- Joined
- May 15, 2025
- Messages
- 30
Hi. I'm Mr. Variety and I'm new here. This will be my first post on this forum and I wanted to introduce myself by adding some of my experiences and tips for picking up girls at the gym. I'd like to preface this by saying that nothing I write consists of absolute rules to follow, but rather guidelines to give a solid foundation to start.
I wanted to post this in the tactics section, but I am too new to this forum to post there. Thanks in advance if an admin would move my thread.
First of all, why the gym? I come from the background of RSD, where we were told not to "shit where we eat," so I was discouraged from approaching women there, and I've always had a mental hang up about this. Later, however, despite the warnings you might hear, I've come to realize the gym is actually one of the best places to meet girls, especially if you are a gym rat like me.
The reasons:
To pick up girls at the gym, there are broadly speaking two approaches, both are unique skillsets and both should be cultivated. Which one you emphasize depends on the gym itself. The first is "Farming" and the second one is "Sniping."
Farming should not be confused with mass approaching. It is cultivating a lot of tiny interactions over time. This would include talking to everyone indiscriminately, being the "social guy" at the gym. You're essentially doing a very low-risk, low-commitment approach to women. Women put their guard down when they see you as just the guy who talks to everyone. The "Farmer" is skilled at "pinging" women, for example asking a trivial question if she's using a piece of equipment, just to establish eye contact. From that brief interaction, he knows, from her attitude, whether to escalate to saying hi and introducing himself briefly, before continuing his workout, or to leave her alone. The danger of relying too much on "Farming" is that you become afraid of escalating sexually and pulling the trigger.
Sniping is more about pulling the trigger. The sniper usually doesn't talk to anyone except hot girls. He goes up and talks to them, and he tries to leave each interaction with a number or a plan to do something. The problem is that since he's socializing is excluded to the most hottest of girls, his intentions are obvious and that might work against him.
The ideal is somewhere in between, and where this in-between is depends on your gym. If you're training at the only gym in your small town, or a close-knitted bodybuilding club, you want to lean toward farming. If you're in a huge commercial chain gym in a major city, you'll need to do more sniping.
Picking up girls where you go regularly needs more finesse than on the street or in a club. Even though I haven't tried, and someone might prove me wrong, I don't think mass-approaching with direct openers is effective in the gym you're training in. It would be absurd to go from one treadmill to the next talking to each girl there while everyone sees what you're doing. While I hate to put this into your head, you don't want to be seen explicitly rejected in a gym.
For this reason, you have to be a little more careful choosing who to walk up to. For this you have to use your social intelligence. You need to invest your "limited approach quota" on women with good energy. There are subtle and some not-so-subtle body language hints as to whether the girl has open energy or closed energy. You'll develop your intuition through experience. If you are unsure, you can "ping" the woman. Pinging is also nice because you don't want to look at a girl too much, and it's really hard to tell how a woman looks, the foundation of her personality, or even her age, without direct eye contact. To ping a girl you can simply ask a brief question so that she acknowledges your existence. If she smiles, laughs or keeps eye contact or otherwise seems interested, you can continue the conversation; if she looks bothered, I would say it's not worth pushing it much further.
Another big cue for approaching her is if she looks around at other people. If someone starts training beside her at the squat rack and she looks briefly to see who it is, she has the sort of energy that's open to people. If she walks around as if she's in a hurry and looking at nobody else, she can be avoided or pinged. You can approach her directly by starting a conversation but you should be advanced enough to know under what circumstances you can do that.
If she looks in your direction when you enter, even for a brief millisecond, that's a good sign; she acknowledges your existence and is prepared for you to say hello. If she looks directly at you, this is no longer a cold approach, and all you have to do is not screw things up.
As I said, indirect openers are the default in gyms. Direct openers are not inherently wrong, but they are used when time is short, and you need to get the message across fast without ambiguity of intention. In a gym you're stuck in a room together in close proximity, if not that day, then for months possibly, so ambiguity of intention is actually something you should embrace. Some of my favorites are:
The best mindset for approaching women in the gym is not "I'm gonna make her like me" or "I want to have sex with her vagina" but instead a place of giving. The best attitude to talk to a girl with is "I'm going to make her laugh." This shifts your focus from self-consciousness on yourself, to her. With this attitude you're more likely to be funny
Okay, you've approached her, now what? When you've had a pleasant conversation it's up to you to suggest exchanging contact details. What I usually do is I tend to make it as low-tension in the beginning. I don't like the role of the guy who picked her up at the gym. I usually try to plant seeds fast in common interests, usually something physical (by the way, have you done yoga?). Most of the times I ask her if she wants to train together some day. When two people who meet at the gym train together at the gym, it's hardly a date. This is a plus, since there are likely to be people around, and it's in both of your interest not to make it too obvious you're setting up something romantic then and there.
