In the first installment of “Optimizing Your Womanizing”, we discussed the value of targeting a field of play that has a favorable sex ratio.
In this post, we’ll talk about the value of physique to augmenting your game.
A man’s physique is less crucial to his romantic fortunes than a woman’s physique is to her’s. This discrepancy is a natural outcome of the biological differences between the sexes. A woman’s mate value is connected predominately to her window of prime fertility, and by proxy to those physical cues — a pretty face, a slim hourglass figure — that alert men to her capacity to gestate the next generation.
Men’s mate value, in contrast, is determined by a number of factors, physical fitness being but one of them, and not even the most important one (at least for 29 days out of the month). And we see this playing out in the real world; the sight of an unattractive, rich man with a trophy wife, or an out-of-shape, charismatic hipster with a cute girlfriend, is far commoner than the inverse.
Nevertheless, it is better, all else equal, to look physically masculine than not. This series, after all, is about optimizing your womanizing, which means maximizing your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses until you have crafted yourself into a complete package Casanova.
Bang for buck, pump for fuck, weightlifting is the king of physique transformation protocols. No other exercise comes close to the improvements that performing the equivalent of dragging a large animal carcass across the veldt will make to your body and your attitude. The Iron Pill even provides anti-aging benefits.
(Endurance exercise has its place, but studies show greater physiological rewards from resistance exercise.)
And, like game, nearly everyone will see improvements from weightlifting. There are few exceptions to this rule.
(Even in those few randomized studies that find nonresponders to resistance training, the number is typically small – on the order of fewer than 20% of total participants, the subjects tilted female, and the time period too short. So, worst case scenario, one out of five men and women won’t get much muscle growth from doing light weight knee raises for three weeks. Good news: 80% of you will see results within only three weeks! Better news, the worst case scenario from this one study is likely not indicative of real world results from resistance training for the great majority of people.)
(Those who want to disingenuously argue that resistance training response is heritable should remember that longevity is heritable as well, but has been dramatically increasing for the past century. Environmental input matters.)
No, not every man will see equal improvements in the gym, nor look like Franco Columbu, but there will be noticeable improvement. And sometimes a little improvement is all it takes to open a man’s world to a wider vista of vagina.
I won’t discuss exercise form here. It’s relevant, but you can find plenty of YouTube clips showing how to do various compound and isolation movements. Sticking to the basics of resistance training, here’s a list of answers to typical beginner questions:
– You will gain just as much size from hypertrophy (i.e., “bodybuilding”) training as you will from strength training. If size and leanness are your goals, you don’t have to do high weight, low repetition sets like powerlifters do. If strength is your goal, then you’ll want to incorporate more high weight, low rep strength building exercises.
(Hypertrophy training also results in strength gains; just not as much as the strength gains from pure strength training. The difference isn’t big.)
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– The optimal combination of sets and reps and weight is, wait for it, somewhere in between low sets/high reps/low weight and high sets/low reps/high weight. The former, geared to hypertrophy, and the latter, geared to strength gain, both result in approximately the SAME AMOUNT of muscle growth. A 3/10/10RM (3 sets of 10 repetitions each at a weight you can lift for ten consecutive repetitions) routine will give you the same muscle growth as a 10/3/3RM (10 sets of 3 reps each at the maximum weight you can lift for three consecutive repetitions) routine.
Since women can’t really tell the difference between a man’s size and strength, and don’t really care, most men who aren’t competitive lifters but are competitive splitters will prefer the hypertrophy protocol.
Men who care about both size and strength (they’re correlated, but not precise mirrors) will want to devise a lifting plan that includes both high rep/low weight and low rep/high weight. In the long run, muscle response is highest when your body has to adapt to different loading schemes. A mix of hypertrophy-based and strength-based training will create a synergistic muscle response.
Therefore, the ideal lifting routine would be something like 3/8-12/8-12RM: Three sets of eight to twelve reps at a weight that you can lift for eight to twelve consecutive reps. Every third workout, substitute this protocol with a strength-based, higher weight circuit.
