Coaching Female Athletes
This is a post I've wanted to discuss for some time and am finally getting around to. The strength and conditioning field is primarily dominated by males and in many instances, these males will have to coach female athletes.
The perception of females is that they are softer, more sensitive, and not as tough as males. If you, as a male coach, feed into these stereo types you are hurting the development of your female athletes. I'm a big believer that you should coach your female athletes as hard as you would coach males. There are a number of gender differences, which we will get into, but from a psychological standpoint, the expectations, standards and attention to detail shouldn't be different. Females are smart and will realize if you are going "soft" on them, and in my experience, they like to be pushed, motivated, and held to an extremely high standard.
Females are often reluctant to be competitive - especially amongst their teammates. They would rather be friends and want to be liked...whereas males often have no problem being competitive and understanding where to draw the line between being a friend vs. a teammate.
North Carolina Women's Soccer Coach, Anson Dorrance, has noticed a similar situation with the women on his team:
" So much of what girls have been taught about growing up is about cooperation and acquiescence. Women have the superior understanding that friendships are more important than winning and fame, and there's nothing in their culture that encourages them to be competitive. Girls who compete are considered bitches. Girls would rather be accepted and liked than be competitive and respected. We want the girls in our system to understand that we don't want you to be popular; we want you to be respected. My job is to change their natural course.”
And you can't complain with the success that Anson Dorrance has had in his career at UNC - Chapel Hill.
There are biochemical differences between males and females that affect their competitiveness:
Testosterone: the hormone that is most associated with aggression and competitiveness; males tend to have 10-20x more than females.
Oxytocin: the chemical that is associated with boding and forming relationships. Females have more of this hormone and it helps to explain why females are more focused on connecting with each other than males.
Serotonin: a chemical that helps to relax people; males have less of this and lower serotonin levels generally lead to higher aggression.
So when you combine higher levels of testosterone with lower levels of oxytocin and serotonin in males, you can see that it can lead to more aggressive and competitive behaviors than females.
Now that we understand that there are physiological differences, we have to realize that we HAVE to try and coach our female athletes to be competitive and expect more out of themselves when they train.
Society is telling them to look a certain way, and behave a certain way - but we are in a unique position to empower females. We can teach them about not quitting, teaching them about breaking barriers, teach them how to persevere, teach them to expect more out of themselves and each other, and teach them how to be leaders.
Be hard on your females, be tough with them, demand more out of them, teach them, praise them, love them, and most importantly expect them to be great. These are the same things that you should expect regardless of the sex of your athletes.
Coach them to be better human begins, and you will have better athletes.
