It took me five years, from age 15 to age 20, to work up to the pro ranks, and now at the tender age of 25 I’ve been involved with this sport for 10 years. I believe I could have done it in considerably less time if somebody had told me a few—not all, but just a few—of the rules of the game, a couple of tips, perhaps.

No, not the simple, standard-operating-procedure capture-the-flag stuff you hear in most safety speeches. I’m talking about the real stuff, the goods, the things you figure out along the way through trips and falls and fat welts.

If you want this game to be your pastime, the thing you do for fun or adventure or to get away from the wife and kids, then listen up for some things I’ve learned in the past decade by being around paintball fields and paintball players. As far as I’m concerned, this is gospel—things I wish someone had sat me down to talk over before I went into the store, plopped down $500, bought my first pimp gun, and entered the paintball world.
Whether you’re trying to become the best player the world has ever known or just think it would be cool to play every now and then, this stuff applies to you, if you want paintball to be part of your life. It’s what every pro really wants to tell you is the secret of paintball success..

Guys who have no problem spearing a 350-pound lineman at full speed are scared of getting hit by a paintball.

Actually, it’s easy to work on your composure during a game. I say this having almost peed in my pants the first time I had a few hundred paintballs flying inches from my head. Pick a spot you know is going to take a lot of heat but where you can live for a couple of minutes just hiding. The louder the better, so maybe a piece of plywood or a big Hyperball tube, something that’s going to make a lot of noise when it gets hit.Dive into your spot, take a deep breath (literally), and start thinking about anything besides the game.Do your multiplication tables, fantasize about your favorite playmate, go over last night’s sexcapades, your vacation plans, whatever; just get your mind off the fact that you’re in danger, that you’re in imminent danger of being shot, and that it’s going to hurt. When I’m balling with a player who needs to work on his composure, I try to ask him questions so stupid or crazy that he won’t answer them but that will take his mind off being shot and force him to stop working off instinct.

In the immortal words of Parrish Smith from EPMD: “Calm under pressure, no need to act ill, listen when I tell you, boy, you gots to chill.” The further away you get from the fear, the closer you get to being proactive, not just reactive. The more you can think, the more you can actually play the game and get to aspects of it that can improve your skills.

It’s the whole “minute to learn, lifetime to master” thing. Anyone can pick up a gun and sit there dueling, but it takes someone who’s thinking rationally about the chesslike mental match going on to truly transcend.

If my team is sucking and we’re losing guys early on in the game for no reason, the first question we always ask ourselves is whether we’re losing our gunfights or getting shot out of our bunkers without knowing why. If it’s gunfights, then there’s no excuse, because if you choose them carefully, then you should win most of them.

A lot of people call gunfighting snapshooting, but that’s just one aspect of it. Gunfighting is all-inclusive. It’s everything you do during the course of the game while shooting your gun.

In order to get better, think the whole gunfight through, one aspect at a time. All right, so a player is in front of you and has you pinned in. He’s shooting at your bunker a couple of balls at a time. Can you go to the other side of the bunker? Is he just shooting high on your bunker, or is he shooting low as well? If he’s only shooting high, kneel down and come out low. Do the opposite if he’s shooting low. Go right if he’s shooting left. You almost never want to come out into flying paintballs, and in a walk-on game there’s little reason to do that because no matter how good your skills are, getting shot is a crapshoot.

You can do many drills to make yourself a better snapshooter, and they’ll help your game overall. But in order to get better at gunfights, you have to clock in and spend the time. It’s that simple.

He’s incredibly fun and friendly, if he likes you. He could also sell crack to the counselors at the Betty Ford clinic, which is why he’s had numerous paintball jobs around the country.

TAll the kids from back in the day who are now rockin’ out on the world paintball stage love him, and if they don’t love him, they at least respect him because he beat them up when they were young and impressionable. Not in a mean or particularly malicious way, of course. But he was bigger and better at paintball and let us know it, kind of like a big brother. He bought us food when we needed it, gave us help when we least expected it, and kicked the crap out of us on numerous occasions.

So if you have tons of cool little studs tearing everybody up at your local field, try thrashing them on a regular basis. If you can get the respect into their heads now, then when they’re all distinguished and heavily sponsored, they’ll kick you down with free stuff, or maybe put you in an article, make you famous. Ah, free. It’s the paintball player’s favorite four-letter word.

I’d say the average incubation time between when they want to move the fields around and when it actually gets done is about six months. If you’re the catalyst for a move, the owner will never forget you.

If you’re lazy, like me, and don’t want to hoof around a hot-ass field for a dozen hours or so, then perhaps you have something else to throw into the mix. A few of my boys who own fields around the world try not to pay for anything in their lives; they prefer to work on the barter system. Plumbing, electricity, car-stereo equipment—if you can provide something to the owner of a paintball field, you never know what the owner might be willing to trade (say, a year of field membership). Everybody wins here, so if you happen to have a skill or a big hookup, share the wealth. There’s a good chance the owner will, too. The less you’re paying to play our sport, the more your girlfriend/wife/life partner will like you and the sport, and the more you’ll get to play.

Vegas movie after Vegas movie will tell you the way to get free stuff is not to ask for it, and to look as if you don’t need it. The second you start asking for free stuff without bringing anything to the table yourself, you’ll look like a moocher, and you’ll be detested for it.

As in life, pain is part of the game, and you work through it to get better.

Aftershock’s Todd Martinez and I were once generals in a big game. We were supposed to be reffing but decided to be officers instead (reffing sucks). We were trying to motivate a group of 50 men and one girl to charge across a field and attack about 30 defenders. So, we’re standing in the open, getting shot, and screaming at these grown men to get up and take the stronghold. No one moved. We insulted their manhood. We screamed bloody murder. Nothing worked. They were too scared.

Suddenly, this 15-year-old girl gets up, screams, and charges the position. We all watch, eyes wide, as 30 or so paintballs destroy her. Well, we let the rest of the troops know what we thought of their courage, and they all got up and stormed the position. The 30 guys defending the place ran at the sight of 50 players coming straight at them. And all because a girl wasn’t scared and decided to be the hero. She knew it was just a game and wasn’t going to sit back and let other people have all the fun. It made me a firm believer in women in the military. Yeah, she hurt for a few days, but as the T-shirts say, “Pain is temporary. Glory is forever.”

So try to get a game with players who are better than you. You’ll love yourself in the morning. I promise.