It’s all well and good having a thread where we can all bemoan the reasons why we as Brits ain’t cutting it when it comes to producing enough high end teams to compete all over the world but we need more than just commentary because, with no disrespect intended to anybody, some of the inputs to that other thread just don’t make sense.
Any players or members of our forum who then go on to read some of that stuff may well take away from that thread a mixture of ideas and directives that are not only useless but would end up being counter-productive.
And so I would like to give people a possible blueprint as to what to do if there are any out there who truly do want to improve the state of our nation’s play.
I am not saying my opinion is worth more than anybody else’s…hold on a minute, yes I am, bollocks to all that false modesty cr@p, I been in this game for 18 frikkin years, I know what I am talking about here and I ain’t gonna be apologizing for seeming somewhat arrogant, fack it, I earned my stripes.
As ballers, the first thing you need to do is understand why you play this game, do you play it to enjoy as a pastime or do you aspire to be a serious baller?
If you play just to enjoy, then cool, crack on dude coz the rest of this post ain’t for you, it’s for those guys and girls who wanna step up to the plate and really go for it.
These people have got pride in what they do, they wanna improve, they wanna work hard, they wanna dedicate and so on and so on.
As an example of this type drive I am talking about (and ironically I am gonna use a girl for this example) I recently got talking to someone who had so much determination to become improved it was remarkable. I wish most of the guys in this sport who moan all day had one tenth the determination this girl had.
She wants one thing and one thing only, to become a better paintball athlete…to me…that says it all.
Rosie from Red Heat began by asking all the right questions and what soon became apparent was that underneath her paintball naivity was a burning desire to get her ass up there with the top pros, she's pragmatic enough to realise that not everybody makes it but this ain't gonna stop her, far from it.
Ironically, the only other time I have heard this type rhetoic was from another girl Ellcie from Dye who wanted to know the self same things after a recent injury, she's so determined to train and improve it should be an inspiration to us all...my male orienteated paintball universe is being turned on its head here guys.
Once you have decided that you really want to become a baller then you might have to make a few changes to your paintball life.
If your team mates are not like-minded then you have to get yer ass outa there because all they will do is infect you with their indifference, you have to realize that remaining in that environment is detrimental to any aspirations you may harbor when it comes to improving yourself.
I know this is easier said than done but nothing’s easy in this world, you have to work at what you want.
You as a baller have to try and identify teams and individuals around you who have ambitions, teams like Jags, Tigers Am, Lincoln Storm to name but a few teams who have this aspiration to improve, there are many more teams out there who have similar enthusiasm and ambitions but I’m afraid I don’t really know who they are but you guys will.
You have to set your sights on getting more like minded people around you and if that means joining another team, then do it for god’s sake coz sure as ****, you ain’t gonna get it if you are mixed up with a bunch of beer swilling, fat asses who don’t give a ****.
You may also be part of a team where most of you are ambitious and maybe you will have to look at cutting those players who aren’t, difficult decisions have to be made if you seriously want to go down this road.
Once you have managed to move into a more conducive area of learning and ambition, it’s then down to you to start on your personal road to improvement as an athlete.
Your team then has to concentrate everything it can on training and at this stage of events, playing tourneys is a stepping stone, it is a means to an end not the end itself.
This is the main differential here that will emerge because at this stage of your development it is obvious that the less serious will be playing tournaments to enjoy and this is why they play, you on the other hand are using that tournament as a benchmark of improvement, as a check on how your training’s going.
The emphasis at this time has now shifted inexorably toward training as against just playing, and so it should !
Voices will now be murmuring in the background, uttering things like, money, time, resources etc, and yes it is a problem but in no way is it impossible, in fact, far from it.
The notion that no real improvement can be made to a team’s real performance unless you got a Nexus type sponsor package is complete bullocks.
As I mentioned in another post, all we (Nexus) had (and needed) in our first year was a field, markers and paint and most importantly a bunch of guys who were so eager to learn it was oozing outa them when they went for a slash, those guys pissed paint……
Yeh we had free paint but most of the training (in fact the most important part of that first year’s training) needed hardly any paint, we practiced for hours on the snap shot, hours upon hours.
We drilled all day on the Saturday with on average about one box of paint per player usage and on Sundays, we dog balled, basically playing games with different emphases such as left handed shooting, running and gunning, break out training and so on.
People, it can be done if you get serious and start to manage your paintball environment accordingly, it all starts to fall into place if you begin to arrange the parts yourself.
And if you think about, if you lift the emphasis of play away from playing tourneys to training (which is a net money save anyway) and end up playing less tourneys but subsequently training more, then your road to improvement will be assured.
In this sense the tourneys are now playing second fiddle to training and are merely check marks on your progress sheet.
If you immerse your ambition or talent amongst people who have no such similar aspirations, then you only have yourself to blame but don't end up relying on the usual knee jerk defence of not having enough sponsorship blah, blah, blah...
And so :-
a) Decide what you want.
b) If you wanna be a real baller, then begin to organize your paintball environment to accommodate this.
c) Commit yourself to training rather than just playing tournaments.
d) Stick at it and I promise you it will come.
I realize this is a basic take on what you have to do but ya know; sometimes the simple things in life are the most relevant and most practical.
I would love to see more Brit teams get up there, I would love to see more players and teams getting serious but conversely, I hate seeing armchair whiners.
