Paint Management - More Important Than You Think

Hey, everyone. John Jackson here with professional paintball team L. A. Ironman. Today, I'm going to give you a little pro tip about paint management. Basically, if you're a back player, it's a pretty good tip for you to help you shoot a few more people off break, I guarantee it. When you go to your local tournament, you're going to play a local tournament or even practice. I personally recommend to practice how you play. As far as paint management goes, I feel it goes the same way. What we're talking about today is you get to your field, you buy your case of paint. This is the Ironman paint I like to shoot for practices. You go out there, you open the bag, you pot up all your pods. What is it about? 12 pods, I think, per case, 13 pods per case. You put them all back in your box and then you go throughout your day and you practice. You come in three hours later, you're pulling another pod that's sitting in there, you put in your pack, good to go.

The issue with this, yes, you've already done all the pod, like packing out the pods and stuff in the morning, so you don't have to worry about later.
That's great. Problem with this is this paint, for example, I'm in Texas, I'm in Houston, so it's very humid here. This paint is going to soak up the humidity. It's going to become very squishy. So, next time you go practice, go ahead and grab the paint that you're shooting over after a couple of hours. If it's been out, grab it and see how squishy that paint ball is. What that means is the paint is not going to be fragile anymore or as fragile as it was before. It's going to hit your target. It's going to bounce off because it's going to be squishy like a gummy bear. And so compared to your brittle paint, if it's fresh out of a bag, it hasn't been hit by the humidity yet. It's going to be more fragile, more brittle. And so that way when you hit the target, hopefully breaks more often. So, what I would recommend next time you go out to go play, grab, let's say you carry four pods, five pods. You want to, that's going to be about two bags. You're going to open your first bag, pot up all your stuff, go shoot your gun.

Good to go. When you go shoot your gun empty out all that paint. Pour that paint into a pod. Remember, you want fresh paint in your loader out of a bag as much as possible. I'm not saying throw paint away or waste it, but any of that paint that's been sitting out for a while, put that in a pod. Again, this is like a back player tip. If you're going to go out and shoot, shoot off, break the next point, you don't want that ball stack that's been sitting basically in this stack here. Or for example, this is a die rotor R2. This holds about five to ten paint balls between the breach, the stack and what's already ready to go inside there. So, if that paint has been sitting there for an hour because I went to go take lunch and I just poured a pod on top of it, that paint is going to be so squishy, not very fragile. Also, I took a pod that's been sitting there for two hours, I poured in here. You're probably not going to shoot anybody off break unless you hit them in a really hard spot or you're shooting really good paint.

Or let's say it's cold outside, you don't have to deal with humidity at all and you don't have to worry about this issue at all. I would say most players though, even as it just heats up, maybe if there isn't very much humidity, as it gets hotter outside, you notice the paint does get a little bit softer. It just naturally does that over time. And this is being pretty nerdy as far as the knowledge of a paintball and the way it works. But this is I think if you want to get more kills off break, especially at practice, practice how you play, all of these same principles that are going over right now are going to follow the same for your tournament. So, when you're playing your next tournament, follow the same rules to guarantee you have better luck. So, back to what I would say, open your first bag, pour maybe 20, 30 paint balls in there. Go chrono your gun, good to go. Shoot out the rest of the paint. Make sure no paint's in your gun.

Take that next bag, go and pot up your pots, good to go. Good to go.
And then when you're done, let's say you're in charge of your own bag of paint. You're not splitting with a team, whatnot. Try to use that old paint first. So, instead of letting 14 bags with like 50, 100 paint balls in here, instead of letting that sit around, go and pour those into a pod. Get those out of there. Go Chrono with those. Get those out of the way quickly. When you're done, roll it up like this. Keep humidity out there. Put it in your box. As you can see right now, the sun's coming out. You also don't want to let the paint inside the box heat up too much. If you keep that in the shade or keep it out of direct sunlight, it's going to help even the bags that haven't been opened yet, it's going to help those stay even more fresh. Now, that you've got your pods potted up, your hopper is empty, you want to go grab the next freshest bag that you can. Let's say everybody's about to go play, you have an opportunity to open a new bag, open that brand new bag, pour that into your loader first, and then give it to your front guys and everybody else on there.

