In all the years I’ve been involved in paintball, and believe me there have been many, I often read/hear this apparent gem of wisdom whereby someone spouts, ‘Communication is the most important part of playing paintball’ or at least is ‘one of the most important’ aspects of playing.
And no matter how many times people repeat this mantra, they never manage to assume the authority they imply - and there’s a very good reason for that, it’s bullsh!te that’s propagated by people who have no idea what they’re talking about!!
Things like this are normally spouted because people like to think they hold a position of authority within the game - this isn’t just specific to paintball I know but we do seem to have more than our fair share of wannabe Intellectuals - And these so-called ‘experts’ of the game get away with it only because it ‘sounds’ right …
But here’s the problem …. when people read/hear these apparent gems of ‘paintball wisdom’, how are they supposed to know what’s true or what's bollox?
They either have to think it through using whatever experience they may have to try and come to a rational conclusion, or they just accept it on the basis that if someone says it, it must be true.
Now, if someone isn’t that experienced, they have to take it on trust in which case they must authenticate the source but even then, it’s a tricky undertaking because saying something stupid isn’t always within the dominion of stupid people.
I think the answer has to be, if you say something like, ‘Communication is the most important thing in paintball’ then you have to back that up with a reasoned explanation that makes sense on several levels.
If you can do that then I think people can place a fair amount of confidence in what you may be saying.
And so what are my reasons for questioning the veracity of ‘Communication is the most important …..’ ?
Firstly, I played many years as a pro both in the woods and in arenas both sides of the Atlantic and when you are in the middle of a game, just think about how many times you’ve tried to shout something to your teammates and it’s fallen on deaf-ears either because your voice has been drowned out by the sheer level of noise when playing or your voice just hasn’t been able to reach the person you meant it for …there are a million and one reasons why one person’s words aren’t received or indeed understood by their intended target during a game.
Come to think of it, how many times have you been playing, and after the game is finished, a teammate comes up to you and says, 'I was shouting at you trying to tell you 'x' was happening, why didn't you listen to me'?
Personally speaking, I've had that more than a few times when I was playing.
However, I’m not for one second suggesting that verbal communication is useless, it’s obviously not but it’s nowhere near the most important – at best, it’s supplemental not critical.
On the other hand, visual communication is far more critical than verbal because if a player sees a teammate who’s about to be mugged, or indeed he may well have eliminated an opponent and needs backing-up, this type of communication is paramount to any game.
And it is upon visual cues such as these that critical decisions are made.
As some bright spark once noted, ‘A picture paints a thousand words’, and that’s about right but I’m gonna amend it slightly by suggesting, ‘A real-time slice of action paints a million words’ ….
When you watch the game unfold as you are playing, you are in the middle of a real-life video that’s packed full to the brim with visual cues that are either seized upon and/or reacted to.
At the very least it provides a constant visual update to the state of the game that’s crucial to underwriting a response of some description.
Now, this fact alone relegates verbal communication back down the list of ‘Most important factors’ when playing but I can go further and hopefully place all major elements of our sport in some form of perspective that makes sense rather than conjecture.
But before I do that, I better qualify something - I fully realise that players cannot see all of the game all of the time but I’d much prefer to rely on visual cues than to rely on verbal ones ….after all, verbal communication is delivered serially whereas visual communication is in part, parallel and therefore a whole boatload of information can be utilised at any given instant.
It’s true to say that verbal communication does have its place but unless you assign the correct priority to each element of our sport then you are not gonna be training correctly or indeed focussing on the correct components of play.
I’ve written several articles over the years that have dealt with this subject and the fact it keeps resurfacing tells us it’s a common misconception that needs addressing again.
To further augment my point, I’d ask you to think about the following points; I have always maintained that one of the most important elements of play is your technical ability to stay tight, in other words to focus on not getting shot.
Now that sounds obvious I know but you’d be surprised just how many people have a sloppy approach to staying tight which is why they get eliminated more often than those who approach the technical aspect of playing tight more seriously.
