paintballers

This is basic team cohesion sport psych that is taught to BTEC National Diploma students in the UK. To get a full explanation of Bruce Tuckman's (1965) theory of group development take a look at Weinberg & Gould's "Foundations of Sport & Exercise Psychology"

Noooooooo, I did not mean to describe you as pretentious Rich, I meant the teachings of yet another American ready-made philosophy.
As soon as I have read enough text to have an informed opinion then I'll come back to ya to either agree or disagree with your conclusions on its applicability to paintball.

 

[jitsuwarrior]

Robbo to me team work is emotional as well as the way you act. If a team becomes passionate through their actions they will on the whole raise their situational awareness. There are several factors that builds teamwork, training, pain, humility, pride are just some of them. No matter what sport or business they are all the same, it is down to the individuals on how they embrace them will show the results or fruits of their labour. Alex ferguson has Sussed how to do this, so did you, Markie seems to be doing well with it with the firm.

 

[Tony Harrison]

Going out on a limb here, but I believe that a single player can make or break a team.

Again, let's use the Dynasty example. Between HB 2003 & WC 2005, they dominated. They had more or less the same roster in that period.

After WC 2005, Oliver Lang leaves & rejoins the Ironmen, and they begin their rise back to the top. Dynasty the goes through a difficult period between 2006 & 2011, changing their roster, flying in players, still contending but not dominating as they did. This is not a bad thing, as in that period other teams such as TBD rise to the top and show their consistency.

Fast forward to 2011 - Oliver rejoins Dynasty and they start to dominate again. Of course, they are now just using in-state players such as Dalton Vanderbyl, who is a killing machine.

It's think it's fair to say that Oliver is the motivation behind Dynasty and was the motivation behind the Ironmen.

However, I think now Oliver is being challenged for his "best player in the world" title by Justin Rabackoff.

 

[Tony Harrison]

Robbo to me team work is emotional as well as the way you act. If a team becomes passionate through their actions they will on the whole raise their situational awareness. There are several factors that builds teamwork, training, pain, humility, pride are just some of them. No matter what sport or business they are all the same, it is down to the individuals on how they embrace them will show the results or fruits of their labour. Alex ferguson has Sussed how to do this, so did you, Markie seems to be doing well with it with the firm.

Markie has rebuilt The Firm several times over. One of the best coaches in the UK ATM.

 

[Robbo]

Robbo to me team work is emotional as well as the way you act. If a team becomes passionate through their actions they will on the whole raise their situational awareness. There are several factors that builds teamwork, training, pain, humility, pride are just some of them. No matter what sport or business they are all the same, it is down to the individuals on how they embrace them will show the results or fruits of their labour. Alex ferguson has Sussed how to do this, so did you, Markie seems to be doing well with it with the firm.

I think your post examples why we should try and keep our understanding of teamwork as limited as is possible.
If we start to introduce 'emotions' into the equation then we might as well fire off a loader-full up our ass because we won't be able to reach any meaningful conclusions though I fear, I'm gonna have to deal with emotions somewhere down the line on this one.
For the moment though, can we limit the meaning of teamwork to physical acts upon the field of play please?

 

[Mark Toye-Nexus]

It does sound a tad pretentious to me I must say but I doubt Rich made it up, I think he maybe believing it's more profound than it actually is but I'm gonna have a nose around and make sure it's not another one of those ready-made Americanisms that promises to answer everything.

It's used in describing the formation of teams and groups in business.

As for my thoughts on this - a team of individual players work together for a common goal using agreed plans or strategies. Their ability to apply and stick to these whether as an overall plan or certain scenarios within a game is a measure of their teamwork.

Hence the GB team last week had a common goal, brought together in an exciting and priviliged event and bought heavily into each other. They must have executed agreed plays and worked together as a team in that manner (by doing what they said they would when they said they would do it).

Without teamwork at that level, lanes aren't shot, certain guns not suppressed and certain moves not made directly off the back of (and relying completely on) the actions of others in the team.

They still had to have 'heart', passion and the basic technical skills which brought about the outcome of each dual on the field and consequently each game. But the 'working as a team' was already set into motion before stepping onto the field and each player was singing to that tune.

Any thoughts of just stepping onto the field and teamworking is a fallacy. Blaming failure on lack of teamwork (without having the basic framework for team play in place) is a nonsence - those teams would fail anyway and anyone that says 'we need more teamwork' are deluding themselves.

Or something....

 

[Return of the Silver Fox]

It's difficult to apply Tuckmans team building principles to paintball as paintball teams are generally based on skill, availability and cash. The time required to fully develop a team is massively underestimated and requires clear definition of part each person plays within the team. Most teams meet a couple of times a month and spend their time playing in the belief that this is improving their performance.
How many teams rotate players because they have turned up to play rather than place their best squad on the field?
How many players weaken their team by including Joe Soap who can only shoot right handed?
There is a certain brutality in building a team and few coaches/managers/captains/players have the bollox to make these difficult decisions and this is why being in a team is confused with being a team.

 

[Donk]

There definately is teamwork in paintball, granted there is not as much as say rugby or football but there is teamwork none the less.

A basic example would be when you want to move one of your guys to a key bunker so you communicate to your player when you have put their player in so the move is safe for them rather than putting them in them making the run yourself when they could snap out at you on the run...

There are lots of these type of things we train but as a relatively newly formed squad sometimes on the field you can see the individual in the player coming out when they don't make the play for a team mate but try it themselves and get pooned in the face...

Similarly if someone is on a mugging run on your team mate you can shoot them across field or you can shoot them across field and communicate what is happening and where to another player so two guns switch to them doubling the chance of hitting them before they reach your player

These are basic teamwork in my eyes no?

 

[Robbo]

Donk, I'm not for one second suggesting there is no teamwork in paintball, however, what I am saying is, you cannot train teamwork directly since it's an emergent property of other aspects of our sport.
The trick is, to understand this and to then train those aspects accordingly.