Pro Talk Episode 1: Pro Paintball Tips and answer to your Submitted Questions!

Hey, guys. John here of Pro Edge Paintball and AC Dallas. This is Matt Jackson here, professional paintball team AC Dallas.

The Jackson Brothers.

We are doing our first video of hopefully a series of videos, of talk, answering your questions, give us a little background information about our experience and just help those newer players. Let's say you're 15 years old, 25 years old, you're getting into tournaments or you want to get more involved in competitive style paintball. We're going to try to bring you guys some videos, answer your questions and give you a little insight on what it takes, what it took, what not. So, dive in real quick, a little bit about us. We are Jackson Brothers, John and Matt. We get that question a hundred times a day for an event. And we've been playing since 1998.

Matt, Fuzz is the shorter one, John's the taller one.

Yeah, I'm a chubby one, too.

Chubby or slower, balding a little bit. And the sweet hair guy over here. We've been playing paintball since 1998, so we're pretty old. And we've been playing paintball 20 years or so. We played national events since 2003. We were at our first PSP World Cup in Orlando, Florida I think it was Disney World.

The World World of sports when they used to do it at the Disney Conflux.

Yeah.
So, it's cool. So, some of those players have been around. They know where that was. And fast forward 17 years, we are now playing our fifth year of professional paintball. We play for professional paintball team AC Dallas out of Dallas, Texas, owned and operated by Mr. Greg Paulie. So we play with TJ Danaer, Ryan Hall,  BJ. Heninberg, and-.
Logan Dyer. Yeah, Logan.
So, small crew. But yeah, been around for a while, so a little bit about us. So before we get started on this, I want to make sure we say this every video. What questions do you have for a pro paintball player? If you are trying to get into paintball, into paintball in general, literally, I was 12 years old, plus was 10 here when we started.

Single mom raised us, got us into paintball. So we're going to talk about that. But, if you're new to paintball and you want to get into the competitive side, the tournament side, let us know. If you have specific questions, don't think any question is too stupid or too small. We are here to try to give you at least our opinion. We're not saying this right or wrong, but we have a lot of paintball experience. We love talking paintball. We do it every day. We can try to give you a little insight. Like I said, help me answer questions. Help me get more players involved in this and see what it takes. Like I said, if you have any questions, go ahead and comment below, please. Just don't be afraid. If you don't feel comfortable posting it online, you can hit us up on Instagram. My Instagram is @JohnJackson22. @johnjackson_22. John Jackson paintball, maybe. Email?

Email me John@prohpaintball.com.

I got that one for sure. My Instagram @fuzzy Jackson. Message me on there. Any questions you guys have, we'll figure it out. Just think of it as perspective, different perspective, pro perspective, the Jackson perspective. Maybe we call it that. I don't know we'll call it that. Anything and everything. Honestly, paintball related, paintball affecting your life, things like that in a sense, too. I think it's good to talk about all that stuff because it's all intertwined when you start getting into the competitive world of it.

So, all right, let's get started here. I've got some questions written down that we've had. I've been reaching out to some local players on my Instagram and stuff to see if we can answer any questions for you guys. We're going to start pretty basic for our first video. First question, how did we get into paintball? How do we get into paintball? What got us into it? How did we get started or whatnot? I'll start it off. But, Fuzz and I both played, I think it was a birthday party our first time.

Yeah, birthday party.

A friend of ours invited us to go play a birthday party in the woods, and we were terrified.
It's absolutely terrifying. I was 10 years old, 12 years old, and I was a pretty small 10-year-old. So the idea of getting shot with a paintball was probably not the most exciting thing to want to go and experience. So, I probably wore six layers. I know for sure.
I wore winter coveralls, the winter hunting ones with the zip up in the middle. I had some shirts on, sweatpants underneath it. I think we were up the entire day. Never shot anybody.
No, not one.
Surrender probably a couple of times. Had a great time.

Shot probably like 300 paintballs.

Total together.

