"The Coffee Shop Girl You Never Spoke To"

You've replayed it a hundred times. She stood three feet away, scrolling her phone. You had an opening. You composed the perfect line — after she was gone.

For all you know, she's married now. To some guy who said something. Anything.

Openers are cheap. Almost any sentence works when it's delivered within three seconds. The expensive part is the standing there, drafting and deleting, while the window quietly closes.

The "22 Rules" stripped out my hesitation. What to open with, how to keep it alive, and the one habit that costs guys more women than anything else: waiting for perfect.

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Help Me Develop a Plan: Getting In Shape for Basketball

Ice882

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Hey guys,

I play basketball for my school. During the season our training is rigorous and keeps me more or less in shape. However, in the 8 months of the year my team isn't practicing and working out, my terrible diet catches up with me and my stomach gets flabby. Nothing major but right now I'm probably 5-10 pounds over my target weight. I don't want to be super jacked and huge, but I want to be lean and have some real definition in my abs, chest and back.

Please help me develop an effective work out plan. I already work out 3-4 times a week with weights, and play basketball pretty regularly for some cardio. Unfortunately its not really producing the results I want. I figure I must be doing some things wrong:

a) I need to improve my diet -- I don't want to eat nothing but beef and eggs but I would like tips on ways to sort of seamlessly integrate healthy, muscle building foods into my diet. Here's how my day went today in terms of meals:

breakfast: 1/2 a cup (dry, that is) of oatmeal. glass of water.

lunch: 2 frozen white castle sliders (250 calories for 2 of them, 13 grams of fat 12 grams of protein), pasta salad, corn salad, a panini with chicken breast and 2 slices of cheese. 2 cookies, 150 calories each.

dinner/dessert at 9 pm: vanilla and chocolate ice cream, probably about a cup. 2 more cookies, corn salad.

Definitely not great.

in terms of workout here's what I do for weights:

- free weight bench
- concentration curls
-lat pull-downs
- forearm curls
- a light lower back exercise that I don't know the name of

3 sets of 12 for each, except for the concentration curls which I alternate every other workout -- fewer reps more weight.

Please help me those these stubborn pounds!

Thanks guys,

Ice
 

"I just moved here from Florida."

That sentence contains at least five follow-up questions she WANTS you to ask. Where in Florida? What brought you here? How long have you been in the area? What do you miss? How does it compare to here?

She handed them to you on a silver platter. And you said, "Oh cool. I come here every week. I love this band. Ummm... pretty crowded tonight."

She smiled politely. Nodded. And never texted you back.

I was that guy for years. Talking too much. Listening too little. Panicking about my next sentence while she was literally feeding me the answers.

Then I found 22 rules that fixed the whole thing. Rule number one: shut up and listen. She'll tell you exactly what to say.

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CaptainJ

Master Don Juan
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For diet, I'm sure someone like carlitosway can come and give a good diet program.

But your training program sucks major balls. You are playing basketball, so you need strong legs to add to your vertical and to keep you fast. You really need to implement squats and deadlifts into your program. I suggest a program like starting strength as you will quickly gain a lot of strength, and burn a lot of fat, which definitely means lots of extra inches for your vertical jump.
 

JCballin88

Senior Don Juan
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Squats, lunges, and calf raises alone did wonders for my vertical. I went from barely getting the bottom of the net to easily hanging from the rim in just a couple months of adding a 60-minute leg workout to my weekly routine.
 

Ice882

Senior Don Juan
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JCballin88 said:
Squats, lunges, and calf raises alone did wonders for my vertical. I went from barely getting the bottom of the net to easily hanging from the rim in just a couple months of adding a 60-minute leg workout to my weekly routine.
I do calf raises. I squatted for a while and it didn't really help (though I'm sure it should). Lunges seem dumb and pointless though? Its just like long awkward steps, isn't it?

Any diet tips by the way? I've started drinking green tea and taking fish oil.
 
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