Last week I had the pleasure of coaching another fellow Irishman who goes by the twitter handle of Caird_J. I’d met Caird a few weeks previous, he introduced himself to me and a bunch of pals and quickly deduced my identity “You’re Roy Walker aren’t you?!”… “Sssh, don’t tell anyone” Said me. I’ve had many daygamers approach me in an uncalibrated fashion whilst doing the laps in Warsaw, so it was a welcome relief when someone was just normal. But enough of my ramblings, here are Caird’s thoughts on the coaching…
I did three hours infield coaching with Roy on an August evening in Warsaw.
I’m an intermediate daygamer with a good app to lay ratio which has been getting steadily worse as I try to crack the top tier of girls in FSU this year.
The weather forecast was all over the place and Roy soundly let the choice of day be flexible depending on rain. Rain didn’t arrive so we confirmed 6pm during the afternoon.
We got stuck in straight away, with him listening to my sets via WhatsApp call / airpods.
I did ten sets in total and his feedback was that a lot of things were in a good place already in terms of vibe, look etc but he had a few suggestions for improvements.
These were:
Making the conversation of my sets more structured, as I was jumping around topics too much. He talked through how he usually structures his sets.
Slowing the pace of the opener down. Not that I’m rushing at present, but that I should slow it right down to create suspense and to calm the girl down plus give myself a little more time to think of where to take it.
Spiking/teasing. In the interests of leaving girls in absolutely no doubt that I’m hitting on them, Roy gave me a bunch of good simple ways to spike on the usual conversation topics that always come up – where she’s from, where I’m from etc.
Another really beneficial part of the coaching was seeing Roy do a demo set on a hot redhead. I could see and hear him put into practice everything he was preaching to me and what really struck me was how steady a rhythm he creates with his conversation and how that gives it a feeling of total control.
I would say, for an intermediate, arguably the most useful part of getting coaching from an advanced guy is that you get to just observe and consider what traits he has that make him a top daygamer. Roy has a manner that treads a nice line between being cheerful and not easily fazed by anything, combined with a slightly harder edge. I remember one of his blog posts mentioned a girl saying he seemed tough (which he laughed at) but that kind of makes sense having hung out with him – there’s a no-bollocks, grounded quality I’m sure contributes to his success.
Near the end of the session, I took my turn on another hot redhead in Zara who it transpired had chicken-pox – or was it monkey-pox – and told me to keep my distance while I carried on trying to get her contact details, which gave Roy a good laugh listening in. The hot redheads added a lot of value to the session, god bless them, and thankfully I didn’t get monkey-pox.
After the coaching (and the post coaching pints which were good craic) he sent me detailed notes and a bunch of infield recordings new and old. All of this is incredibly useful to have and the recordings will get repeat listens as I compare them to my own. Overall I found Roy very professional and on the ball as a coach.
It was a no brainer to me to get one of the most successful daygamers out there to have a look at what I’m doing and give me his feedback. Very glad I did and highly recommend his coaching.
Thanks for the kind words Caird… If you’re interested in coaching, then get in touch. I’ll be in Belgrade for two weeks, 17-30 September.
roywalkerdaygame 