Run Game Practice

A 30-minute warm-up routine before your first approach

Updated 5 min read

The first approach of the night is the hardest. You've been quiet in the car, your voice is flat, and your head is running through everything that could go wrong. A warm-up can ease most of that in about 30 minutes: voice drills, a few easy exchanges with strangers, and a deadline for your first real approach.

The timeline

When What Time
At home Voice drills and the read-aloud 5 min
At home Set one process goal 1 min
On the way Reframe nerves as excitement 1 min
On the way or at the door 3 to 5 micro-interactions 5 to 10 min
Arrival Walk the room, no standing still 5 min
By minute 20 after arriving First real approach 3 to 5 min

Step 1: voice (5 minutes at home)

Julian Treasure's voice warm-ups, from his TEDGlobal 2013 talk, take a couple of minutes:

  1. Arms up, then sigh as you lower them.
  2. "Ba ba ba."
  3. Lip trill.
  4. "La la la."
  5. Rolled "rrrr."
  6. Siren: slide from low to high and back.

Then do a read-aloud. Take a paragraph of any book or article and read it out loud three times. Each time, exaggerate the emotion and the variation in your delivery a little more. By the third pass, your normal voice feels subdued by comparison, which is the aim.

Keep the volume up afterward. Todd Valentine's daygame advice is to speak loudly and keep talking at first, so practice that volume now. More in voice and tonality.

Step 2: one process goal (1 minute)

Pick a goal you fully control, not "get a number."

Process goals tend to keep you moving. Outcome goals can make you hesitate.

Step 3: reframe the nerves (1 minute)

In a 2014 paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Alison Wood Brooks found that people who reappraised anxiety as excitement performed better on tasks such as karaoke, public speaking, and math. Try it before you go in: "I'm excited." Your body is already revved up, and the label changes what you do with it.

Another useful fact is the spotlight effect. Gilovich, Medvec, and Savitsky (2000) found people overestimate how much others notice them. That applies to a shaky voice or a stumbled line too.

Step 4: micro-interactions (5 to 10 minutes)

Todd V describes beginner success as "physically walk up to a girl and utter a sound" and suggests graded 10-second interactions: small talk, directions, asking an opinion, a compliment plus an introduction. Use his ladder as your warm-up, in this order.

  1. Small talk: "Hey, how's it going?" to the cashier. Wait for the answer.
  2. Directions: ask someone where something is, even if you roughly know.
  3. Opinion: "Is the burrito place on the corner any good?"
  4. Compliment plus your name: "That's a great jacket. I'm Sam."

Aim for 3 to 5 of these, each about 10 seconds. Smile and move on if someone isn't interested.

The research backs the effort. In Epley and Schroeder's 2014 study, commuters who talked to strangers had a more positive experience than they'd predicted. Boothby and colleagues (2018) found people underestimate how much their conversation partners like them after a conversation. Both point the same way: a chat often goes better than your head predicts. Neither study was about dating.

If you want a harder version, try rejection therapy. Jason Comely created it around 2009: get rejected at least once a day for 30 days. Jia Jiang's 100 days of rejection became a TEDx talk and a book called Rejection Proof.

Step 5: arrive and keep moving (5 minutes)

Don't stand in a corner scanning the room. Walk the space, order a drink, chat with the bartender, say something to the people next to you.

Then use the three-second rule from the Mystery Method: when you see someone you want to talk to, go within three seconds. If she's mid-sentence with a friend, wait for the next gap, but don't wait for a perfect moment.

Step 6: the 20-minute rule

Set a cutoff. Your first real approach happens within 20 minutes of arriving. Warm-up chats count as warm-up, but they're not the objective. It's easy to spend an hour talking to bartenders and never go over.

Make the first approach low stakes. Pick someone you're interested in and set the goal as "start the conversation." Opening lines are in openers that work.

With a friend

  1. Talk on the way, so you arrive in conversation mode.
  2. Ask a group for a recommendation together.
  3. Agree on a goal: "One approach each in the first 30 minutes."
  4. Check in after each approach with one sentence.

See going out alone vs with a wingman.

What alcohol does

A drink can help. Research summarized on Wikipedia's "beer goggles" page found Bowdring and Sayette's participants were more willing to approach after alcohol, without rating people as more attractive. If you rely on it, you lose the practice. Cap yourself at one before your first approach.

Common mistakes and fixes

Mistake Fix
Skipping the warm-up because you feel fine Do the voice drills anyway. They take 2 minutes.
Over-rehearsing a line Use a simple opener and adapt.
Warming up for an hour Hard stop: first approach by minute 20.
Only using alcohol Do the micro-interactions first.
Waiting for the perfect target Go at the next natural gap.
Counting only successes Count every approach and every warm-up chat.

What to do next

  1. Tonight or tomorrow, do the six voice drills and the three-times read-aloud.
  2. Write your process goal on your phone.
  3. Do five micro-interactions at 10 seconds each, working up Todd V's ladder.
  4. Make your first real approach within 20 minutes of arriving.
  5. Log it in Run Game as Success or Rejected, and group the night as a Session so you can compare nights with and without a warm-up.
  6. After four outings, compare your first-approach time across them.

For deeper fear, see approach anxiety. For daytime outings, the same routine works with cafes and bookstores, as in day game.

Sources