So let's say you took her number on the idea of training together. Depending on the length of the interaction or her interest level, you can choose to suggest something different altogether, and she won't mind. Don't get too hung up on your original plans. Be unapologetic that you want to go bowling instead. No woman in the history has said "wait a minute, I thought we agreed on (...) !"
If the interaction was short, you can train together, no problem. Personally I like training dates, as I enjoy training with women. A good workout and a date at the same time, a good use of time! Gym dates are really awesome, you'll learn from women about workout tips, both of you feel good after the workout, and girls will make you push yourself harder. If you're too obsessed with your gym routine to train with someone else I would say get your finger out of your ass. Training together with other women will increase your value in people's eyes, you're letting everyone who's in that day know that day you're not a creep.
Don't do more than two workouts or something fitness-related together in the beginning. Don't get "fitness-friend-zoned" - go immediately to something more intimate after your first workout together.
Some of you might cringe at the idea of having to go to a place where you know some girls you have dated or are dating are going, and you prefer having a place where you can just go and focus on your training, without having to prepare yourself to meet someone you know. But the reality is much less scary than in your head. It's only as awkward as you make it to be. Eventually you'll start training next to girls who "you don't talk to anymore" and it becomes normal to you very fast. A lot of the times it's the girls who decide to switch gyms to avoid discomfort of presence. Just don't be a girl.
Timing and location.
There are no exact rules to follow here. You've probably heard of the 5-second-rule, that you have five seconds to approach a woman upon seeing her, lest you let the anxiety build up and you become overly self-conscious before approaching. In the gym, it doesn't work like that. It's completely fine to delay talking to a girl there. But there are limits.
You want to approach with the least amount of built-up pressure. If you've been training a month, two months, a year, next to a girl without saying a word, of course there's going to be more natural pressure than were you to say hi on the first day upon seeing her. Especially if you've been looking at her for this entire time! (Believe me, they can tell.)
At the other extreme, you can't just stumble into a gym and immediately talk to girls left and right, while she's on the treadmill or during her set, as if there was something urgent; this makes for a lot of pressure, as if something was very important to say, that you had to walk across the entire gym to talk to her.
Therefore time and place to approach needs a bit more finesse in a gym than say a night club, a party or the street. I avoid approaching women from behind, as that makes the approach seem like a big deal. Starting a conversation should be somewhat accidental. A light brush of the stroke, saying hi, a quick comment, or a question. Not a long march across the floor and a tap on the shoulder. I usually approach based on feeling, but usually the prerequisites are: Proximity, good angle (to the side or open), positive body language. She should be aware of my existence before me doing anything else than pinging her. After which, you shouldn't delay the approach for too long, maybe a few minutes to find a good opportunity.
I tend to walk around in the gym a lot and I like to create natural opportunities of talking to women by leaving the area to fill my water bottle and come back, and then start the conversation, as that makes the timing sort of less arbitrary than were I just to start the conversation after a few minutes beside her.
Ideally I like to approach girls when few other people are nearby, it seems to me it's usually more successful this way. If there are a lot of girls around, I prefer not to approach in front of them in case I want to talk to them later, and I don't want to seem like a mass approacher. If there's a lot of guys around, she might be already on-guard and a little uncomfortable, and she might think I'm just flexing in front of my bros. I completely disregard older people. As for what people might think of me, most people are wearing noise-cancellation anyway and if not, assume we know each other when I go up to talk to her. The idea is not to get obviously rejected in front of large crowds. But I'm not against approaching girls in the open to develop your "not give a fuck" muscles.
Clothes and misc tips.
GET RID OF YOUR HEADPHONES. This was a game-changer for me. When you're wearing headphones listening to music, you're disconnecting yourself from your surroundings and you have to rely entirely on Sniper approaches. It's harder to approach women as you have to shift your energy from listening to music to talking to people. A lot of guys drink pre-workouts or coffee and put on heavy metal music with noise cancellation on. While that helps you lock into your workout, your edges become sharper and your energy more uncalibrated. Take off your headphones and stop consuming stimulants, and your energy will be more open and mellow. When you have headphones on, the threshold of talking to women is doubled tenfold. If you have to take off your headphones to talk to a girl, it suddenly becomes much more of a big deal than were you just saying things spontaneously. It also becomes this weird dilemma on when to put back your headphones, making it more weird for re-initiating a conversation later on after a set or something. When I stopped listening to music while training, the women I "stumbled into" in gyms skyrocketed.
