Part One …...
To help launch P8ntballer’s rebirth I think it’ll help if we run a series of articles concerning the basics of our game … in the early stages, these articles will focus on the techniques required, the preparation needed and a lot more besides.
I’m gonna try and prioritise what players need when trying to improve their game not just as a player but also as a team.
I’ve been told my articles are a bit long sometimes and so I’ll try and keep this as brief as I can without leaving too much out of it.
I’m assuming that a lot of people who’ll read these introductory posts/articles will want to develop as players but maybe they don’t really know what to do.
Our sport is inundated with people who think they know paintball when the reality is, they probably don’t.
The problem is, if someone starts spouting their home-spun philosophy concerning how to play, if you’re a new player/team then how can you prove or disprove it?
For the most part, it’s difficult for players to know who’s talking out their fat ass and who ain’t.
A pretty good yardstick is to look at results but these have to be put into context because if you are playing against one of the top teams around then if you lose, which is likely, you then need to disentangle the salient factors of your own game.
I hate hearing all that bollox on TalkSport when people being interviewed drown us in clichés but I’ll use one now and it’s ….. trying to take the positives out of a loss.
Well, we can utilise this in paintball but it has to be done carefully.
Let’s start at the beginning:-
Training …...
Far too many paintballers believe they can improve levels of play just by playing the game when training.
The danger here is an obvious one; yes, you can improve …. Of sorts !
But if you want to develop as a player, you’ll need more than just playing a game when training.
Someone once advised me:- ‘If I hear, I forget - If I see, I remember - if I do, I know !!
That expression might well seem somewhat glib but in this case, ‘less really is more’ ……
One of the most prolific philosophies used when attempting to develop any sport is, ‘reductionism’.
The vast majority of sports are a compilation of elements - each of which, need to be identified, isolated, trained and then reintegrated back into whatever game you’re training …. Reductionism is therefore a four-stage process.
You need to get all four elements right and it is the last factor that’s most important.
After all, when reintegrating the components of play, the correct emphasis needs to be finely tuned otherwise you might as well throw your money/time down the bog-hole.
We’ve got enough stresses and strains on our wallets these days without wasting it doing bullshiit training.
If you reduce our sport down a click or two, we’re really playing glorified Cowboys and Indians.
The common factor in Cowboys and Indians with paintball is obviously shooting people and getting shot.
Shoot, or be shot !!!
This may sound like an over- simplification, and to a point it is, but don’t let this simplicity fool you because it does host a true indicator of what to look for when trying to understand our sport’s most important dynamics.
The most basic consideration is, you can’t shoot anyone if you’re standing in the dead-box with your thumb up your ass.
Obvious, I know but acknowledging this indicates the MOST important skill in the game of paintball, and that is staying alive.
And so, how do we stay alive?
We have to play tight and minimise the risk of being shot out … easier said than done I know.
The irony is, even though staying alive is insultingly obvious, go and watch any game of paintball and you’ll see a whole slew of players abandoning any thoughts of playing tight [seemingly] - and this happens because the game of paintball sucks away your focus.
Circumstances end up dictating the flow of your game, and so it should but you have to try and maintain a level of concentration that has your best interests at heart which in this case is staying alive.
As soon as that ‘Game On’ is shouted across the field, you have to focus your attention on playing tight, and I mean really focus.
This is not just a word or a directive that you pay lip-service to when reading this article; you have to actually do it on the field of play if you are to improve, nothing comes easy folks !
I’ve always used boxing as a relevant and working metaphor that I can utilise when talking about paintball.
There’s a good reason for that.
If you go into a fight with some guy who’s got a heavy left-hook.
Your trainer will tell you to protect your chin with your right hand especially when throwing out your jab – if you forget, his left-hook will remind you.
And it’s the same in paintball, one ball can end your participation and what’s worse, that ball can hit you on your big toe or loader and you’re still gonna have your armband ripped off..
Try knocking someone out by clumping their big toe … paintball is a lot less forgiving than boxing, you get my point I hope.
I genuinely don’t want to appear over-simplistic here but I’ll have to risk it - if you think about this following consideration - 'the longer you manage to stay in the game by playing tight, the longer you have to eliminate an opponent'.
And so how do we apply this?
Playing ‘tight’ in the Paintball sense covers many areas; it describes your breakout, the way you snap shoot, the way you move from bunker to bunker, the way you bunker the opposition, the way you cover fire and so on. In fact, every aspect of play has to be governed by the prime directive in Paintball – ‘staying tight.’
If you run to your primary bunker on break-out, make sure it’s not too far…what’s the point in trying to make the fifty if you are only going to make it six times out of 10?
You could easily make the stop-off at the 40 and do the fifty bunker as a secondary move in your own time.
This is percentage Paintball here guys; you are weighing the percentages in your favour and not allowing some stupid idea of ‘making a fifty bunker off the bat’ to compromise your ability to stay alive.
The acquisition of real-estate on the paintball field is fine, as long as you don’t get yer ass lit up in the process.
OK, so apologies to anyone that feels this article/post is obvious but sometimes in life, things can be right in front of your nose and you still don’t see them.
The next article will deal with training itself and how you develop a program for improvement and then how you maintain it.
Stay tight, shoot straight !!
