Anatomy of a Tournament Paintball Player!

Paintball is an amazing game for all sorts of reasons, but one of the best reasons to fall in love with the game of paintball is the ability to make paintball anything a player wants to make it! Players looking to get off the couch and enjoy some recreational exercise among friends can simply head to the local field, rent equipment and enjoy an afternoon outside. Shooters in search of the ultimate tactical, force-on-force experience can lock and load with mag-fed paintball gear and operate operationally, and those with a competitive streak can gear up with the latest high-tech tournament paintball equipment, join a team and compete from the local level all the way up to the national and professional ranks with hard work, dedication and experience!

Tournament Paintball Gear

For paintball players interested in starting down the long road to competitive paintball, the first time they see a serious tournament paintball player, they may feel a bit intimidated! All that matching gear with logos all over it with high-tech equipment and a fast-shooting paintball gun can seem overwhelming! But don’t worry, Valken has all the paintball equipment a player will ever need to get serious about competitive paintball, and the knowledge to put a player in exactly the right paintball gear they’ll need to WIN!

A tournament paintball player needs paintball gear that can stand the rigors of sliding, diving, running and shooting – and that can handle all that again and again in all kinds of weather, as modern paintball tournaments challenge a paintball athlete to multiple games per day, not to mention all those practices and scrimmages it’s going to take to get better at the game! Let’s take a look at the Anatomy of a Tournament Player to learn what paintball equipment a serious competitor will need and why they’ll need it!

Paintball Headband – A headband or headwrap is essential for a serious tournament player, not simply for style purposes, as it helps protect the forehead from paintball impacts and, just as importantly, absorbs sweat to keep the goggle foam dry and helps prevent sweat from getting into the player’s eyes!

Paintball Goggles – A high-end set of paintball goggles is critical to tournament success as they’re designed to be extremely comfortable while providing plenty of eye, face and ear protection. Tournament-level thermal anti-fog paintball goggles provide clear vision and maximum air flow, and offer high-tech features like quick-change lenses and even interchangeable face foam to keep a player comfortable and playing at their best, every single game!

Paintball Gloves – While paintball gloves do offer the hands and fingers protection from paintballs, many serious tournament players wear paintball gloves for yet another important reason: to protect the hands while sliding and diving! Sliding and diving on surfaces like astro-turf or rough ground can be rough and even painful on the hands, and sweaty hands don’t hold a paintball gun securely either!

Paintball Jersey – a paintball jersey is more than just a shirt that shows everyone what team a player is on and what, if any, sponsors a team or player may have! A modern paintball jersey is designed with breathable panels to provide maximum air flow, and even padding to the elbows and other critical areas for comfort, agility and performance!

Paintball Pants – much like a paintball jersey, modern paintball pants are modern performance sportswear! Paintball pants offer padded protection for the knees, hips and groin, with adjustable cuffs, pockets for paintball swabs and breathable mesh panels to keep the player inside cool and comfortable!

Paintball Harness – Tournament paintball players need to carry plenty of extra paintballs, but not just any pouch or pod pack will do! Tournament players carry their paintball pods in a tournament paintball harness that wraps securely around the waist and will stay in place through all the sliding, diving, crawling and running a player might do on the paintball field, all while carrying as many extra paintball pods as a player might need, depending on their position on the field!

Paintball Pods – carrying extra paintballs onto the paintball field means plenty of paintball pods! Flick lid paintball pods like Valken flick-lid pods hold around 140 paintballs each and make reloading fast and easy, even with one hand, while shooting!

Cleats – Tournament paintball means quick moves and fast running, often on turf but sometimes in less-than-ideal weather on less-than-ideal playing surfaces! That means traction is critical, and a good set of cleats is important as these will allow a player to move without slipping and sliding!

Paintball Gun – Tournament paintball guns are designed to do a lot of things and do them all very well! A high-end tournament paintball gun, sometimes called a paintball marker, is designed to shoot even the best paintballs, the most brittle tournament quality paintballs, as consistently and accurately as possible without breaking them in the paintball gun and do that upwards of ten shots per second whether it’s hot, cold sunny or raining! A modern tournament paintball gun must also be easy to quickly disassemble for cleaning or maintenance between games should something go wrong, and it had better be lightweight, durable and reliable too! 

Paintball Loader – a tournament player needs a paintball loader for their paintball gun that can keep up with fire rates easily clearing ten shots per second, and ensure a consistent stream of high quality paintballs is fed into the paintball gun to prevent breaks, chops or other problems. A modern paintball loader can feed fast, feed even brittle paint without smashing it to pieces, and do this thousands of rounds per game for days at a time on battery power, all without jamming! Some even offer the ability to convert from low to higher capacity to help a player better fill their role on the paintball field!