In 1992, a writer named John Gray published a book called Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. The book was a massive success because it focused on the idea that there are several major differences between men and women. These differences make men and women seem like beings from opposite planets, and the concept of the book is that understanding them can make relationships smoother and stronger. The woman I was dating at the time asked me to read it because she thought it would make us a happier couple. I told her that I was a man and that I didn’t need a book to figure out my love life. She broke up with me not too long after that, and I’ve never understood why. I just know it wasn’t my fault...

After Gray’s book hit the best-seller list, armies of writers sat down at their computers and tried to write books in the same genre. The field of relationship-help/try-to-better-understand-the-opposite-sex books is enormous. This is one area of life where almost everyone needs some help, and the stakes are high. Long-term relationships and marriages hang in the balance. Men and women trying to figure each other out is possibly the largest conundrum in the human race. Knowing all of this, we have to conclude that the differences between men and women can also spill over into the world of strength training, weightlifting, and coaching. Men coach women frequently in our sport and, occasionally, women coach men.
Is there a difference between coaching men and coaching women? Do coaches have to adjust their style and approach depending on the gender of the athlete? Wow! These are intense questions! Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place in your search for answers. Sit back and relax while I fix all of your life’s problems with a short article.

DISCLAIMER: Many of the statements I will make in this article are broad generalizations. This means that you will read things that sound like, "Men are usually -----, but women are -----." Right from the beginning, let’s understand that there are individual differences between all people, exceptions to every rule, etc. No one single law applies to each and every member of a gender. But hopefully we can all agree that there are certain characteristics that seem to be shared by many/most men and women. In other words, nobody needs to blow a gasket when they read a statement about their gender that doesn’t completely apply to them. I’ll say this like a true man, "Just don’t make such a big deal about it." (That sentence has probably started more fights than any group of words in the history of civilization.)

First of all, just answer the question...

Are there differences between coaching men and coaching women? Well, let’s ask the bigger question first: are there differences between men and women, period? I’m going to assume that everyone who is reading this article is an intelligent human being, so the answer to that question should obviously be "YES." Therefore, logic concludes that if there are some basic differences between men and women, then there is probably a basic difference in how to effectively coach them. It is immediately important to understand that this article is not mainly focused on the teaching of the Olympic lifts or the technique training of the athlete. Men and women need to learn the same snatch technique, the same clean pull technique, etc. This, along with workout program development, is an area of coaching where gender is mostly neutralized. Proper clean and jerk technique is the same for men and women. This article is aimed more at the inter-personal aspect of coaching. Anyone who has ever coached, or been coached, realizes that the coach-athlete relationship is the bottom line of success. If the coach cannot successfully manage personal relationships with athletes, it does not matter how skilled the coach is in the ability to teach weightlifting or design workout programs. Most athletes will not continue to be coached by someone they don’t like, trust, or respect. They will leave the coach who treats them poorly and either quit the sport or find another coach. Therefore, building successful relationships between coaches and athletes is one of the most basic pieces of the athletic foundation. If it’s not handled correctly, the whole house comes crumbling down in a big hurry.

Just to throw in a little background of my own, I’ve been coaching weightlifting, football, and track and field for thirteen years. In weightlifting and track, my male-female athlete ratio has traditionally been about sixty percent male and forty percent female. In addition to this, I’ve also been a competitive weightlifter for twenty-one years and I’ve been fortunate to train with some of the best male and female athletes in the United States. I am a member of the Calpian Weightlifting Club, coached by John Thrush, and we have been one of the most successful weightlifting teams in America since the 1980s in both the men’s and women’s divisions. All of these experiences have left me with the understanding that there are most definitely some differences in working with men and women in the world of coaching, whether we like it or not.

Meeemmmories, light the corners of my mind...

Women like to hang on to things. Mothers and grandmothers have said for years that if the house catches fire and you only have enough time to save a few things from being burned up, make sure you save the photo albums. They want to remember all of the special moments from their lives, and those photos are a great way to cling to them. I’m not sure my father even knows where the photo albums are in the house because they’re just not as important to him as they are to my mother. But one thing my father definitely knows about is the garage full of junk that my mother won’t throw away because it has "sentimental value." Some of my most cherished memories from childhood are listening to my dad scream obscenities when he went out to the garage to get a new light bulb and tripped over a twenty year-old lawn chair that my mom refuses to trash because they took it with them on their honeymoon.

How does this relate to coaching? Coaches have to understand that women will often remember the things the coach says for a long time, especially if we’re talking about negative comments. When reprimanding a male athlete for something, the coach can be pretty rough. The male athlete will take his tongue-lashing, fix what he needs to fix, and shrug it off pretty quickly. But with women, harsh words often get committed to long-term memory and they usually hurt twice as much as they would hurt the man. I once coached a young girl who wasn’t a naturally gifted athlete. The first time I saw her run, she was so uncoordinated that I told her she looked like she was running with ankle weights attached to her feet. She knew I was joking around with her, so she giggled nervously and that was the end of it. Later in her career, she had improved tremendously and I complimented her on her hard work one day in practice. She gave me a look and said, "So I guess I’m not wearing ankle weights anymore, huh?" That was two years later! Knowing this, the coach has to be a bit more careful with the tough comments when working with women. I say things to my football players that I would never say in a million years to one of the girls I coach. If I ripped my female shot-putters as hard as I rip my football team, I would coach very few girls. They would jump ship, fast.