If we start to take pride in ourselves as paintball athletes, then as a natural consequence of that, we also begin to create an environment whereby we can produce a new generation of ballers who can really cut it instead of just talking about it.
Peace !
Any players or members of our forum who then go on to read some of that stuff may well take away from that thread a mixture of ideas and directives that are not only useless but would end up being counter-productive.
And so I would like to give people a possible blueprint as to what to do if there are any out there who truly do want to improve the state of our nation’s play.
I am not saying my opinion is worth more than anybody else’s…hold on a minute, yes I am, bollocks to all that false modesty cr@p, I been in this game for 18 frikkin years, I know what I am talking about here and I ain’t gonna be apologizing for seeming somewhat arrogant, fack it, I earned my stripes.
As ballers, the first thing you need to do is understand why you play this game, do you play it to enjoy as a pastime or do you aspire to be a serious baller?
If you play just to enjoy, then cool, crack on dude coz the rest of this post ain’t for you, it’s for those guys and girls who wanna step up to the plate and really go for it.
These people have got pride in what they do, they wanna improve, they wanna work hard, they wanna dedicate and so on and so on.
As an example of this type drive I am talking about (and ironically I am gonna use a girl for this example) I recently got talking to someone who had so much determination to become improved it was remarkable. I wish most of the guys in this sport who moan all day had one tenth the determination this girl had.
She wants one thing and one thing only, to become a better paintball athlete…to me…that says it all.
Rosie from Red Heat began by asking all the right questions and what soon became apparent was that underneath her paintball naivity was a burning desire to get her ass up there with the top pros, she's pragmatic enough to realise that not everybody makes it but this ain't gonna stop her, far from it.
Ironically, the only other time I have heard this type rhetoic was from another girl Ellcie from Dye who wanted to know the self same things after a recent injury, she's so determined to train and improve it should be an inspiration to us all...my male orienteated paintball universe is being turned on its head here guys.
Once you have decided that you really want to become a baller then you might have to make a few changes to your paintball life.
If your team mates are not like-minded then you have to get yer ass outa there because all they will do is infect you with their indifference, you have to realize that remaining in that environment is detrimental to any aspirations you may harbor when it comes to improving yourself.
I know this is easier said than done but nothing’s easy in this world, you have to work at what you want.
You as a baller have to try and identify teams and individuals around you who have ambitions, teams like Jags, Tigers Am, Lincoln Storm to name but a few teams who have this aspiration to improve, there are many more teams out there who have similar enthusiasm and ambitions but I’m afraid I don’t really know who they are but you guys will.
You have to set your sights on getting more like minded people around you and if that means joining another team, then do it for god’s sake coz sure as ****, you ain’t gonna get it if you are mixed up with a bunch of beer swilling, fat asses who don’t give a ****.
You may also be part of a team where most of you are ambitious and maybe you will have to look at cutting those players who aren’t, difficult decisions have to be made if you seriously want to go down this road.
Once you have managed to move into a more conducive area of learning and ambition, it’s then down to you to start on your personal road to improvement as an athlete.
Your team then has to concentrate everything it can on training and at this stage of events, playing tourneys is a stepping stone, it is a means to an end not the end itself.
This is the main differential here that will emerge because at this stage of your development it is obvious that the less serious will be playing tournaments to enjoy and this is why they play, you on the other hand are using that tournament as a benchmark of improvement, as a check on how your training’s going.
The emphasis at this time has now shifted inexorably toward training as against just playing, and so it should !
Voices will now be murmuring in the background, uttering things like, money, time, resources etc, and yes it is a problem but in no way is it impossible, in fact, far from it.
The notion that no real improvement can be made to a team’s real performance unless you got a Nexus type sponsor package is complete bullocks.
As I mentioned in another post, all we (Nexus) had (and needed) in our first year was a field, markers and paint and most importantly a bunch of guys who were so eager to learn it was oozing outa them when they went for a slash, those guys pissed paint……
Yeh we had free paint but most of the training (in fact the most important part of that first year’s training) needed hardly any paint, we practiced for hours on the snap shot, hours upon hours.
We drilled all day on the Saturday with on average about one box of paint per player usage and on Sundays, we dog balled, basically playing games with different emphases such as left handed shooting, running and gunning, break out training and so on.
People, it can be done if you get serious and start to manage your paintball environment accordingly, it all starts to fall into place if you begin to arrange the parts yourself.
And if you think about, if you lift the emphasis of play away from playing tourneys to training (which is a net money save anyway) and end up playing less tourneys but subsequently training more, then your road to improvement will be assured.
In this sense the tourneys are now playing second fiddle to training and are merely check marks on your progress sheet.
If you immerse your ambition or talent amongst people who have no such similar aspirations, then you only have yourself to blame but don't end up relying on the usual knee jerk defence of not having enough sponsorship blah, blah, blah...
And so :-
a) Decide what you want.
b) If you wanna be a real baller, then begin to organize your paintball environment to accommodate this.
c) Commit yourself to training rather than just playing tournaments.
d) Stick at it and I promise you it will come.
I realize this is a basic take on what you have to do but ya know; sometimes the simple things in life are the most relevant and most practical.
I would love to see more Brit teams get up there, I would love to see more players and teams getting serious but conversely, I hate seeing armchair whiners.
If we start to take pride in ourselves as paintball athletes, then as a natural consequence of that, we also begin to create an environment whereby we can produce a new generation of ballers who can really cut it instead of just talking about it.
Peace !