Another option, and a popular one, is to simply mix the two systems into one workout session. So you would start your exercise with a lower (60-80% of maximum) weight at higher reps (8-12) for the first two sets, and then finish up at a high (90-100% of maximum) weight at lower reps (1-4) for the third set.
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– Another advantage of the hypertrophy routine is the time savings. More rest is needed between sets of very high weight, less rest for sets of low or medium weight. At 1/3 the time, you can achieve the same muscle growth as you could from a strength training system.
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– Injuries happen. To minimize the chance and severity of injuries, favor a hypertrophy routine over a strength-building one. Most injuries occur under the stress of very heavy loads.
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– Full body, compound exercises – squat and deadlift being the two most representative – are better than isolation exercises (e.g., bicep curls) but not for the reasons gym rats think. Studies find that “big” lifting exercises don’t alter the hormonal profile any differently than do smaller movement exercises. The primary advantage of compound movements is that you can hit a lot more muscle per rep, and you can do heavier weights which, when controlling the number of reps, will generally produce more muscle growth than lighter weights. The ideal is a mix of compound and isolation exercises.
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– The downward motion of a lift (known as the eccentric phase) is perhaps more critical to muscle growth than the contraction movement. It’s during the “deceleration” part of the lifting movement that muscle damage accrues, and from that damage the body heals itself by building the muscle up. Injury is also more likely during a point in the eccentric motion, so take care to lower your weights (or your body, if you’re doing squats) slowly and deliberately.
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– The average man will see observable results in as little as six weeks. Six months later, girls will take notice. A year later, he’ll be a new man. Three years later, he’ll intimidate other men. Now, you can train three years for a marathon and get nothing from it but a participation ribbon and noodle arms, or you can lift for three years and at least look like a physically active man.
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– All you need is 2-4 workout sessions per week, 30-60 minutes each. Hell, you’ll see positive results going just ONCE per week for FIFTEEN MINUTES. In fact, it’s better to err on the side of training too little than training too much.
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– Steroids work. Most men won’t need them. People who demonize testosterone replacement therapy have a secret fear of masculinity.
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– Here’s a good list of the top strength and health supplements for men. If you only buy three supplements, make them whey protein, creatine, and magnesium citrate.
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We’ve reached the end of this post. Psst lean closer, I’m gonna tell you a secret…
The times of my life when I slew pussy like the Quim Reaper were times when I slacked off at the gym. At my physically weakest, my pussy pioneer skills never left me. I haven’t seen much of a connection between my muscle strength/size and my harem size. Yeah, sure I get more looks from girls, and more playful arm squeezes, when I’m fitter, but the true test of a man’s seductive prowess is the bang. A man still has to approach and charm a girl to her final surrender. And on that measure, my close rate was independent of my bicep circumference. The weight room did not hold my hand on the way to the bedroom.
So why did I write this post?
Because the evidence that the Law of Iron holds for every man is too great to wave away. The Law of Iron states:
Every man is a better man when he’s stronger rather than weaker.
A strengthened body strengthens the mind.
Looking and feeling stronger imbues a man with that aura of confidence so alluring to women.
Character, Fortitude, Confidence. That’s the Law of Iron.
I don’t know how much better my total to-date notch count would be had my gym time been more consistent and less interrupted by injury or laziness. Maybe much better, happy as that is to contemplate. I do know that, during those gym down times, my boldness and no-fucks-given attitude took me a lot farther with women than my lack of muscle definition pushed me away from women.
That’s the core lesson of the Law of Iron, right there. Boldness. Weightlifting will benefit introverted men the most, which is most of the men who seek game advice, because the confidence and masculine attitude that flows from muscle development will nudge men closer to women and to interacting with women. It isn’t the muscles that will make a man a great slayer of poon, it’s the boldness and cocksureness that follows from lifting and inevitably enshrouds his personality.
PS: Lyle McDonald’s Body Recomposition website is a valuable resource of exercise and diet information.
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