Added to this, women are generally "pleasers." This means that when a woman has a coach that she likes, respects and admires, she will fight hard to be successful because she wants to make the coach happy. This way of thinking applies to men as well, but my experience has been that more women connect their accomplishments with how proud they can make their coach. Because of this, women who perform unsuccessfully will not only take their own failure on their shoulders, they will take on their coach’s disappointment as well. If a coach takes a female athlete who has all of this guilt in her head and then smashes her with a verbal barrage to make it even worse, the athlete’s confidence could take a dip that it will take a long, long time to build back up again. I once made the mistake of delivering a pretty mean butt-chewing to a young lady after she had performed poorly at the state championship, and I honestly think it took a full year and a half before she believed in herself again. The coach does not even need to communicate verbally, in many cases. Women are incredibly perceptive; they will pick up body language and facial gestures that the coach might not even be aware of.

However, some coaches take the treatment of this idea too far in the other direction. The coach, not wanting to crush the female athlete’s self-esteem, will treat her too much like a China doll. This can lead to a situation where the athlete is frustrated because she knows that she is doing something wrong, but the coach won’t tell her what it is because he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings. It is important to remember that there is a difference between telling an athlete "That clean looked terrible, so let’s fix it" and telling an athlete "You suck." All athletes, male or female, need to be told when they’re doing something wrong. And without a doubt, every athlete has a time when they need to have their butt chewed. The challenge of coaching is knowing exactly when and how to say it. In many cases, challenging a male athlete by questioning the size of his testicles will bring out the anger and intensity needed for a successful performance. Using the same terminology with women will most likely not produce the same results. How’s that for a highly scientific coaching principle?

Big Gulps, huh? Well, see ya later!

Dumb and Dumber is one of the greatest movies in history. We all know this. One of the best scenes from the movie is when Harry and Lloyd are sitting in a hot tub together and Harry is describing why he broke up with his last girlfriend by saying, "She gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her, or something. I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention." Women want men to listen to them. I’m sure this truth is written in the Men are from Mars book somewhere. But as I said, I didn’t read it. Hundreds of fights and headaches could be avoided if men would just let women say what they need to say and actually pay attention... I think. That’s what my wife says, anyway.

Is there a way to connect this idea with coaching? Absolutely. Coaches forget to listen, in many cases. It’s their job to do the teaching and, therefore, they think it’s their job to do all the talking. Coaches have to explain a great many things and, like doctors, they are supposed to have all the answers. Still, there are big rewards to be reaped when the coach stops everything and asks the athlete, "How are you feeling?" This is where the discussion gets fun because men and women will hear the question "How are you feeling?" in very different ways. They will also respond to it in very different ways. A coach asks a male athlete, "How are you feeling?" The athlete’s response will probably focus on the physical status. In other words, the answer will be something like "My shoulder is sore, but I’m okay" or "I feel a little slow today. I don’t know why."

A coach asks a female athlete "How are you feeling?" The answer could go in a thousand different directions. In weightlifting, common responses might be "I’m frustrated" or "I don’t know. I’m trying to do what you tell me, but it feels like I’m doing everything wrong." At this point, the coach needs to listen. Let the athlete do the talking. If the athlete talks about improper technique, possible injuries, or workout program problems, then the coach’s job is to work with the athlete to find a solution. If the conversation takes a turn where the athlete needs to talk about personal problems (and this does happen sometimes), the coach doesn’t always need to try to fix everything. Athletes, male or female, build trust with a coach by confiding in them. Women will often be more forthcoming with their stresses and obstacles than men, because men are taught from birth to handle their problems silently. There might be times when a coach can offer help to the athlete that will make their life easier, or the athlete might just need somebody to vent to. If the athlete just needs to vent, let them. As soon as the coach shows the athlete that his/her problems are unimportant, the athlete thinks the coach doesn’t care.

And the bottom line to all of this is that when athletes think the coach is unqualified or doesn’t care about them, they will buy out quickly. This is not a male/female concept. It’s a basic coaching truth. Once the athletes think that the coach lacks the skill to help them improve, the grave has been dug. The same can be said for when the athletes believe that the coach has no personal commitment to them. I once knew a coach who had been a highly successful athlete in his sport and then decided to go into coaching. Unfortunately, it was clear that his reason for going into coaching is that he wanted everything to be about him. He wanted to work his way up in the coaching world exactly as he had done in the athletic world. He wanted the publicity, the awards, and the attention. Because he was a big name, it didn’t take long for him to attract athletes. It also didn’t take long for the athletes to see what he was really about. The end of the story is that he simply didn’t have success as a coach because his athletes could tell that he was self-centered, and that is one quality that great coaches can’t have.

There are many other things that can be said about the topic of coaching men vs. women, especially when you consider that there will be huge personality differences in ALL athletes regardless of gender. I’ve trained with some women who bring their personal baggage into the gym every day and use it to make the whole atmosphere dysfunctional. I’ve trained with men who won’t stop running their mouths and trying to tell everybody what to do. I’ve also trained with women who demonstrate fantastic focus and intensity, and I’ve trained with men who use their enthusiastic personality to build camaraderie and team support. There are no gender limitations on high-quality personalities or, conversely, destructive attitudes. All athletes are individuals and the coach has to treat them as individuals. When all is said and done, coaches will most likely be successful if they have technical expertise and a selfless attitude that motivates the athletes to push themselves.