If you care to look at any other serious sport, training is an integral part of that sport, and I think it's a sad indictment of our game that a question like this can even be asked ... think about it !
How the hell can someone ask a question like this if we want to be taken as serious sportsmen?
It's just plain ludicrous.
I would like to make something clear however, I am not having a pop at Woody here at all, he is hostage to the same mode of thinking as a lot of people in our sport and therefore can't be wholly responsible for posing this question.
Of course we need to train if we want to get better, the fact that some dick-squad who don't train managed somehow to beat some pro team somewhere means nothing, it's an aberration, nothing more, and certainly not indicative of something deeper.
However, there are teams out there who just love to play and don't take it too seriously and I suppose they don't need to train at all if having fun is the reason for playing.
But tournament ball is by definition a competitive environment and as such, people will want to win.
As soon as you introduce that competitiveness into your team ethos, training then becomes an integral part of that team's development, it has to.
I will add a rider however, it's no good whatsoever if you ain't training the right way.
A lot of people think they understand our game and their notion of training is consequently skewed because they don't actually understand the underlying paintball dynamics.
Suffice to say, you must take the reductionist approach to training and then reintegrate those elements back into the game in stages.
It's a creative and managerial problem to negotiate this patchwork of team
development but at the same time the most rewarding.
