For your health? For your confidence? To look good naked?
It’s different for all of us, but there’s one contributing reason many of us do it – to supercharge our love lives.
It gets easier and easier to date the closer your physique is to Chris Hemsworth and the further it is from Zach Galafanakis.
I’m no stranger to this – at 5’7” I used to be 250lbs of fat.
I’m now a lean 165 – which even includes more muscle.
These past few years I’ve been on a mission. It’s my goal to help people everywhere build a life they love. And I started by helping guys like us build the love life they wanted.
Out of loneliness, I started taking dating profile photos for myself a few years ago. People noticed and they asked me for my help. First I gave it for free to practice and see what worked, then as a service.
At this point, I’ve worked with over 100 clients from more than 40 cities – and growing.
And I reached out to the team at Active Man to see if I could help you guys out too.
I take a variety of photos for my clients, which includes fitness photos. I’ve compiled an actionable list of 3 don’ts and 3 do’s for how to get the best dating profile photo that shows off your physique at the gym – backed up by my extensive experience taking photos of hot, sweaty, buff men (I swear I like women trust me.)
Here goes:
3 don’ts:
- No gym selfies
- Gym selfies portray low effort and a lack of social awareness.
- No mid-rep photos where you stare at the camera
- One common issue with using gym photos on dating apps is that they can be intimidating. When you’re mid-rep and you’ve got that intense facial expression, looking right at the camera can be a bit much.
- No machine photos
- We can argue about the merits of using machines all day. Heck, we’re fitness bros, everyone and their grandpa has an opinion here. Personally, I like them in certain situations – which don’t include dating profile photos… They tend to be busy and hard to make sense of in a photo. It’s hard to see what you’re doing and even harder to make it look cool on a phone-sized screen.
Do’s
- Do have your friend take the photo
- The counter to “no gym selfies” is to have your friend take the photo (or hire a professional photographer.) This shows you have friends or at least the social intelligence to avoid gym selfies. You also have a lot more options available to you in how to pose. When your phone is in 1 hand taking your own photo you have limited options.
I had my friend take this photo of me with my photography equipment. He’s also a photographer as you can tell.
- Do either have a relaxed positive expression resting photo or mid-rep where you’re looking off to the side
- As a counter to the 2nd “don’t” of looking too intense, take one of these two kinds of photos. They ease up on the intensity and make you look both approachable AND badass.
I took this photo for my client to make him look approachable but also badass.
- Do use dumbbells or battle rope
- As a counter to the 3rd “don’t” dumbbells and battle rope are great options. On a dating app on a cute girl’s small phone screen, she can clearly see what you’re doing and see that you’re great at doing it.
Here’s another photo I took for a client, looking to the side while using the battle ropes.
Try these out and see what happens. Let me know your results! You can find me at www.datingunchained.com
I also help guys with their photos by offering kickass dating profile photoshoot packages. If you want to know more, or want to book a shoot check out the same site, www.datingunchained.com, and I’ll take care of you.