Total, yeah.
Had an amazing time. Loved it, was hooked forever. So, thank you for that guy. We'll say guy that got us involved in paintball and gave us a chance. After that, it was game on. Like I said, we played in the woods for the first time. I know some of y'all don't know what that means. So, the things that are green and brown and stuff that grow out of the woods, trees, sometimes you have them in your yard.
We say this because some of our buddies are terrified to play in the woods. A lot of these new tournament players out there, they're like, man, there's like mosquitoes and stuff. Like, how do you hide behind a tree? And you're like, bro, you got to get good at this stuff. This is part of what teaches you. It gives you your character on the tournament field and stuff. So, yeah, that's how we got started. Birthday party.

And then, of course, we probably had one of our own birthday parties a couple of times. We had a chance to just multiple birthday parties, rented all the gear, all that stuff.
Case of paint was $115 a case for 2000 paintballs. But we couldn't afford that.

No, a lot of times we would buy a 500 round bag and see if we could make that last as long as we could to be able to try to play as much as we could. But, realistically, the same thing I would say most players kind of start off doing. You go with a friend, a birthday party, and then you rent guns for however long it takes for you to get hooked or hate it. I don't know. Sometimes that happens.
But, I'm sure if we took a poll on Facebook how many people got into paintball because of birthday party, probably be pretty high. All right, so second question here. What style did we grow up playing?
Kind of answered a little bit. Yeah, a lot of woods. And so woods fields, if you've never played in the woods, of course there's the paintball scenarios, right, paintball scenarios. Think of it as like a mass game of hundreds of people versus hundreds of people in a large scale field. And sometimes the woods fields are actually just straight woods.

Sometimes it's going to be towns, sometimes it's going to be buildings inside the woods and stuff like that. Right. So that's like, what we grew up on was the woods plus, like, a mixture of buildings in the woods.
Oh, like our speed ball field. Yeah, like our speed ball field was just flat plywood. Like, now you guys grew up, you know what an air-ball field is, or the tube. You might not even know what some people call it hyperpipe or hyper tube. We didn't even have like, our Hyperball. We didn't really have that at the first Seal we ever played at. They didn't have compressed air. I forgot they didn't even have compressed air. When we started playing. We had CO2 tanks and our little spider paintball guns, which probably got those year down the road. So, we started playing woods. Woods and really creamed up at some point. Somebody labeled us Rambo and Rambo Jr. We may have had walkie talkies and earpieces, possibly.
I mean, not upgrades.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, communication, right. If you ever watch this play, right? But then soon after that, Fuzz got a job at another local field because he was too young to work, I guess, at the one I was at. And so mom Saturday morning would drop us off at two paintball fields, but his was not going to say way cooler.
But it was different at the time. It was cooler to us because we had played for a little bit in the woods. And this other field had the Hyperball tubing. And we've hear this a lot. It's like the tubing getting shot was like scarier. So, it sounds different than the trees getting shot or brush getting shot.

So, for us at the time, being pretty young, it was like this cool thing in a sense. There's like this cool factor to it. So, yeah, my field was the cool field that I started at. And John was basically at the field that we first started with a lot of the woods, kind of a different crowd. So same thing, kind of like my field. It's tanks paintball out in Houston and be considered Katie, Texas, I guess it would be, had a lot of hybrid ball tubing and like no woods. So, it's like the exact opposite type of field.

And we always played to go into this a little bit, we always played competitive sports like junior high school. We were always pretty competitive and tried to know, stay outdoor, to be active. And so the woods was cool. But, whenever we went over to this other field, that's when we first saw our ever tournament. Like our first we went and watched our first three man tournament. We didn't know that was a thing. The closest we ever got where we had the doctors come out to the woodsball field and they had angels and they were awesome. And they could afford to buy the $115 case of paint and shoot case after case.
And we're like, they had their own compressed air tanks to fill their compressed Air tanks.

Mind blow, electronic hoppers. I didn't know what that was. That was awesome. And so, we knew that this tournament style competitive side existed. And then when he started working at the other field, we saw it firsthand and we watched the first three men. I remember Tank. You guys have been in Texas and we're in Bonneville for a long time. Some of the older guys, you know who Tank is, has been around for a long time. But he is to credit getting us into the tournament site. He gave us opportunity.

