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Robbo

Owner of this website
Jul 5, 2001
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I keep reading the words "Raw talent", someone define raw talent within paintball ?
The areas i see raw talent within our sport would be the agility to run faster(speed), flexibility, and awareness.
Other areas such as techniques like stance, snap shooting, understanding how to play different bunkers would be all down to each individuals learning skills and how well that player listen, the understanding and consume.
Like any sport it does however help with a good teacher in building a foundation to step on.
On the face of it, this looks as though it could be an easy question to answer and I think in most cases it generally is ....but.....one of the things I learned whilst putting together the XBall Brit squad for that inaugural XBall event in the US was that when I went looking for talent, I could spot it within about 30 seconds of looking at a player.
There was a certain 'style' about the way they played and that style is apparent whether the said player has been playing years or even months.

I realize that sounds kinda improbable but for the most part, I found it to be true.
Most certainly, I selected about 5 of those players from seeing them play for less than a minute. In fact, when I saw Bowen play for the first time, I saw him do one run to the snake and one dive into it ... job done - he was in.

Now if you were to ask me to define that style, LoL, oh my, my answer would be ...go look at the greats of this game, they all have it.

So for me, raw talent merely means, they have that style :)

Dammit, after reading what I've just written, it could be argued I am seeking refuge in the artistic side of things instead of the bedrock science principles I always try to stick to .... hmmmmmmm.........Eeeeekkkk, I'm turning into a frikkin fairy :(
 

Buddha 3

Hamfist McPunchalot
I said that they did not have to rely on training.

I would not suggest, that they simply "knew" how to do what they do, without the benefit of training to improve it

I think natural ability, just makes for a more "fluid" style, earlier and faster progression.

It is no substitute for practice of course.

Pete. Fair enough!:D
No argument here. As an aside, I hate it when people get into something, show to have a lot of talent for that something and then don't do much with it...
Complacency....yuk!

Jesus, can you imagine what Dynasty would be like if they had the same resources as the Russians from the get go?
 

Buddha 3

Hamfist McPunchalot
If this thread was focused on guys like yourself then I'd be inclined to agree with you mate, but it's not.
A lot of the people on this site haven't had the experience you have or had access to a lot of what I have written, and it is to these people I direct my attention.
Well that's the plan anyway :)
Ah, in that case, let me speak to the masses real quick...

Ahum...

DRINKING BEER IS NOT A PAINTBALL RELATED SKILL, PEOPLE!

Thanks.

;)
 

Robbo

Owner of this website
Jul 5, 2001
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The original Dynasty squad were a bunch of freaks, trust me on that one.
I watched those guys amalgamate from Iron Kids etc and evolve into the second greatest team of all time (Aftershock being the most successful of all time in terms of winning the big events).

Dynasty's rise to the top is a fascinating insight into the ways you can attain brilliance of play. The Russian Legion exemplify one route, with Dynasty providing the alter ego for the strict training regimes of Sergey's Legion.

The Russian's rise is easy to appreciate and understand because it has its training ethos firmly enmeshed within a reductionist framework.
Each element of the game was identified, isolated and then trained; after this had been done, the elements were reintegrated back into actual play and then coupled with some vigilant observational feedback, a process was created whereby improvement was inescapable.

Dynasty on the other hand, free-styled their way to brilliance and it certainly seems more fitting to me at least, this style of learning was Cali based.
It just seems such a natural path to take for the guys from San Diego to take a laid back, sun drenched tour de force evolution alongside the west coast beaches.

To understand how the Dynasty phenomenon unfolded, you have to acknowledge that sometimes in life, things come together due to circumstance and not design, and sometimes, very rarely in fact, genius is created, albeit with a minimum of nudging.

Those guys worked hard at what they did, but other teams were doing similar, the thing that made Dynasty so different was their average age, these were frikkin kids for god's sake, and nobody really took them seriously.
I wish I could say i knew different but I'm afraid I was just as dismissive as the next guy and that ignorance was unceremoniously rammed up my backside on more than one occasion.
And it was this lack of maturity that led observers to conclude there was no way they could get anywhere because they had no Bob Long at the helm, no Renick Miller or Billy Gardner.
Who the hell was gonna teach them anything?
I'm afraid the old guard couldn't have taught them anyway because once these guys got going, they bought with them a whole new raft of skills not least of which was 'running and gunning'.
Basically nobody did that sh!t before those guys and they ripped the cr@p outa teams with this skill until their opponents adopted and trained the running and gunnning skill.

And so, when we look toward Dynasty to provide a template for training teams, it can prove to be a useless endeavour because their excellence of play was borne out of naturally talented players evolving, you can't train what they had, you can only hone it ...and that's exactly what they did in those first two years.
After that, the monster was created and unleashed upon the world of paintball, we were never to be the same again.