You can wear a tank-top if you want, but it probably does more harm than good in terms of pressure. Girls can look at guys in tank tops and think they're hot, and that's of course good, but it's better to try to not make a big deal of your physique, to get rid of the pick up vibe. Tight-sitting long sleeves reveal your physique while ostensibly hiding it. It's probably your best bet for most gyms.
TALK TO EVERYONE. Talk to old ladies, your fellow gym bro. Don't see them as mere tools to gain the status of social guy so that you can instrumentally use them to talk to girls with less pressure. Learn to understand that there's actually really valuable to get to know a large range of people. Who knows? Maybe the gym bro will become a good friend? If you have trained in the same gym for ages and haven't talked to the people around you, the best time to start is today. I know it will be weird, but it's better for your growth long term to do that instead of taking the "easy" route and start anew.
In conclusion, what really is important here is to manage pressure. Pressure-control is increasingly more important the smaller and tight-knitted the gym is, but is relevant in all gyms. Finally, I'd like to end on a note that even though I've been advocating for being careful, the only way to learn and progress is to take risks. I routinely approach women despite "knowing better" because I constantly want to try to disprove my own rigid ideas or validate them. The only way you learn is through action, not inaction, so lean towards action if in doubt.
Lastly, some people in my gym (and other places), I presume, think of me as a highly toxic man. Guys have called me a "bad man" and girls accuse me of talking to lots of girls in the gym, and you know what, I am okay with that. When you get to a certain level of charisma, you can lean into and own the fact that yeah, you're a little toxic. There's nothing inherently bad about people thinking of you as a skirt chaser, so you can stop having to walk on eggshells. It doesn't really matter whether you're toxic or not, what people are interested in is if you have good energy, radiant and likable, if you take genuine interest in other people and have real warmth toward them.
Mr Variety
I wanted to post this in the tactics section, but I am too new to this forum to post there. Thanks in advance if an admin would move my thread.
First of all, why the gym? I come from the background of RSD, where we were told not to "shit where we eat," so I was discouraged from approaching women there, and I've always had a mental hang up about this. Later, however, despite the warnings you might hear, I've come to realize the gym is actually one of the best places to meet girls, especially if you are a gym rat like me.
The reasons:
- Women who train in gyms are more likely to have health-focused, self-development attitudes than a random girl on the street or in a night club. If you have that too, your value in her eyes will be automatically higher, since you have things in common.
- You are in the gym anyway, doing your thing. It's better to approach women when you're doing something else in contrast to going out some place for the sole purpose of approaching women.
- Girls who work out are hot. hnng!
To pick up girls at the gym, there are broadly speaking two approaches, both are unique skillsets and both should be cultivated. Which one you emphasize depends on the gym itself. The first is "Farming" and the second one is "Sniping."
Farming should not be confused with mass approaching. It is cultivating a lot of tiny interactions over time. This would include talking to everyone indiscriminately, being the "social guy" at the gym. You're essentially doing a very low-risk, low-commitment approach to women. Women put their guard down when they see you as just the guy who talks to everyone. The "Farmer" is skilled at "pinging" women, for example asking a trivial question if she's using a piece of equipment, just to establish eye contact. From that brief interaction, he knows, from her attitude, whether to escalate to saying hi and introducing himself briefly, before continuing his workout, or to leave her alone. The danger of relying too much on "Farming" is that you become afraid of escalating sexually and pulling the trigger.
Sniping is more about pulling the trigger. The sniper usually doesn't talk to anyone except hot girls. He goes up and talks to them, and he tries to leave each interaction with a number or a plan to do something. The problem is that since he's socializing is excluded to the most hottest of girls, his intentions are obvious and that might work against him.
The ideal is somewhere in between, and where this in-between is depends on your gym. If you're training at the only gym in your small town, or a close-knitted bodybuilding club, you want to lean toward farming. If you're in a huge commercial chain gym in a major city, you'll need to do more sniping.
Picking up girls where you go regularly needs more finesse than on the street or in a club. Even though I haven't tried, and someone might prove me wrong, I don't think mass-approaching with direct openers is effective in the gym you're training in. It would be absurd to go from one treadmill to the next talking to each girl there while everyone sees what you're doing. While I hate to put this into your head, you don't want to be seen explicitly rejected in a gym.