Him and his wife and his family were super like, hey, come check this out. Come watch us. I remember it was freezing cold at the turn. I don't know why I remember that. Because he gave us his jacket, whatever. And so we went and watched that. And like I said, we always played sports. So, it's like an easy, I don't know, whatever, easy segue into like, oh, this is competitive. We got two people here.
There's a structured version of this rather than just like the lawless woodsball where it's like you and the woods deal versus other team.
But, hold up.

We used to run around in the woods in our own camouflage before small. Oh, yeah. And it's not going to go over real well with some people. We used to shoot stuff in the woods with BB Guns. We'll leave it at that. Sometimes each other, sometimes targets and stuff. But this is where we started, shoot BB Guns. We were much younger. So, where we lived, the apartment complex, we were able to just shoot stuff. So, we've always been shooting stuff. I did archery. Both of us did archery when we were much younger because we live north of like North Dallas area, middle of nowhere. And so we're outside quite much. So, we entertained each other, that's for sure. But anyway, so woods was fun. We played all that stuff with shooting stuff. And then we see this, we're like, All right, cool. Let's get going. Anyway, let's get a little bit about us on that one. And so we're talking about getting guns. So, next question I have here is, How do we afford to play? So, like I said, we were super young, single mom raising us. And like we said, I know we said this already, but Fuzz started working in a field. We started playing and mom's like, Oh, this is expensive.

The $115 kids are paying was just not... It wasn't in the realm of possibility as far as that being achievable. And like I said, sustainable for both of us playing as much as we wanted to play. We were always playing together.

Like a lot of you guys know out there? We got kids out there and he's like, All right, we'll just go play paintball today. And you got nine kids and you, Thomas Taylor. I mean, it's a million dollars to go play paintball.
It'll add up really fast if you're doing it consistently, right.

And so mom was like, hey, sorry, not sorry, but you have to go get a job. You have to do this. And so that's when I started working at the local paintball field, the very first one, paintball challenge. I have to respect those guys. They're still friends today.
Let me volunteer at the field for a little bit. Yeah, volunteer. And it wasn't like a paid thing. I think I got paid in paint.
Four paint walls probably because it was worth it at that time.

Which, of course, has a dollar value, right. But, at the same time, that's not money getting paid. So when I had the opportunity to move to the other place and actually get paid, it was the idea of transitioning into this cooler type field. I think.
Those are just our first jobs.
Ever, though. It was. That's my first job.

Yeah.

Yeah. Transitioning into this cooler field with a paycheck. And of course, generally speaking, if you do work at a paintball place, you can have some type of discount, right. You have some type of employee thing or the field does this and it allows you to make it more affordable just by you having connections, right.

Yeah. That helped a lot. We started working at it. We get a question like, Man, paintball is expensive. Absolutely. I understand that. I own a store now. We see it every day. We talk to moms, kids, dads, everybody. I mean, kids want to save up their lunch money and mom's like, Hey, you don't have any money. And moms like, hey, how much money? So, they do what they can, mow lawns, whatever they can. So how do we afford to play? We got jobs and we worked. So we would play on Saturdays a lot of times, I think, and play. I think we only play like once a month, maybe probably once a month to get started if I remember right.

The biggest thing I remember is once we really got into it, it was always the thing where we would basically work. We would work Saturday and Sunday, say four weekends in a month. We work Saturday, Sunday of the first weekend, work Saturday of the next weekend, play Sunday, work Saturday, Sunday of the next weekend, and then play the following Sunday. And that's how we made it. That's how we afforded it with, like I say this, our 14-year-old paychecks.
I remember Uncle would come out, he balled out. He bald out. He was like, Yo, boys, we're buying a case of paychecks.
Cases on me.

We had a Raptors and a Paintball gun. We had spiders. And so to answer your question too about our first guns and stuff. Christmas one year, Mom says, All right. I think it was Christmas. I remember we picked it up in APG magazine. There wasn't the Internet back then, just so you know.
We're aging ourselves with this. The more this conversation goes on.