As you're playing, your pods are going to sit there.

Let's say you don't shoot a lot. Don't always pull from the left side. And if you do what I mean by that is the left side of your pack. Don't just pull from the left side of your pack and use them and let this right pack sit there for until three o'clock in the afternoon. And then you come down to a one on one or whatever the case is, and you've got to pull that pod last and it doesn't shoot straight or paint's broken inside of it, or it's real squishy and it bounces off your opponent. So, again, fresh paint is definitely the most important. Keep it out of the sun. And then again, before you go play the next point, let's say you shoot off break, you play good to go and you have, for example, I have about 10, 20 paintballs right here left. Go ahead and shoot those out and pour another fresh bag if you can, at least a newer bag the whole time. I see a lot of, even at the pro level, a lot of players will take a pod as they're walking on the field and pour it in their loader and I watch them when they shoot off break.
I don't know about you, but I would definitely want the best advantage possible when shooting off break. You may not get that opportunity again. You may shoot somebody that skims off the shoulder. That may be the difference between winning that point or winning that tournament or not because you were lazy or you didn't think about it or you just didn't know. But definitely recommend as a back player, even a front player. I mean, if a front player, you have to be a little more careful because you're worried about maybe being too brittle. So, when you go sliding in, it's broken in your loader. So, I know that's been an issue with some of our players or some of the players that I played with over the years at the same time. But as a back player, always fresh bag, keep them wrapped up. Please, next time you got to fill, don't open all your bags. Don't let them just sit there, unless they are too fragile. And we have another video talking about that, talks about why your paint ball is exploding in your barrel and because the paint is too fragile. We talk about that.

But for normal conditions, perfect day to day, keep your bags closed for as long as possible until you need them. Same for your tournaments. Keep the bags closed. You're pulling them out of the trailer from your local field. If it's air conditioning inside of there, or you go into a local tournament and it's kept inside of a building or at the national events, it's kept inside the trailer, don't lay those open. Open all the bags, let the humidity get to all of them, unless that is what you're trying to do. There's a situation for that, of course. But as far as that goes, I think that pretty much covers everything. Hopefully, it wasn't too confusing. But my whole point of this is don't just open all your bags of paint. Don't go to the field. Don't pot up all your paint right when you get in the morning. And if you have a bunch of paint, maybe try to keep it covered up. Keep it out of the shade. If you don't have a place to store it, keep it in the shade, out of the sun, and that way it can stay more fresh.

A lot of players use those caddies like the ball haulers, and that's great. But sometimes the bottom 200 paint balls out of that never get put into a pod or into a loader or they are getting put into a loader, but they've been sitting there for two hours. So, again, I know this is maybe real nerdy, maybe more technical. A lot of players like to think when they're just practicing or playing. But I guarantee you if you're a back player or you shoot off break and you're really trying to get more kills, definitely try to put more fresh paint into your gun or into your loader. Remember, you always have five to ten paint balls ready to go. So, as you turn and shoot, maybe that first ball was right on point. Maybe the second, the third or fourth or fifth, and you would have got that kill. But instead you balance the player because you just didn't think about that first attack that's been in there for two hours because you just took a lunch break. So, make sure you go ahead and get fresh paint when you’re out there and you go out there and shoot. So, if you have the opportunity, of course.

Other than that, I think I covered everything. If you have any technical questions about paint management, I enjoy talking about it and get real nerdy about it. The drop test, the accuracy test, should you bore size, all that stuff. I love talking about that. If you have any questions, make sure you comment below. I do shoot. This is the die UL-less barrel, and so I do shoot different bore sizes. I do bore size my paint. Again, even out here doing drills, I try to make sure I shoot all this paint and shoot my old pods first and go grab new stuff. That way if I do get a jump in some games, I've got fresh paint. It's not been sitting there for three or four hours between doing drills or whatever the case is when you're out there hanging out, being a staging area all-star. Cool deal.

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