For this reason, you have to be a little more careful choosing who to walk up to. For this you have to use your social intelligence. You need to invest your "limited approach quota" on women with good energy. There are subtle and some not-so-subtle body language hints as to whether the girl has open energy or closed energy. You'll develop your intuition through experience. If you are unsure, you can "ping" the woman. Pinging is also nice because you don't want to look at a girl too much, and it's really hard to tell how a woman looks, the foundation of her personality, or even her age, without direct eye contact. To ping a girl you can simply ask a brief question so that she acknowledges your existence. If she smiles, laughs or keeps eye contact or otherwise seems interested, you can continue the conversation; if she looks bothered, I would say it's not worth pushing it much further.
Another big cue for approaching her is if she looks around at other people. If someone starts training beside her at the squat rack and she looks briefly to see who it is, she has the sort of energy that's open to people. If she walks around as if she's in a hurry and looking at nobody else, she can be avoided or pinged. You can approach her directly by starting a conversation but you should be advanced enough to know under what circumstances you can do that.
If she looks in your direction when you enter, even for a brief millisecond, that's a good sign; she acknowledges your existence and is prepared for you to say hello. If she looks directly at you, this is no longer a cold approach, and all you have to do is not screw things up.
As I said, indirect openers are the default in gyms. Direct openers are not inherently wrong, but they are used when time is short, and you need to get the message across fast without ambiguity of intention. In a gym you're stuck in a room together in close proximity, if not that day, then for months possibly, so ambiguity of intention is actually something you should embrace. Some of my favorites are:
- "Hi, how is it going?"
- "How is your workout going?"
- "Hi, I haven't seen you before, are you new here?"
- "Hi, I'm new here."
- "You look focused, are you competing for something?"
- "Are you a cheerleader?
The best mindset for approaching women in the gym is not "I'm gonna make her like me" or "I want to have sex with her vagina" but instead a place of giving. The best attitude to talk to a girl with is "I'm going to make her laugh." This shifts your focus from self-consciousness on yourself, to her. With this attitude you're more likely to be funny
Okay, you've approached her, now what? When you've had a pleasant conversation it's up to you to suggest exchanging contact details. What I usually do is I tend to make it as low-tension in the beginning. I don't like the role of the guy who picked her up at the gym. I usually try to plant seeds fast in common interests, usually something physical (by the way, have you done yoga?). Most of the times I ask her if she wants to train together some day. When two people who meet at the gym train together at the gym, it's hardly a date. This is a plus, since there are likely to be people around, and it's in both of your interest not to make it too obvious you're setting up something romantic then and there.
So let's say you took her number on the idea of training together. Depending on the length of the interaction or her interest level, you can choose to suggest something different altogether, and she won't mind. Don't get too hung up on your original plans. Be unapologetic that you want to go bowling instead. No woman in the history has said "wait a minute, I thought we agreed on (...) !"
If the interaction was short, you can train together, no problem. Personally I like training dates, as I enjoy training with women. A good workout and a date at the same time, a good use of time! Gym dates are really awesome, you'll learn from women about workout tips, both of you feel good after the workout, and girls will make you push yourself harder. If you're too obsessed with your gym routine to train with someone else I would say get your finger out of your ass. Training together with other women will increase your value in people's eyes, you're letting everyone who's in that day know that day you're not a creep.
Don't do more than two workouts or something fitness-related together in the beginning. Don't get "fitness-friend-zoned" - go immediately to something more intimate after your first workout together.
Some of you might cringe at the idea of having to go to a place where you know some girls you have dated or are dating are going, and you prefer having a place where you can just go and focus on your training, without having to prepare yourself to meet someone you know. But the reality is much less scary than in your head. It's only as awkward as you make it to be. Eventually you'll start training next to girls who "you don't talk to anymore" and it becomes normal to you very fast. A lot of the times it's the girls who decide to switch gyms to avoid discomfort of presence. Just don't be a girl.
Timing and location.
There are no exact rules to follow here. You've probably heard of the 5-second-rule, that you have five seconds to approach a woman upon seeing her, lest you let the anxiety build up and you become overly self-conscious before approaching. In the gym, it doesn't work like that. It's completely fine to delay talking to a girl there. But there are limits.
You want to approach with the least amount of built-up pressure. If you've been training a month, two months, a year, next to a girl without saying a word, of course there's going to be more natural pressure than were you to say hi on the first day upon seeing her. Especially if you've been looking at her for this entire time! (Believe me, they can tell.)
