Paintball is the fastest growing sports worldwide and every day thousands of new players join this exciting sport. Many might think it is an extreme sport – well, it is but there several differences to “normal” extreme sports. One of the major differences to regular extreme sports is that you hardly can survive a game on your own. Yes, you need to cooperate and communicate with your team-mates.
Have you ever been to one of these career assessment centres held by big companies when you apply for a job where your social behaviour, team spirit, leading skills are being tested? Guess what? I think they should exchange their entire psychological test against a round of paintball and then select their new staff. You have to be highly communicative, you need interpersonal skills to follow or organise a team.
For beginners, the most important thing to remember is to protect yourself. Many injuries with paintball have occurred. The number one paintball rule is: never ever take you mask off because the velocity of a paintball is high and it can easily damage your eyes. So, be careful when you are playing. To be a successful player you need to follow some further simple rules. Well, of course you need the right gear. Without a high quality gear it’s hard to win. But, I think knowledge and skills ‘how to paintball’ are even more important. It does not make sense to spend a fortune on gear, if you don’t know how hide effectively; playing in a team and so on. One question I came across many times is that beginners waste an awful amount of paintball. Unnecessary in my view ! If you have the right knowledge and skills you would use only a minimal amount of paintballs and still be the winner of the game.
I think it is also important that boys and girls have different strategies – by nature. Boys tend to use more paintballs whereas girls are think twice before they shoot, although the percentage of girls actively playing is
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