Are Boot Camps Worth It? My Experience with RedpoleQ

by Socrates – Sometime back in 2010

I was digging through some old files on Saturday and came across a writeup I did for a private forum I’m a member of.  Sometime back in 2010 I convinced myself to take a boot camp with RedpoleQ. That weekend completely changed my life.  Looking back, it’s interesting to see the thoughts that were going through my head before, during, and after taking the boot camp.  If I could only have seen my life 3 years later I wouldn’t have had such a tough time deciding on whether to take the boot camp or not – but I guess that goes for any big decision people are trying to make.

This week I thought I would share that writeup with you. Who knows, maybe my experience can help someone out there who is struggling over whether to take the boot camp or not.

Now back three years ago…

Internal Battles

This weekend I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with RedpoleQ, one of the top PUA guys in Asia, at his bootcamp learning the ropes.

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure about taking the bootcamp. I mean, I have always said to myself that I would never pay for anything while learning how to be good with girls, but after talking to a lot of guys on this forum, and back at home, I saw that there could be a real upside to taking a bootcamp. Still, when it came time to decide whether to actually take one or not the money situation was a huge barrier. The price of the bootcamp is not cheap so to really justify the cost, I thought, I would have to develop a lot because of it…. a lot because of it.

In the end, it wasn’t the great stories or references that convinced me to do it, it was sitting down and doing a couple cost-benefit analyses that sold me. Ultimately I couldn’t know whether the bootcamp would help me or not but the likelihood of good outcomes outweighed the likelihood of bad or neutral outcomes so taking the bootcamp seemed the rational choice. That, and I figured that, especially given the possible upside, $1500 is not much money over the course of a lifetime. Yeah I know, pretty nerdy, but that’s what it took.

RedpoleQ

RPQ has a reputation as a guy who knows his shit. That reputation is well deserved. The whole weekend he gave me the sense that he’s a guy who eats, sleeps, and breaths this stuff. He seems to be a really deep thinker about all of this, both in terms of tactics and overall philosophy of game, so when I would challenge him on a point to try to get a better understanding of how he thought… he always had a well thought-out answer to give. I felt as if I were asking someone who had already asked himself that same question and came to a conclusion based on critical analysis and experience. Perfect.

Day 1

The weekend was a blur. We approached set after set after set and got feedback after almost everyone. It was intense, second only to running through Demonic Confidence in the summer.

The first night was kind of disappointing. The lecture was fine and the guys were cool, but my performance was off. I wasn’t opening as well as I wanted to and I felt myself freezing up during conversation. Not cool. I had the same problem earlier this fall until I read Ozzie’s book “The Physical Game” recommended to me by Rio. Out of that I realized that I should stop being so outcome dependent and just turn off the internal filter, the little guy sitting in your head saying “Don’t say that, idiot, that will only weird them out.” This fall I was able to have fun free-flowing conversations by applying those techniques. It was really good. Unfortunately this realization didn’t kick in until part way through the second day of bootcamp. When I did actively shut off my filter magical things started happening. Half way through the day my conversations started getting much better and I was hooking sets a lot better, too.

Night Game

That night the progress continued. At Ellui I started off a bit nervous but then put the same mindset in place and conversations became a lot more effortless. About half way through the night I hit a rhythm and started to really absorb what RPQ was telling me to do. I was bt spiking well, and challenging the girls. I began hooking the majority of my sets and directing the girls positioning around. I was kinoing more than I had ever done before, and standing next to them much, much closer than I ever felt comfortable doing before. This was adjusted when during one set I felt someone shove me and I momentarily spun around to clock whatever asshole had manhandled me before I realized it was RPQ moving me into the set. I had a good laugh about that in my head while I was standing there with the girl. The results of close contact with a girl I met just 30 seconds earlier felt great. She seemed much more keen, and when I mentioned to RPQ how I always thought that would be uncomfortable before he smirked and said, “that’s because you’re Canadian.”

At one point I opened a sexy little Korean chick and laid the kino on thick. I was fully facing her and took her by the waist and pulled her into me. My wings took to the other girls and I built up enough compliance in mine to move her upstairs to the VIP and isolate her. My wings were right behind me with their girls (apparently….I didn’t know what was happening with them at the time) but when I isolated I didn’t really know where to take it… my qualification was horrible, so I lost the set. She popped and made her way back to her own VIP table which I’m guessing is where she blew-out my wings.

Near the end of the night we were on our last set of the evening (if that’s what you folks call 5am) when I spotted this lone girl on the bench. We locked eyes and as I went to open her she had her arms outstretched beckoning me over. I bt spiked and sat down next to her. She was drunk. Her body moved around loosely and without much coordination, and her breath smelled like beer. It was exactly my type of set. There is just something about the ply-ability of a drunk girl’s body and the alcohol on her breath. When she half slipped off the bench I knew she was the girl I had been waiting for for all this time. As I helped her back onto the bench and seated her next to me we started to talk. I bt spiked a bit but she couldn’t understand my “broken English,” but slipped forward with conversation of her own, her nose brushing centimeters from my face. I decided to go for it and just started making out with her. After her initial eagerness she pulled back and said, “I don’t want to…” but minutes later I pushed for the kiss again and she responded with the same eagerness she had the first time. Moments later she pulled back again and said the exact same thing. This happened again, in the same order, one or two more times before she finally got up and left.

As hot as that girl was, that set is only tied to a set I ran with RPQ for being the most fun of the night. Part way through I opened and hooked two two girls then brought over RPQ to wing since my other wing was in another set. When RPQ got there the girls had their hands locked and we were both trying to position their bodies to isolate them from each other. While I directed my girl’s body away from her friend, the hand-lock of death became an issue so I motioned for her hand to spin her, which would brake the hand hold, bt spiking the girl, and further isolating her from her friend so I could have a more open conversation with her. Unfortunately it didn’t quite work out like that – after spinning her and pulling her towards me I looked down and saw that they had relocked hands! I quickly did it a second time, only to get the same damn result! At some point our girls bolted and RPQ and I bent over laughing about how the set went. Hilarious!

A Painful Ending

The third day I was exhausted and totally unmotivated. I was 30 minutes late and dogged it opening sets. I just had had enough. After two days in a row going to bed at 7am or later and tonnes of time sarging I had reached my pain threshold. I painfully opened a few sets and got blown out most of the time. The only two good sets of the day were the sets I opened and winged in the coffee shop, one with a 32 year old woman who was a kindergarten teacher and had a radiant smile. She laughed at all my bt spikes and I was using far more kino than I ever had before during the day time. I time-bridged her by seeding this great Italian coffee shop with rich oak tables and chairs made of fine Italian fabric. She asked for the name and I paused and said….”…..um…star…. ah, Starbucks, I think it’s called”. Got her number but after a great interaction she’s ignoring my texts.

Got back to my place at 12:30, just after midnight. That was the point in which my body decided to say “Fuck you for this weekend. Enjoy the bronchitis.” Of course, I had been sick all weekend, but had ignored it. On the Thursday before the event I knew that something was up. I felt a rumble in my chest and a slight cough… but decided to do the bootcamp anyways.

Looking Back

Overall the weekend was good. Parts of it were frustrating and parts were fantastic. I feel that I really have it in me to do well in sets and with girls generally, and I understand more than ever about how to be “on” – just kill the little censor inside and don’t worry about outcome. In the beginning of the weekend this really frustrated me but once the problem was solved my development took off. Fantastic. Moving a girl at Ellui was also great, but it was frustrating not knowing quite what to do one she was isolated with me and obviously super keen. This, despite all the things RPQ told us to do before we made it out to the club. It was fantastic to feel myself improving rapidly in the club, set after set, and to hear RPQ say he was impressed with how I handled a couple of my sets because most guys don’t get to that level on a bootcamp. I was very thankful for all the guys who came out for it, Vigoroso, Vision, Trailblazer, Evolution, Diablo, loveGTM, and everybody else that came out to make it a great experience. Thanks to those who talked to me about taking the bootcamp and helping me form my decision (you know who you are). Thanks to RedpoleQ for kicking my ass and showing me what was possible. It was hilarious how you would bark out orders for me to qualify her, or ask me pointedly what was great about her, and all of this in set with the girls right there! It was even funnier to see them not really know/care what the conversation between us was about!

This weekend I’ll take away some key things: 1. I now know a new great bunch of guys with the drive and social intellect that will make this learning experience better than it already has been. 2. I know more about body positioning and kino, the latter shattering a latent limiting belief I had about touch during the day. 3. I discovered that the way I was running sets post blowup (later sept, early oct) is actually how RPQ runs attraction, so the transition will be much easier than I thought. 4. I went through a paradigm shift regarding how to look at game -RPQ turned my understanding on its head and made me conceptualize it first and foremost as a process of compliance building by utilizing attraction, comfort, etc, rather than seeing the pickup in terms of the Mystery Method M3 model. This is revolutionary for me because it will help me stay in sets that I don’t think are going places and push the interaction until she won’t comply anymore. It also rids my reliance on IOIs, which are mostly useless when looking at the pickup from this perspective. 5. A lot of other little things. I only hope that I get in set and apply what I learned, especially the positioning and kino, going forward.

If you are thinking of taking a bootcamp and not sure whether to do one or not, reading this will only help you a little bit. I don’t think anybody can tell you that you will get a lot out of it or that you won’t get anything out of it. What determines that, I think, is how much you are prepared to absorb and apply what he tells you…. then apply what he has told you after the camp is over.

I never looked into other bootcamps. For one, I didn’t know of any other worthwhile practitioners who were offering a comparable product (Alex is a good PUA apparently but I don’t know Korean so can’t use his forum). This might be different for you, and you should explore the options available to you. For me, it really came down to a simple cost benefit analysis – it turned out the percentage likelihood of the range of possible good outcomes from RedpoleQ’s boot camp out weighed the range of possible bad or neutral outcomes, so I went for it. Kinda like betting on horse races and trying to find the horse with a 50-50 shot but that will pay 3-1 if it wins. I guess it was that, and the fact that $1500 over the course of a lifetime is nothing while the skills you could possibly build would be monumental.