Nice Snatch! A phrase that I hope I would never utter to a female athlete but one that would be shouted in praise of a male with an outstanding lift. This example also serves to illustrate maybe the greatest difference in how I coach men & women. This question of differences in training males vs. females comes up frequently but to be honest it’s one that rarely crosses my mind. I have thought about and have what I feel is a decent answer as this question is a favorite of hiring committees when interviewing potential strength & conditioning coaches for intercollegiate sports.

Here is my response to the popular interview question… I have a 4 step thought process in my coaching style & programming … I look at athletes as athletes 1st & foremost, regardless of gender (Strength & conditioning for sport is primarily GPP and much of this is universal: if you have any questions regarding this see the April 21st 2009 post on the Crossfit.com main site). My 2nd consideration becomes what is their sport. What are the energy system demands, time demands, modality, frequency of competitions, is there a peak phase as in track or swimming, what are the most common injuries in this sport, ect. Our GPP program will be tweaked to fit these demands. My 3rd step is what position or event does the athlete play… is there specialization that can or needs to be done within a strength & conditioning program? Now 4th comes is the athlete a male or female. As you can see it’s not that high up on the chain of things but it is thought of & considered. Let’s look at some practical things I do do in my programming for women.

I’d like to start out by stating that there are indeed some physiological differences in males & females that need to be considered. These differences are covered in great detail and rather articulately and entertainingly by Mark Rippetoe in his excellent book Strong Enough. I highly suggest purchasing the book & reading it… The jist of it in regard to males/females is women are able to rep a much higher percentage of their 1rm then men… or in other words they can perform more reps with say 85% than a man can… they also recover much faster between sets. The former is important info to have when determining openers and or jumps to make in attempts in a meet the later helps greatly in a situation like mine where I have a limited amount of time to work with my athletes and a lot of stuff I’d like to get in. The ability of my female athletes to complete the same amount of work with slightly shorter rest intervals helps greatly with the efficiency of our programs. I’ve also found that giving them the increased “scientific” amount of rest doesn’t improve their performance so I’m good with the shorter rest intervals as compared to males.

Now for the big concern… the ACL. Women are as much as 9x more likely to tear their acl then a male athlete. The biggest difference in my programming for females involves trying to reduce ACL tears. There are a myriad of reasons women tear their ACL more frequently then men but the ones we can control have to do primarily with hamstring strength, quad dominance, jumping & landing mechanics, and core strength.

We address hamstring strength issues by you guessed it… hammering the hamstring muscles. I make sure we include plenty of RDL’s, Hip extensions, Glute-ham raises, single leg RDL’s, and KB swings in our programming for women. I also do much of this with the men but I never miss it with women. When we have back off weeks with men I tend to drop assistance exercises but keep squats… in back off weeks with women I am more likely to drop squats and keep our posterior chain assistance exercises. This lead us into our 2nd concern… Quad dominance.

Females tend to depend much more on their quads for movement both lifting and jumping/landing/stopping/cutting. This is a bad thing because we would like them to use the more powerful muscles of the posterior chain to accomplish this but also because using the quads for these activities places more stress on and put the knees at greater risk for injury. Obviously we strive to get the hamstrings stronger so the athletes will want to use them. When lifting we teach them to drive through the heels… that will lead to greater dependence on the glutes and hamstrings (as opposed to driving through the balls of the feet which recruits the quads) As of writing this article I am just learning some warm-up routines from Stephane Rochet that promotes “glute-activation” that I will soon be incorporating.

Along with fighting quad dominance in lifting and teaching female athletes to recruit the posterior chain we also teach them to not rely on their quads for jumping/landing/cutting/stopping. This is very important stuff you need to teach your female athletes. Most ACL injuries occur when the knee is locked out. Most females without coaching on proper mechanics will make cuts and land from jumps with straight legs… drastically increasing their chance of injury. On the other hand most male athletes will naturally bend their hips & knees when cutting and landing without being coached on it. So we therefore spend time on very simple drills where we teach our women to bend their hips & knees & “get low” when making a cut. We also teach them to land from jumping by bending their hips & knees and absorb the force over a longer distance while keeping their knees and toes in proper alignment… basically teaching them to land with ¼ squat mechanics. It’s very important that they can execute these physically and have an intellectual understanding of what they are doing. Now the hard part is doing enough repetitions so it becomes their natural method of cutting and landing in a game situation at full speed. In addition to these drills we also do some “soft” box jumps… these are different than the typical Crossfit rapid fire box jumps in that our goal is to land with proper mechanics as softly as possible. We will have competitions to see who can do their box jumps the quietest. Last but not least in maintaining proper cutting and landing mechanics is core strength… a weak core with lead to improper mechanics in everything else. We of course address core strength with O-lifts & squats and also do additional ab work such as L-sits, planks, ECT.

Lastly I’m going to discuss differences in motivation and psychology. This one is a bit harder to answer for me as at my job a different team walks through the door each hour and each team has a different “personality”… this tends to vary for me more than the question of male/female. For example the men’s tennis team is much different than the baseball team who is different from the basketball team, ect, ect. I’m not exactly sure in my experience as to whether the differences I come across on a daily basis are gender specific or just a product of the type of person/athlete that ends up in various sports. I change slightly with each team that walks through the door but not much really. I’m only 34 and maybe someday I’ll understand women but right as of right all I know is that at some point many of them will cry in front of you… 99.9% of the time this crying has nothing to do with you or your program and it’s best if you ignore the tears and let them cry it out while completing their assigned workout. If I ever have a guy start crying in a workout I’m personally going to escort him to the sports psychiatrist… his tears will not be ignored. I guess that is a significant difference in how I’d handle a male vs. a female emotionally. As for motivation… each athlete is different some need praise, others need a kick in the pants… they all need to know that you respect and care for them as both an athlete and a person. Male of female once they have that trust they will run through a wall for you… or at least not sue you if you accidentally compliment them on their snatch.