Make This Easy For Yourself: Warm-Up First

It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m riding up the escalator with Glenn.

We are heading into a shoe store to approach some women.

There’s a break in the conversation. He turns to a middle-aged woman on the escalator behind us.

“High five!” he says.

She slaps his hand and a subdued smile comes across her face.

Glenn’s been doing this all day.

Glenn is unstoppable when it comes to women.

I have seen him run circles around the cutest girls imaginable, escalate faster than you think was possible.

He’s had supermodels eating out of the palm of his hand.

But when he’s warming up, he’ll have fun with anyone.

“Do people ever not high five you?” I ask him.

“Of course. You know how many people look at my hand like their hair is going to fall out if they touch it?”

In weekend workshops whenever we take guys out to meet women, during the day or at night, we always have them do warm-ups.

“We’re not going into the club until you ask five different people for directions,” we tell them.

Warm-ups are just interacting with people before you actually commit to an approach. It involves interacting with people in your environment in some way.

Simply asking directions or the time will suffice.

“Can you tell me how to get to Central Park?”

Doing warm-ups gets your body used to being around people. It gets your voice used to talking and builds your confidence a little bit.

“My whole life is a warm-up,” Glenn says. “I’m social where ever I go.”

“If I walk out my house and I see someone wearing a cool hat the second I walk out, I’ll say ¡ÆWow, that’s a cool hat.’ I immediately will say what’s on my mind.”

“If people bump into me on the street, I’ll be funny about it. I’ll say ¡ÆThere’s easier ways to say hi, if you wanted to say hi you didn’t have to push me.'”

“I’ll start asking people for directions. I’ll ask them about trains that don’t exist. I’ll ask them questions that aren’t yes/no answers.”

“I’ll start asking weird questions like ¡ÆHey do you know anywhere around here that sells broccoli.'”

And people warm up to Glenn.

But the purpose of warm-ups is not to get a good reaction from people. They are to get you from being in your head to being in a social mode.

Your mind and body are in a completely different state, Glenn explains.

“When you’re ¡Æin your head’ you’re in your own world,” he says “All you’re doing is hearing yourself think. You’re thinking about stuff that hasn’t happened or that has already happened. Just talking to people helps you to be in the present moment.”

“I want to be used to talking to people, just in a better state of mind so if I see someone I like I will be able to walk up to them without hesitating.”

Ideally, you want to be social all the time. There is almost never a situation when you can’t be social with people. You can always say “Hi, how are you doing.”

However, warm-ups imply that you are taking pro-active steps to go out and meet women and that you want to get your mouth moving before you do so.

I always do warm-ups. And I make sure I attach nothing to the outcome.

I do banter with women. But a lot of times I don’t banter with women when I do warm-ups.

Why?

I want to get used to talking to people without trying. I want to get used to interacting with people without any objective in mind other than just to do it.

And that’s part of the whole point of warm-ups. There is no objective other than just to be social. They are meaningless.

It is being social just for the sake of being social.

And if your mouth has been moving already, interacting with strangers, it makes a huge difference when it comes to approach anxiety.

It’s a ramp up for you to talk to that amazing woman when you see her, rather than starting cold and anti-social.

Glenn is a coach for dating guru Brad P and is available for coaching in NYC.

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posted in Ramp Up