Robbo
To help launch P8ntballer’s rebirth I think it’ll help if we run a series of articles concerning the basics of our game … in the early stages, these articles will focus on the techniques required, the preparation needed and a lot more besides.
I’m gonna try and prioritise what players need when trying to improve their game not just as a player but also as a team.
I’ve been told my articles are a bit long sometimes and so I’ll try and keep this as brief as I can without leaving too much out of it.
I’m assuming that a lot of people who’ll read these introductory posts/articles will want to develop as players but maybe they don’t really know what to do.
Our sport is inundated with people who think they know paintball when the reality is, they probably don’t.
The problem is, if someone starts spouting their home-spun philosophy concerning how to play, if you’re a new player/team then how can you prove or disprove it?
For the most part, it’s difficult for players to know who’s talking out their fat ass and who ain’t.
A pretty good yardstick is to look at results but these have to be put into context because if you are playing against one of the top teams around then if you lose, which is likely, you then need to disentangle the salient factors of your own game.
I hate hearing all that bollox on TalkSport when people being interviewed drown us in clichés but I’ll use one now and it’s ….. trying to take the positives out of a loss.
Well, we can utilise this in paintball but it has to be done carefully.
Let’s start at the beginning:-
Training …...
Far too many paintballers believe they can improve levels of play just by playing the game when training.
The danger here is an obvious one; yes, you can improve …. Of sorts !
But if you want to develop as a player, you’ll need more than just playing a game when training.
Someone once advised me:- ‘If I hear, I forget - If I see, I remember - if I do, I know !!
That expression might well seem somewhat glib but in this case, ‘less really is more’ ……
One of the most prolific philosophies used when attempting to develop any sport is, ‘reductionism’.
The vast majority of sports are a compilation of elements - each of which, need to be identified, isolated, trained and then reintegrated back into whatever game you’re training …. Reductionism is therefore a four-stage process.
You need to get all four elements right and it is the last factor that’s most important.
After all, when reintegrating the components of play, the correct emphasis needs to be finely tuned otherwise you might as well throw your money/time down the bog-hole.
We’ve got enough stresses and strains on our wallets these days without wasting it doing bullshiit training.
If you reduce our sport down a click or two, we’re really playing glorified Cowboys and Indians.
The common factor in Cowboys and Indians with paintball is obviously shooting people and getting shot.
Shoot, or be shot !!!
This may sound like an over- simplification, and to a point it is, but don’t let this simplicity fool you because it does host a true indicator of what to look for when trying to understand our sport’s most important dynamics.
The most basic consideration is, you can’t shoot anyone if you’re standing in the dead-box with your thumb up your ass.
Obvious, I know but acknowledging this indicates the MOST important skill in the game of paintball, and that is staying alive.
And so, how do we stay alive?
We have to play tight and minimise the risk of being shot out … easier said than done I know.
The irony is, even though staying alive is insultingly obvious, go and watch any game of paintball and you’ll see a whole slew of players abandoning any thoughts of playing tight [seemingly] - and this happens because the game of paintball sucks away your focus.
Circumstances end up dictating the flow of your game, and so it should but you have to try and maintain a level of concentration that has your best interests at heart which in this case is staying alive.
As soon as that ‘Game On’ is shouted across the field, you have to focus your attention on playing tight, and I mean really focus.
This is not just a word or a directive that you pay lip-service to when reading this article; you have to actually do it on the field of play if you are to improve, nothing comes easy folks !
I’ve always used boxing as a relevant and working metaphor that I can utilise when talking about paintball.
There’s a good reason for that.
If you go into a fight with some guy who’s got a heavy left-hook.
Your trainer will tell you to protect your chin with your right hand especially when throwing out your jab – if you forget, his left-hook will remind you.
And it’s the same in paintball, one ball can end your participation and what’s worse, that ball can hit you on your big toe or loader and you’re still gonna have your armband ripped off..
Try knocking someone out by clumping their big toe … paintball is a lot less forgiving than boxing, you get my point I hope.
I genuinely don’t want to appear over-simplistic here but I’ll have to risk it - if you think about this following consideration - 'the longer you manage to stay in the game by playing tight, the longer you have to eliminate an opponent'.
And so how do we apply this?
Playing ‘tight’ in the Paintball sense covers many areas; it describes your breakout, the way you snap shoot, the way you move from bunker to bunker, the way you bunker the opposition, the way you cover fire and so on. In fact, every aspect of play has to be governed by the prime directive in Paintball – ‘staying tight.’
If you run to your primary bunker on break-out, make sure it’s not too far…what’s the point in trying to make the fifty if you are only going to make it six times out of 10?
You could easily make the stop-off at the 40 and do the fifty bunker as a secondary move in your own time.
This is percentage Paintball here guys; you are weighing the percentages in your favour and not allowing some stupid idea of ‘making a fifty bunker off the bat’ to compromise your ability to stay alive.
The acquisition of real-estate on the paintball field is fine, as long as you don’t get yer ass lit up in the process.
OK, so apologies to anyone that feels this article/post is obvious but sometimes in life, things can be right in front of your nose and you still don’t see them.
The next article will deal with training itself and how you develop a program for improvement and then how you maintain it.
Stay tight, shoot straight !!
Robbo
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