At the other extreme, you can't just stumble into a gym and immediately talk to girls left and right, while she's on the treadmill or during her set, as if there was something urgent; this makes for a lot of pressure, as if something was very important to say, that you had to walk across the entire gym to talk to her.
Therefore time and place to approach needs a bit more finesse in a gym than say a night club, a party or the street. I avoid approaching women from behind, as that makes the approach seem like a big deal. Starting a conversation should be somewhat accidental. A light brush of the stroke, saying hi, a quick comment, or a question. Not a long march across the floor and a tap on the shoulder. I usually approach based on feeling, but usually the prerequisites are: Proximity, good angle (to the side or open), positive body language. She should be aware of my existence before me doing anything else than pinging her. After which, you shouldn't delay the approach for too long, maybe a few minutes to find a good opportunity.
I tend to walk around in the gym a lot and I like to create natural opportunities of talking to women by leaving the area to fill my water bottle and come back, and then start the conversation, as that makes the timing sort of less arbitrary than were I just to start the conversation after a few minutes beside her.
Ideally I like to approach girls when few other people are nearby, it seems to me it's usually more successful this way. If there are a lot of girls around, I prefer not to approach in front of them in case I want to talk to them later, and I don't want to seem like a mass approacher. If there's a lot of guys around, she might be already on-guard and a little uncomfortable, and she might think I'm just flexing in front of my bros. I completely disregard older people. As for what people might think of me, most people are wearing noise-cancellation anyway and if not, assume we know each other when I go up to talk to her. The idea is not to get obviously rejected in front of large crowds. But I'm not against approaching girls in the open to develop your "not give a fuck" muscles.
Clothes and misc tips.
GET RID OF YOUR HEADPHONES. This was a game-changer for me. When you're wearing headphones listening to music, you're disconnecting yourself from your surroundings and you have to rely entirely on Sniper approaches. It's harder to approach women as you have to shift your energy from listening to music to talking to people. A lot of guys drink pre-workouts or coffee and put on heavy metal music with noise cancellation on. While that helps you lock into your workout, your edges become sharper and your energy more uncalibrated. Take off your headphones and stop consuming stimulants, and your energy will be more open and mellow. When you have headphones on, the threshold of talking to women is doubled tenfold. If you have to take off your headphones to talk to a girl, it suddenly becomes much more of a big deal than were you just saying things spontaneously. It also becomes this weird dilemma on when to put back your headphones, making it more weird for re-initiating a conversation later on after a set or something. When I stopped listening to music while training, the women I "stumbled into" in gyms skyrocketed.
You can wear a tank-top if you want, but it probably does more harm than good in terms of pressure. Girls can look at guys in tank tops and think they're hot, and that's of course good, but it's better to try to not make a big deal of your physique, to get rid of the pick up vibe. Tight-sitting long sleeves reveal your physique while ostensibly hiding it. It's probably your best bet for most gyms.
TALK TO EVERYONE. Talk to old ladies, your fellow gym bro. Don't see them as mere tools to gain the status of social guy so that you can instrumentally use them to talk to girls with less pressure. Learn to understand that there's actually really valuable to get to know a large range of people. Who knows? Maybe the gym bro will become a good friend? If you have trained in the same gym for ages and haven't talked to the people around you, the best time to start is today. I know it will be weird, but it's better for your growth long term to do that instead of taking the "easy" route and start anew.
In conclusion, what really is important here is to manage pressure. Pressure-control is increasingly more important the smaller and tight-knitted the gym is, but is relevant in all gyms. Finally, I'd like to end on a note that even though I've been advocating for being careful, the only way to learn and progress is to take risks. I routinely approach women despite "knowing better" because I constantly want to try to disprove my own rigid ideas or validate them. The only way you learn is through action, not inaction, so lean towards action if in doubt.
Lastly, some people in my gym (and other places), I presume, think of me as a highly toxic man. Guys have called me a "bad man" and girls accuse me of talking to lots of girls in the gym, and you know what, I am okay with that. When you get to a certain level of charisma, you can lean into and own the fact that yeah, you're a little toxic. There's nothing inherently bad about people thinking of you as a skirt chaser, so you can stop having to walk on eggshells. It doesn't really matter whether you're toxic or not, what people are interested in is if you have good energy, radiant and likable, if you take genuine interest in other people and have real warmth toward them.
Mr Variety
Last edited:
