Since I began coaching, one question continues to become more and more prevalent: “I’m new to this. What is the best way to start out and improve quickly?”

A lot of guys get ahead of themselves, asking about threesomes and harems when they still battle their AA and can barely hook a set. Over the years I’ve observed dozens of guys in the field: as mentors, then wingmen, then students. Many of these guys got good fast, many didn’t. After a while, patterns began to emerge which differentiated the successful from the unsuccessful.

I should clarify. By success, I refer to guys who improve the quickest. Everyone joins this game at different levels of development — many guys enter the community as “naturals” in some aspects, but complete newbies in others. Our goal here is the most efficient route to improvement, wherever you are on that path. There will be steps here that some guys mastered years ago, and therefore can largely ignore them.

Finally, I should iterate that the most important factor in your development is your willingness to change yourself. The common denominator of PUA progress is not looks, intelligence, talent, how many routines you learn, or how many books you read. These things are all factors, but the bottom line is your willingness to change yourself.

Phase I: The Pre-Game (0-3 months)

Community dogma for a long time was the best way to start was to immediately do 1,000 approaches, ASAP. I disagree. Approaching is great, and everyone has to learn to do it early on, but these approaches will be little more than an existential exercise if you don’t have your life in order and are genuinely able to convey value to the women you’re meeting.

1. Health – Join a gym and either lose weight or add muscle or both. There’s an endless source of free fitness information at http://forum.bodybuilding.com/. Fix up your diet. You don’t have to go vegan on us, but cut down on the fast food and pizza. Stop smoking. Drink less (or not at all). The goal here isn’t to look like Brad Pitt or have a six-pack (although that’d be nice). It’s to have more energy and to FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF. Even minor adjustments in this department over a month or two should have you feeling more energetic and positive about yourself in no time.

2. Body Language/Tonality - This stuff is easy to fix with some conscious effort. Straighten up your back, put your shoulders back, hold your head up, look straight ahead while you walk. RELAX! Make eye contact with girls you find attractive and practice holding it. Speak LOUDLY. I don’t care how loud you are, BE LOUDER. What? LOUDER!

3. Read Material – This is the one time I will ever tell you to read MORE material. Read EVERYTHING you get your hands on. “The Game,” “Magic Bullets,” “Double Your Dating” and “The Routine Manual” are all must-reads. Read stuff by Juggler, BradP, RSD, Pickup101, etc. Go to a bookstore (open a set while you’re there) and get “Way of the Superior Man” by David Deida and “Sperm Wars” by Robin Baker. Digest as much information as possible. Find what resonates with you and what doesn’t. Join and browse as many forums as possible. Find which posters you enjoy. Read as many LR’s as possible.

4. Seek Out Wingmen – This is important. 90% of guys by this point will be wanting to approach but running into hardcore AA. If you have single friends who go out often, start going out with them. Even if you don’t approach, get comfortable in bars and clubs — they can be culture shock at first and REALLY intimidating if you’ve never gone. If your friends are hardcore AFC’s (most will be), then seek out wingmen in a local lair, on the mASF winglist, or even put up a Craigslist ad for a wingman (I’ve heard this has been working more and more lately). When you start, your AA is going to own you if it hasn’t already. You need another guy, preferrably more experienced, to help push you into sets. Start approaching casually. It isn’t time to hit full throttle yet. Try out different ways of opening. See what hooks sets. Get over your nerves. Don’t beat yourself up if the night doesn’t go well. You still have a lot of work on yourself to do.

5. Professional Life and Passions - If you don’t have a job, get one. If you hate your job, start looking for another one. If you’re a student, make sure you’re getting good grades and attending class. Cultivate your passions. Have a guitar that’s been collecting dust for a year? Start playing again. Take a boxing class. Take a salsa class. Train for a marathon. Buy a bike. Learn to cook. Travel to Israel, or China, or India, or Australia, or wherever. Find what you love in life and build an identity around that. GET OUT OF YOUR SHELL. Before you can show off an amazing person to the hottie down the street, you have to BE an amazing person yourself. That means getting off your ass and doing something other than watching TV and playing Guitar Hero.

Phase II: Let the Games Begin (3-6 months)

If you’ve been working on the items in Phase I, you have the basic building blocks in place to sarge consistently and have some semblance of a clue of what you’re doing once you open. You have wingmen, and you can open despite AA (finally). This second period is valuable for experimenting with creating attraction and rapport, learning to create interesting threads, holding and dominating dynamic conversations. By the end of this phase, you should be able to get phone numbers pretty easily.

1. Go Out Consistently – You should have at least a couple reliable wingmen at this point. Even if they’re not good, that’s fine. Start going out regularly. Weekends are MANDATORY. Additional weeknights are preferrable. The more you sarge, the better you’ll get. At this point, you should be APPROACHING as much as possible. Five times a night, minimum. DO IT!

2. Cut Back on Material - By now you should have a good idea of which “guru” appeals to you and which style of game you feel most comfortable running (direct/indirect, canned/natural, etc.). Focus on that material and delve into it. Read some about inner game: David X, Carlos Xuma, etc. Start posting on your favorite boards and put up as many FR’s as possible. By the end of this phase you’ll hit your first sticking points. They’ll most likely be: generating attraction, generating comfort, or escalating. All three lead to lots of flakes and not getting laid.

3. Fashion – Why is this in Phase II, you ask? Simple, I’ve seen TOO MANY guys who first start out and immediately go out and buy a new wardrobe thinking they’re “peacocking,” but they look utterly ridiculous. At this point, you should have been going to the bars for a few months and noticed which guys look good and which ones don’t. Keep an eye out for guys with a style that you like and try to emulate them. Check out BradP’s “Fashion Bible” and http://www.kinowear.com/. Do some fashion research and find hip stores that you like in your city. GET CLOTHES THAT FIT! Augment your wardrobe slowly — it’s a process. Start with “the uniform:” button down shirt, nice jeans, nice shoes. GET CLOTHES THAT FIT! Add a bracelet and necklace. Slowly branch out from there as you become more informed and comfortable with various styles. Oh, and GET CLOTHES THAT FIT!

4. Take a Bootcamp (Optional) – Bootcamps are not a cure-all for any of this, although they greatly accelerate your progress. They help you approach, get your style, outer game, and theory in order. They provide experts who you can model and who can constructively criticize you. If you have the money, you should definitely take one. The only caveat is you want to make sure you take a bootcamp from a school that greatly resembles your style and values when it comes to sarging.

Phase III: Practice, Practice, Practice (6-12 months)

OK, you got numbers, you know theory back and forth, and you have a handful of favorite places to sarge. You know what to do, SO DO IT AND DON’T STOP!

1. Sarge CONSTANTLY – Sarge as much as your sanity and time can handle. By now opening and number closing should be the rule, not the exception every time you go out. Tweak your game, escalate, go direct, expand your social circle, go on day 2’s. The more you sarge, the faster you improve. Call every number you get. Push every interaction as far as possible. If you look at every “guru” they all had a period where they sarged 5-7 days a week for extended periods of time. If you don’t go out more than 2-3 times a week, you will not see much improvement at this point.

2. STOP Reading Material – By now you know what you should be doing, how to do it, and when you’re not doing it correctly. You’re finally starting to engrain successful habits into yourself, so reading material will be counterproductive if anything. By now, you should have 1-2 favorite message boards where you’re comfortable asking questions and posting FR’s and LR’s and getting feedback. Other than that, STOP READING. It’s will overcomplicate your in-field experiences, and you’ll waste more time doing it instead of sarging. There’s one exception to this and that is…

3. Get Good at Sex – Ideally, by the end of the first year, you should be getting laid here and there. If you are, then learn to fuck well. Read “Sex God Method” by Dan Rose, David Shade’s “Masterful Lover” and “The Multi-Orgasmic Man”. If you actually manage to get a girl to stick around for a bit (oh, you player, you), then fuck her as much as possible (I probably don’t have to tell you that) and get used to what a vagina feels like. Believe it or not, the more you fuck, the easier it is to fuck other girls.

To PUA-dom and Beyond…

If you keep Phase III up for an extended period of time, you’ll find yourself actually (gasp!) getting laid regularly! Welcome to normal, functioning humanity. It’s up to you where to go from this point: harems, SNL’s or a nice and tidy girlfriend, maybe?

This timeline is by no means rigid or “the standard.” This just seems to be the average amount of time for most guys who push themselves. A lot of guys have a lot more ground to cover, and they’ll take longer obviously. But I believe that for anybody who pushes themselves regularly, this is a completely reasonable timeframe to create these goals and see these results.

If there’s one thing to take from this, it is that 90% of your improvement will come FROM THE FIELD. With the exception of introducing yourself to the community, reading eBooks or crap on forums (like this post) retains a miniscule amount of value relative to a solid night in the field. A guru said once that one set is the equivalent of 100 pages of theory/material. If you’ve been going out for months and still can’t approach, YOU AREN’T PUSHING YOURSELF. If you’ve been getting numbers for months, but they all flake, YOU ARE NOT PUSHING YOURSELF. If you are sarging less than three times a week and expecting to improve, YOU ARE NOT PUSHING YOURSELF. Get out there and push the envelope. You’ve got one fucking life and it’s slowly ending every second you spend reading this. SO GET OUT THERE AND DO IT.

That’s it! Good luck…