When I created and coached Nexus, playing tight and shooting accurately was first on my list of how I wanted the players to approach the game; and one of the most obvious things to look at was the way players were snap-shooting.
If you think about a boxer in the ring - generally speaking, the time when he’s most vulnerable is when he’s punching [attacking], and that’s because if he’s throwing a punch then at least one side of his head /body is unprotected which is why a counter-punch style of fighting is effective.
And in paintball, if we’re stuck behind a bunker out of sight then you can’t be shot [save being bunkered obviously].
Only when you break the profile of your bunker do you then become accessible to your opponents’ paint.
I’m pretty sure there will be players out there who will mount an oblique but familiar response by suggesting this is ‘so obvious’ but it cannot be dismissed so casually.
Try telling that to a boxer who’s been dumped on his arse because his jab wasn’t as technical as it should have been in terms of minimising his own target area while he’s jabbing …. Paintball, like boxing, is combative, both sides are attacking and defending at the same time and therefore you cannot attack without opening yourself up in some way.
Paintball isn’t like a game of chess,darts or snooker where only one player is active at any one time, paintball has both protagonists attacking and defending at the same time.
Snap-shooting is an integral part of our game and critical when trying to win but at the same time, you are capable of being eliminated yourself when snap-shooting as you guys will know all too well.
In my previous articles on this subject, I’d dealt with two misconceptions, the first being the idea that communication wasn’t as important as people were suggesting, and also the idea that 'teamwork' was another misconception in terms of its relative importance.
How many times have we heard that ‘teamwork is the most important thing when playing’ … it’s been said many times for many different sports/endeavours.
I’ll now focus on this idea of teamwork being prioritised as one of the most important aspects of playing along with communication.
If we try to define what we understand ‘teamwork’ to be, we find ourselves on shaky ground because there’s not a definitive description to be had.
Any description of teamwork you might hear is generally non-specific and ambiguous.
In my experience, the top two aspects of technical play are playing safe [tight] and shooting accurately.
Once again, people tend to gloss over these considerations by describing them as ‘obvious’, well, no sh!t they’re obvious, and there’s a reason for that but we’ll come to that later.
Now, the problem I have in attempting to correctly prioritise these factors is how do I go about proving my points?
I’m gonna use the same methodology as Albert Einstein once did when developing his theories of General and Special Relativity, this may sound a bit pretentious but it's true, all the same.
Unfortunately for the more practical type, if you want to make progress in areas such as physics/astrophysics then you can’t shove the universe into a fat-ass test-tube and wave it over a Bunsen-burner, you have to do it theoretically, in your head with rational arguments followed by rational conclusions.
And if this methodology is good enough for Einstein then it’s gonna be good enough for me.
And so, to summarise thus far – we have some people suggesting that communication is the most important aspect of playing [or at least one of the most important] and other people, probably the same bunch just mentioned, who believe that teamwork is the most important aspect of play, or indeed one of the most.
How can I differentiate them and assign them their correct priority?
Imagine two sets of teams who will contest a game of paintball against each other but we’re able to tell one of the teams how to play …. Let’s start with verbal communication … if we tell one of the teams, you are not able to verbally communicate during the game ….. that said, I’ll ask the following question - is it impossible for the team who aren’t verbally communicating to win the game?
The answer is an emphatic ‘No’ …… of course they can win a game.
Secondly, if we try to define what teamwork is, I think most of us would agree in somewhat broad terms that it’s when players react or respond to their teammates; it may well involve one of your teammates eliminating an opponent and then going on a bunker-run and you backing him up on that run.
This can sometimes involve two, three or more players responding in a similar way – from the side-lines, this would tend to be regarded as good teamwork …. Prima facie anyway.
If we try to be more specific then we can suggest that teamwork is the ability to respond to a situation on the field of play whereby your actions reinforce one or more of your teammates whether that be in defensive mode or more likely, attacking … I don’t think any of us can really argue too strongly with that description of teamwork.
But how can we test for that?
Let’ go back to the two teams, but this time, we tell one of the teams that they cannot move from their primary bunker positions – this effectively negates teamwork in its fullest sense.
