The main motivation for this article is to explore the connections between the existence of certain combinatorial patterns (as in van der Corputs's theorem on arithmetic progressions of length $3$) with well-known tools and theorems for definable groups in simple theories. In the last sections of this article, we apply our model-theoretic results to bound the number of initial points starting few arithmetic progression of length $3$ in the structure of the additive group of integers with a predicate for the prime integers, assuming Dickson's conjecture, or with a predicate for the square-free integers, as well as for asymptotic limits of finite fields. Our techniques yield similar results for the elements appearing as distances in skew-corners and for Sárközy's theorem on the distance of distinct elements being perfect squares.