We weren't shopping online on Amazon to buy this stuff. And so we're like, or proedgepb.com. Plug. We were shopping around and we went to this local traders village. This place is like a flea market. So, they had a little retail store and we went in there and mom's like, look, you're getting paintball stuff and this is it. I remember that Christmas is when we got the add on stuff like the packs and the remote hoses.
Some fancy hoppers.
Adjustable stock.
For my spider. I mean, don't tell them that stuff.
CP flamed drop-forward BJ. Ceramic 14-inch barrel. I'd still recommend the Barrel if you can find one.
I forgot about that. We got barrels. And we got the stuff. And so mom's like, look, this is it. I did what you got to get started. A spider was $250. You can buy them now for like 65 dollars. And I remember I bought them from a good friend of mine still now John Perry at paintball, Bonanza, paintball gear store, Paintball gear store and a flea market in Houston. And so, we bought them and that was it. We had those guns for, I don't remember. We were super young, but probably two years or three years. We had spiders at least for two and
A half, three years, something like that. It was definitely a good length of time.

I think we started playing tournaments when we were 15 and stuff. We got started. We played a lot in the woods. We played both places. We did all kinds of stuff and mixed it up. We're looking to afford to play paintball. I recommend working on a field, save your money, be nice, do your chores. It stinks sometimes, but if you guys are really getting into it, if you're younger players out there. Luckily, it is a little less expensive nowadays. A case of paint anywhere from $35, $45 a case up to $75, $85 a case depending on where you're playing and the quality you're buying. Guns are way better quality now, so hopefully you can get started pretty good. But it does take time. We rented guns for probably quite a while before we.
Actually, I think we played for about a year almost before. It was probably a little bit less than a year before we bought our own equipment. I'll never forget this, our mom's mentality, she'll occasionally be in the store and hear mom talk about it, and she has the same speech that she does all the time. It's scripted. But she tells them she wanted to make sure that we wanted to do it enough where she could spend the money and not regret it in a sense. She's like, Look, my kids are their kids. They're going to get into this hobby and this little fad and then drop it in two months. And I'm going to be out all this money because I can't sell this thing, right. So, she made us rent guns and experience all of the things that you start off playing and getting shot in the neck and- Oh, dude. -playing in the cold.

I was getting smoked in the neck this one time. If I remember right, it was off just like a piece of wood. It splintered into him. He's like, I don't know if he cried, but he was not having a good time. And he was just like, Yo, I'm done. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I remember one time he's crawling through the woods and he goes through ants. And this is all before he owned our own equipment. Rough day. So, he's like, Go through, you get minutes and I just stopped mid game and I'm like, little bro, we're going to watch out for him. We're getting probably pumped by everybody else and just getting ants off of him. He's just like not fun. Pretty over this. This is not fun. You cannot do this. This is not good. But we had each other and so we continue to play.

So, we're going to try to just do like three or four questions a week, check back every Monday. It might be a little abrupt ending here, but again, we won't want these videos 15 minutes or so. We want to try to cut them off and make it a weekly thing that we can put out there and not go on too long.

So, hopefully that at least gets you a little insight on us, a little fun, chat, stuff like that, and hopefully gets some of you newer players out there like someone inside like, Oh, look, I'm not the only one struggling here. I'm not the only one that doesn't eat lunch at school every other day or whatever to save 20 bucks for paintball that weekend or whatever it is. Whatever you guys need, we're here to answer your questions. Make sure to comment below. Thank you so much for watching. Please, if you enjoyed this at all, hit the like video, hit like on the video, and please go down there and subscribe my YouTube channel for the Pro Edge, Pro Edge website and everything. We have tech videos every Tuesday. We do product reviews every Thursday. Hopefully, you're going to start with some pro tips on Fridays being ambitious here, but hopefully I can do some pro tips from the local field and everything and put those out there. And then, of course, Monday afternoon pro chat chat. What would you say?
The Jackson perspective?
Sounds okay, but - Sounds a little ego ish. I mean - Whatever. I don't know. He's got cocky. I mean.

Anyways. All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. Make sure you check back next Monday. See you guys next time. Thanks.