After all, if all you are doing is sitting behind your bunker shooting lanes/opponents, you cannot for the most part, indulge in any teamwork as defined by any orchestrated move in support.
And so, my question gets repeated, is it impossible to win a game playing in such a way?
Once again, it’s an emphatic ‘No’ … lord almighty, when I played for the All Americans back in the day, if we played against one of the other top teams we’d superglue our ass to our primaries for the most part – we won games, we lost games against the other top teams but when we stayed behind our primaries we could still win.
And there we have it; we’ve dethroned those two pretenders to the throne and unmasked them to see their true worth.
But it beggars the question, then what are the top two aspects of play?
Imagine a team that goes out to play and bears little to no thought about staying tight when playing, and ends up snap-shooting like an epileptic giraffe, would it then be impossible for them to win?
Damn right it would be … but I’ll add a caveat to that by stating they could win but if only they were up against a team who were even worse at staying tight which is never gonna happen anyway ….
Secondly, imagine a game where the players couldn’t hit a barn door when shooting - would it be impossible for them to win a game?
Of course it would?
If you can’t hit your opponents but they can hit you then it’s only a matter of time before you all get shot out suffering little to no loss yourselves.
Now before anyone starts bleating that it’s not actually impossible to win, either when negating teamwork or indeed whilst not being able to shoot accurately, It’s not impossible I know but in any practical, common-sense way, it is – it’s a bit like saying it’s not impossible to win the lottery but practically? … Well, I’m sure you get my drift.
And to drive these points home with a final deathblow, imagine going out there and sticking behind your primaries [no teamwork] and saying nothing [No verbal communication] is it even then impossible to win a game … the answer has to be ‘no’ yet again .. you can still win a game that way.
Where does this leave us in terms of categorising elements of play in their correct priority?
Tied in first place are shooting accurately and playing tight …
As for where verbally communicating and teamwork are placed?
I’ll leave that to you guys but hopefully, I’ve tried to prove my point with reasoned arguments backed up with many years of playing and writing about our beloved sport and I haven’t just accepted something I’ve heard.
My next article will be all about unmasking ‘Tactics’ and its relevance to playing paintball today.
And no matter how many times people repeat this mantra, they never manage to assume the authority they imply - and there’s a very good reason for that, it’s bullsh!te that’s propagated by people who have no idea what they’re talking about!!
Things like this are normally spouted because people like to think they hold a position of authority within the game - this isn’t just specific to paintball I know but we do seem to have more than our fair share of wannabe Intellectuals - And these so-called ‘experts’ of the game get away with it only because it ‘sounds’ right …
But here’s the problem …. when people read/hear these apparent gems of ‘paintball wisdom’, how are they supposed to know what’s true or what's bollox?
They either have to think it through using whatever experience they may have to try and come to a rational conclusion, or they just accept it on the basis that if someone says it, it must be true.
Now, if someone isn’t that experienced, they have to take it on trust in which case they must authenticate the source but even then, it’s a tricky undertaking because saying something stupid isn’t always within the dominion of stupid people.
I think the answer has to be, if you say something like, ‘Communication is the most important thing in paintball’ then you have to back that up with a reasoned explanation that makes sense on several levels.
If you can do that then I think people can place a fair amount of confidence in what you may be saying.
And so what are my reasons for questioning the veracity of ‘Communication is the most important …..’ ?
Firstly, I played many years as a pro both in the woods and in arenas both sides of the Atlantic and when you are in the middle of a game, just think about how many times you’ve tried to shout something to your teammates and it’s fallen on deaf-ears either because your voice has been drowned out by the sheer level of noise when playing or your voice just hasn’t been able to reach the person you meant it for …there are a million and one reasons why one person’s words aren’t received or indeed understood by their intended target during a game.
Come to think of it, how many times have you been playing, and after the game is finished, a teammate comes up to you and says, 'I was shouting at you trying to tell you 'x' was happening, why didn't you listen to me'?
Personally speaking, I've had that more than a few times when I was playing.
