This post is supposed to be a kick up the arse for those who are stuck in Lower Intermediate Hell. I’ve been purposefully harsh in this post so if something comes up that you disagree with let’s talk about it in the comments.
First, please watch this quick video which Juergen – who wrote the excellent post on learning a girl’s language (link here) – sent to me recently:
My immediate reaction matches Lee’s whenever I hear about guys stuck in Lower Intermediate Hell. You’ve heard of Beginner’s Hell – battling AA and a lifetime of self-doubt which tells you you can’t do Daygame – but this is a step on from that. This is where a guy finds himself after getting laid from Daygame once, or maybe even two or three times, and has done 1000+ sets, but is forever spinning his wheels and never seems to be able to put together any string of positive results.
The reason why I react in the same exasperated way that Lee does is that Lower Intermediate Hell is entirely self-inflicted. It comes from guys pushing against the line of most resistance as a beginner and coming out on top – something you have to do to overcome AA – but then resting on their laurels and looking for the easy way out once they escape that stage. That and having entirely unrealistic expectations. He looks for the special hack, tip or technique which is going to let him skip the line and get to the results he dreams of without putting in the work or acting in accordance with the natural laws of the world. That or he simply doesn’t put the level of work in that he did as a beginner and forever languishes as a lower intermediate, forever vowing that “next month I’ll hit the streets hard!”
Lee gets asked “What [do you] think of the three body types? Endomorph, Ectomorph, Mesomorph” and whether he would give any particular advice for someone who believes they exist in one of those camps. I get similar questions along the lines of “I’m [characteristic, location, age, etc.], what should I do?” The headline answer is “There is no secret hack or special way of doing things that will allow you to cheat the system.” You cannot beat the SMP. No one breaks the SMP. This is an age old saying but if you are stuck in Lower Intermediate Hell then get this tattooed on your forearm:
High value men sleep with high value women
If you are not currently getting with the girls who you would like to then you need to improve your value. Being 50 pounds overweight will not suffice. Dressing like a dork will not suffice. Being miserable will not suffice. Being nervous will not suffice. Not accepting harsh truths will not suffice. Not putting in the required work will not suffice. I could go on listing things but you get the point: if you are not getting the kind of girls that you want, you need to improve your value.
Just to hammer home this point one more time, here’s a quote I always return to from Steve Jabba’s Primal Seduction:
“Can you be a one eyed, zit-encrusted, short, peg-legged, one-armed, syphilis ridden, paranoid, shit-smelling, hunch-backed, pock-marked skinny pot-bellied Goblin of a man…. and pull Perfect Ten women with sufficient “game”?”
Another point that Lee touches on is that you just have to get in the gym and workout. Do the squat and leg press to build your legs, for example, and if you have the genetics to grow, you will. Or if you’re trying to lose weight and you’re eating well and doing cardio and aren’t losing weight, well then you have to eat fewer calories or do more cardio. Whining won’t change anything. It’s as simple as that, and it corresponds perfectly to Game:
Getting better with women is difficult, but it’s not complicated.
Get out on the street, start talking to girls and make sure you are at least doing the fundmanetals right such as speaking at a measured pace and standing with strong body language. “Oh but doing that is so hard!” You’re not a beginner anymore! You don’t get praise anymore for pooping in the potty. Time to put your big boy pants on and use the toilet like everyone else.
When it comes to quality, if you’ve been doing it for two years and haven’t laid a genuinely hot girl then you probably don’t have the “genetics” to do it. Here I mean a lot of things other than just your actual genetics such as your personality, determination, your ability to learn and a host of other factors. But don’t get me wrong, your genetics (being good looking*) in the literal sense are the primary determinant of the potential quality you can get; for most guys this will be up to a point above their own looks. And I don’t care how many guys you’ve seen in-set, getting a hot girl to laugh, getting her number or even if she goes off on an i-date with him because there is a universe of difference between everything up to the point of sex, and the P actually going inside the V.
* The three broad categories of good looking are pretty boy, chad and hypermasculine. If you’re a pretty boy with little muscle, you’re good looking in certain markets. If you’re hypermasculine with a hardface, you’re good looking in certain markets. It’s all about which SMP you apply your looks in with chads having the broadest appeal. Height is a huge positive as well, of course, and I think 6 ‘3 is the optimum with it better to be over 6 ’3 rather than under 6’.
Here is a harsh truth that everyone needs to come to terms with: if you were approaching girls of attainable quality then you’d be getting one of them every now and then. This is perhaps the biggest sticking point for guys who are forever stuck in the lower intermediate stage: they aim too high. It’s hard for some guys to hear that but the data speaks for itself.
To ascertain what counts as “attainable quality” for you think about the girls you slept with pre-Game and those you might have slept with, or had a near miss with, from Game. If pre-Game you were quite clueless with women then it will be about a point* above the former and around the same as the latter. Note that I said girls you slept with and any near misses, and not dates, and certainly not “girls who seemed really into you but had a boyfriend.”
* Krauser gives this gap as two points in Daygame Mastery but I don’t myself see this playing out in real life. Going abroad to somewhere where your archetype is in higher demand, though, might give a little bit extra.
It’s forever on the minds of those guys: “if a mosquito fought Mike Tyson in a boxing match – if the mosquito was fully present and fully authentic, and he’d maxed out his Game – eventually Tyson will fall over and knock himself out.” In reality, it’s not happening. Or, it’s so unlikely to happen – it’s such a small probability – that it might as well be considered impossible for the mosquito to win in its current form. I’m sure that with some kind of special tactic a mosquito could take down other insects, or maybe some kind of small rodent, that was larger than itself, but he’s not taking down Mike.
Everyone wants to hear how their magical vibe and Game will win the day but that is magical thinking: a teddy bear. If you need a teddy bear, you’re a baby. It’s actually much easier, psychologically, to aim high and get rejected all the time rather than risk approaching a girl who you could actually succeed with, because if you don’t, the blow to your ego would be huge and you would need to do some real soul searching. That’s why “you’re aiming too high” is the worst thing for some guys to hear, because it means taking away their teddy bear.
And what ever happened to people just getting on with things? You tried and failed, okay well done for trying, but can the sob story. Only some people in the world can consistently have sex with the most beautiful girls in the world. And hey, that’s not me either. My quality range probably caps out in the low, maybe mid, eight territory, with my average being a seven, and I’m okay with that*. Don’t get me wrong, Game has definitely improved the quality of girls I can get, in both looks and character, but I don’t have sexual access to the girls getting flown out to Dubai to be shit on. Nonetheless, through Game, I was able to lead a much happier life. “Being happier” is what your aim with Game should be, relative to whatever your baseline is, not banging Instagram models.
* I’m talking about true ratings here, not the typical American “she’s a 10 bro!” when in reality she’s a solid seven.
As Priest says, he’s never going to be a professional basketball player, but he can still play with his mates for fun. What’s wrong with that? There are so many things in life we accept we will never be. Never a billionaire. A star athlete. An astronaut. Of course, never say never, but again it’s a Mosquito vs Mike Tyson situation where the chances are so slim they might as well be considered impossible. We don’t cry about those things. We’ve accepted we won’t be outlandishly rich, for example. But when it comes to Game… Here come the waterworks. Whah! You just have to accept that you will have “mediocre results” compared to your atmospheric starting expectations and be content to have a little fun here and there. I use scare quotes because Game will likely have made your life better in real terms, but you are only dissatisfied with it because it didn’t meet your unrealistic expectations.
What this comes down to is that I’m so sick of this “everyone can do it” culture where people are scared to call a spade a spade. And I can already hear people thinking “You can’t say that, you’re going to discourage guys from even trying!” Here’s a newsflash: if me saying this discourages someone, they weren’t ever going to make it. Never ever. Some guys have it in them to be players. And some, probably most, are better off getting a nice girlfriend and working their damn hardest to make it work. This was the way of the world for millenia: a few men are alphas and the rest are betas.
And I hope that here you can appreciate that I’m speaking the truth and not sugarcoating things to the extent that you’re laced with false hope and diabetes. “Oh and buy my book and hire me for coaching while you’re at it.”
“Train hard, diet hard – if you want to lose weight – and just shut the fuck up.”
So what should those stuck in Lower Intermediate Hell do? The answer is simple: stop overthinking things; get the basics right. You shouldn’t care about higher levels of optimisation in your game if you can’t do these basic things:
- Take care of yourself
- Approach consistently (especially while solo)
- Speak confidently
- Stand with good posture and body language
- Maintain solid eye contact
- Plan a date
- Escalate.
Here are some numbers for you so that there are no excuses:
If your A:L is worse than 250:1 then the only things you should care about are those seven things.
If you are doing those seven things but your A:L is still worse than 250:1, lower the quality. Specifically by that I mean that for every aspirational (hot) girl you approach you should approach two regular ones. If that doesn’t work, move to a four to one ratio. Either way: just shut the fuck up.
Yours unfaithfully,
Thomas Crown
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Thomas Crown PUA 
Very good quality.
Very good post. Thanks
Two things come to my mind: Don’t underestimate Lee Priest, he might look different with his style, but owns a PhD. Means, far more educated than people might think he is.
It takes balls to talk those words, so many fancy f..ckers out there, lying about results and the real world. If you can’t get the basics right, then hire a coach: I myself was very bad with fashion. Therefore, I hired a coach.
On top, closing girls 2 points above your SMV seems almost impossible, also in hidden countries with knowing the language and so on. This gets more and more difficult, the higher your own value is.
Why this video and your article, Tom, are so golden? Because not hiding behind the bushes. Number one driver is, “that I am sick and tired of being sick and tired”. I don’t want to look back in 5 years, and still rot in the same shit hole. Driver number two is close your mouth, swallow down your pain and go working very hard for your results.
Then, there is the other side. A friend of mine is quite successful in weightlifting and bodybuilding. He does it let’s say for at least 20 years, consistently. His diet is absolutely on point. He is 1.91 (6 foot 3) tall, 99 kg, and true 12% bodyfat. Now, people ask him very often, which steroids he takes to get such a physique. The friend tells me, that this annoys him sometimes, as people don’t ask what to do, and how to work out to get such results. People automatically assume the easy way out. Fact is, that over 80% of people taking steroids look bad anyway, as they don’t have the mentality to work very hard, for many years.
Best wishes
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Credit to you for publishing these harsh truths – very few people earning a living from coaching have the integrity to do that.
My favourite part of the post: “there is a universe of difference between everything up to the point of sex, and the P actually going inside the V.”
So true. A number, an I-date, a make-out, a bounce-back, even fingering her on your bed can be miles away from you actually being allowed entrance.
That’s why I always see consistently reporting such events as a give-away of not getting much actual action.
Surely it depends on the girl but as an example I’ve known girls for which a make-out is just a fun party gimmick. They’d sometimes french kiss their gay best friends or girlfriends for shits and giggles.
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