Team Paintball Practice

1. Play as a Team

The most important thing you can do to improve your team play is to play paintball with your team. I know this sounds obvious, but it's something that many people simply ignore. To excel at paintball you need to spend considerable time playing the sport in the way that you plan to compete. If you want to do well in tournaments, you need to play with the people who will be with you in the tournament. Just as any high-performing sports team will practice together for considerable time to maximize their potential, you must spend that same time with your team. You can do this both by playing against other teams and scrimmaging against yourselves.

2. Practice Scenarios

You never know what is going to happen during a particular game, so you need to strategize for everyting. You can do this by identifying the common events that happen in your game and then practice through those same events with your team. For example, let's say that it's common in a speedball game for one member of your team to get stuck in the snake and not able to move up the field to another bunker. You can position one person in the ideal spot to pin the snake player down (so they are playing as if they were on the other team) and then the rest of your team can go through options of how to free up the snake player. After discussing options, you then actually try it out and see what happens. After trying something, talk about what worked and how you can improve.

3. Go to Events You Are Not Familiar With

Different varieties of paintball teach you different skills and abilities. If you are a speedball player, for example, go to some scenario events as a team. Not only will you have a lot of fun, but you will be exposed to new styles of play with which you are not familiar. You can then adapt these different strategies to your preferred style of play.

Many players feel that they have little to learn from another style of the sport - if you spend your time on a flat field with inflatable bunkers, what can you really learn from running through the woods in camouflage? The truth, though, is that there is lots that you can learn which can help your team improve its play.

4. Talk Strategy and Stick With It

To successfully compete you need a team strategy that everyone is following. If half your team tries to strong-side the right side of your opponents while the other half thinks they are taking the middle, you're going to end up confused, disoriented and, likely, quickly eliminated. You need to not only specify the strategy with which you are going to play a game, but you need to be prepared for what happens if it doesn't work. With any strategy there is a good way to counter it, and you need to be able to through a twist on the fly. While it's nice to verbally discuss what you are going to do if things go sour during a game, it's also very important to get a feel for how your team will react so that you know, given the situation, what your team is going to do.