However, I’m not for one second suggesting that verbal communication is useless, it’s obviously not but it’s nowhere near the most important – at best, it’s supplemental not critical.
On the other hand, visual communication is far more critical than verbal because if a player sees a teammate who’s about to be mugged, or indeed he may well have eliminated an opponent and needs backing-up, this type of communication is paramount to any game.
And it is upon visual cues such as these that critical decisions are made.
As some bright spark once noted, ‘A picture paints a thousand words’, and that’s about right but I’m gonna amend it slightly by suggesting, ‘A real-time slice of action paints a million words’ ….
When you watch the game unfold as you are playing, you are in the middle of a real-life video that’s packed full to the brim with visual cues that are either seized upon and/or reacted to.
At the very least it provides a constant visual update to the state of the game that’s crucial to underwriting a response of some description.
Now, this fact alone relegates verbal communication back down the list of ‘Most important factors’ when playing but I can go further and hopefully place all major elements of our sport in some form of perspective that makes sense rather than conjecture.
But before I do that, I better qualify something - I fully realise that players cannot see all of the game all of the time but I’d much prefer to rely on visual cues than to rely on verbal ones ….after all, verbal communication is delivered serially whereas visual communication is in part, parallel and therefore a whole boatload of information can be utilised at any given instant.
It’s true to say that verbal communication does have its place but unless you assign the correct priority to each element of our sport then you are not gonna be training correctly or indeed focussing on the correct components of play.
I’ve written several articles over the years that have dealt with this subject and the fact it keeps resurfacing tells us it’s a common misconception that needs addressing again.
To further augment my point, I’d ask you to think about the following points; I have always maintained that one of the most important elements of play is your technical ability to stay tight, in other words to focus on not getting shot.
Now that sounds obvious I know but you’d be surprised just how many people have a sloppy approach to staying tight which is why they get eliminated more often than those who approach the technical aspect of playing tight more seriously.
When I created and coached Nexus, playing tight and shooting accurately was first on my list of how I wanted the players to approach the game; and one of the most obvious things to look at was the way players were snap-shooting.
If you think about a boxer in the ring - generally speaking, the time when he’s most vulnerable is when he’s punching [attacking], and that’s because if he’s throwing a punch then at least one side of his head /body is unprotected which is why a counter-punch style of fighting is effective.
And in paintball, if we’re stuck behind a bunker out of sight then you can’t be shot [save being bunkered obviously].
Only when you break the profile of your bunker do you then become accessible to your opponents’ paint.
I’m pretty sure there will be players out there who will mount an oblique but familiar response by suggesting this is ‘so obvious’ but it cannot be dismissed so casually.
Try telling that to a boxer who’s been dumped on his arse because his jab wasn’t as technical as it should have been in terms of minimising his own target area while he’s jabbing …. Paintball, like boxing, is combative, both sides are attacking and defending at the same time and therefore you cannot attack without opening yourself up in some way.
Paintball isn’t like a game of chess,darts or snooker where only one player is active at any one time, paintball has both protagonists attacking and defending at the same time.
Snap-shooting is an integral part of our game and critical when trying to win but at the same time, you are capable of being eliminated yourself when snap-shooting as you guys will know all too well.
In my previous articles on this subject, I’d dealt with two misconceptions, the first being the idea that communication wasn’t as important as people were suggesting, and also the idea that 'teamwork' was another misconception in terms of its relative importance.
How many times have we heard that ‘teamwork is the most important thing when playing’ … it’s been said many times for many different sports/endeavours.
I’ll now focus on this idea of teamwork being prioritised as one of the most important aspects of playing along with communication.
If we try to define what we understand ‘teamwork’ to be, we find ourselves on shaky ground because there’s not a definitive description to be had.
Any description of teamwork you might hear is generally non-specific and ambiguous.
In my experience, the top two aspects of technical play are playing safe [tight] and shooting accurately.
Once again, people tend to gloss over these considerations by describing them as ‘obvious’, well, no sh!t they’re obvious, and there’s a reason for that but we’ll come to that later.
Now, the problem I have in attempting to correctly prioritise these factors is how do I go about proving my points?
I’m gonna use the same methodology as Albert Einstein once did when developing his theories of General and Special Relativity, this may sound a bit pretentious but it's true, all the same.
Unfortunately for the more practical type, if you want to make progress in areas such as physics/astrophysics then you can’t shove the universe into a fat-ass test-tube and wave it over a Bunsen-burner, you have to do it theoretically, in your head with rational arguments followed by rational conclusions.
And if this methodology is good enough for Einstein then it’s gonna be good enough for me.
And so, to summarise thus far – we have some people suggesting that communication is the most important aspect of playing [or at least one of the most important] and other people, probably the same bunch just mentioned, who believe that teamwork is the most important aspect of play, or indeed one of the most.
How can I differentiate them and assign them their correct priority?
Imagine two sets of teams who will contest a game of paintball against each other but we’re able to tell one of the teams how to play …. Let’s start with verbal communication … if we tell one of the teams, you are not able to verbally communicate during the game ….. that said, I’ll ask the following question - is it impossible for the team who aren’t verbally communicating to win the game?
The answer is an emphatic ‘No’ …… of course they can win a game.
Secondly, if we try to define what teamwork is, I think most of us would agree in somewhat broad terms that it’s when players react or respond to their teammates; it may well involve one of your teammates eliminating an opponent and then going on a bunker-run and you backing him up on that run.
This can sometimes involve two, three or more players responding in a similar way – from the side-lines, this would tend to be regarded as good teamwork …. Prima facie anyway.
If we try to be more specific then we can suggest that teamwork is the ability to respond to a situation on the field of play whereby your actions reinforce one or more of your teammates whether that be in defensive mode or more likely, attacking … I don’t think any of us can really argue too strongly with that description of teamwork.
But how can we test for that?
Let’ go back to the two teams, but this time, we tell one of the teams that they cannot move from their primary bunker positions – this effectively negates teamwork in its fullest sense.
After all, if all you are doing is sitting behind your bunker shooting lanes/opponents, you cannot for the most part, indulge in any teamwork as defined by any orchestrated move in support.
And so, my question gets repeated, is it impossible to win a game playing in such a way?
Once again, it’s an emphatic ‘No’ … lord almighty, when I played for the All Americans back in the day, if we played against one of the other top teams we’d superglue our ass to our primaries for the most part – we won games, we lost games against the other top teams but when we stayed behind our primaries we could still win.
And there we have it; we’ve dethroned those two pretenders to the throne and unmasked them to see their true worth.
But it beggars the question, then what are the top two aspects of play?
Imagine a team that goes out to play and bears little to no thought about staying tight when playing, and ends up snap-shooting like an epileptic giraffe, would it then be impossible for them to win?
Damn right it would be … but I’ll add a caveat to that by stating they could win but if only they were up against a team who were even worse at staying tight which is never gonna happen anyway ….
Secondly, imagine a game where the players couldn’t hit a barn door when shooting - would it be impossible for them to win a game?
Of course it would?
If you can’t hit your opponents but they can hit you then it’s only a matter of time before you all get shot out suffering little to no loss yourselves.
Now before anyone starts bleating that it’s not actually impossible to win, either when negating teamwork or indeed whilst not being able to shoot accurately, It’s not impossible I know but in any practical, common-sense way, it is – it’s a bit like saying it’s not impossible to win the lottery but practically? … Well, I’m sure you get my drift.
And to drive these points home with a final deathblow, imagine going out there and sticking behind your primaries [no teamwork] and saying nothing [No verbal communication] is it even then impossible to win a game … the answer has to be ‘no’ yet again .. you can still win a game that way.
Where does this leave us in terms of categorising elements of play in their correct priority?
Tied in first place are shooting accurately and playing tight …
As for where verbally communicating and teamwork are placed?
I’ll leave that to you guys but hopefully, I’ve tried to prove my point with reasoned arguments backed up with many years of playing and writing about our beloved sport and I haven’t just accepted something I’ve heard.
My next article will be all about unmasking ‘Tactics’ and its relevance to playing paintball today.
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