easier to coach, men or women?

Are you coaching high school, college, or older runners? There's a difference.

High school females are far easier to coach than high school guys. Partly due to maturity. At the college level I had greater success with the men.

From the physical side, I found men easier to coach, and have coached both at college level. Women have drastic monthly hormonal cycles and it DOES affect training and racing. Unless she's amenorrheic..then you have another set of problems altogether. But i found the men to be less crazy overall (even though, as mentioned women tended to get over bad races easier).

Sure, it's easier to coach women if you are a man. Since women cry, and most men hate to see women cry, most men don't try as hard with women athletes.

However, to coach women successfuly, it is harder. I've found that the lack of depth on women's teams, the relative ease at which some women will quit or otherwise become sidetracked, and the personality conflicts between athletes that reveal themselves in practice, make for a much more hostile environment.

Of course, this is my experience only, and should not be taken to be a reflection of every women's program out there.

women.

A lot easier on the eyes.

seriously, some guys can coach anyone. Girls usually are harder to coach. I have found that some female coaches are even more versatile in this aspect than males. But like life, its all about the details and is different for every situation. I have come across some girls that have no hope, in anything other than getting married off to some screw ball. I have come across a lot of screw balls as well.

I have found that the girls are better at interacting with the adult coaches and volunteers but don't seem to be as interested in the content of the workouts, the racing psyche, the well known athletes of our sport, or the history of middle and distance running.

That being said, I've found the girls to be more thoughtful and seem to be more eager to please.

I like having the boys and girls together. I feel that they compliment each other's strengths and weaknesses.

Of course these are broad and sweeping statements, based soley on my personal observations. I'm a middle aged man who coaches regular kids 16:30-18:30 (boys) and 19:00-22:30 (girls).

Yeah, you know because you coach so much?

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

Are you coaching high school, college, or older runners? There's a difference.

My experience of the flip side of this (as a runner on a team, not a coach) is that it's a bad thing when a coach tries to treat women drastically differently then men based on stereotypes. It may be generally true that women are more emotional or more mature or some other label, but it's a mistake to expect less from them because fear of pressuring them or being too demanding.

As a high school freshman, we had one coach for both girls and guys, we did close to the same workouts and mileage, and had close to the same expectations. If anyone whined, they were put in their place (nicely). Both girls and guys did what they needed to do without complaining and there was a good team atmosphere. No crying or excuses.

Halfway through HS, a separate coach was hired for the boys and our coach thought that just because he was only coaching girls that things should be suddenly different. Our mileage was reduced a lot, and if anyone whined, he gave in. As younger girl runners joined the team, they discovered that they didn't have to run much and that they could get out of training hard by making excuses. When I mentioned this to the coach, he said that girls had to be treated more gently (although he previously had a happy, hardworking team of girls on higher mileage and stricter expectations). A few years later, he quit saying that it was just too difficult coaching girls.

As a middle aged woman who coaches the same types of kids, I think the boys in general, are easier to coach, are more motivated to work really hard and tend to complain a bit less. There are girls who share those qualities, but the majority are less concerned with being as competitive. Cultural and socioeconomic factors tend to the biggest factor in influencing a girl's competitiveness. Some girls are very focused on beating their competition, but achieving personal goals (pr's, etc) seems to be enough for many of them. The guys always seem to go after the runner in front of them.

It's cliche', but neither group is easier, they're just different. I coached a club team of college and post collegiate aged runners, both sexes.

I found that women were more willing to do the workout, but it was harder to talk them into racing. As in, just convincing them that they should enter a race - once they were in it, they ran as hard as they could. I had a few instances of spontaneous tears, one or two eating issues, but most of them were resolvable. While it was nice that the women would do what the workout said, it also meant that they would do that no matter what. So if they needed a rest, unless I was able to see it, or get them to tell me, they would run themselves into the ground.

The men had more ego invested. They tended to race the workouts - whatever time they were given, they had to go faster than that. And in general, they would question the workouts more and try and change them. Some would run the easy days hard. In the worst cases, we had a few guys that would blow off the workouts (it was a club team, after all), then show up for the races and get whupped.

I think I enjoyed coaching the women more because, coming from an era in which women didn't do sports, it's still new and exciting to see them pursuing athletics.

I coach HS women. I guess I should have posted that originally.

We have been successful (recent state champions in xc and high finisher in state track).

Maybe I am just lucky but I have found men complain more than women about workouts.

I agree that the women tend to be less interested int he history of the sport bu honestly I don't care. I love the history of the sport and try to educate them but does it matter if they are into the history. If they just want to work hard, get in shape, race hard, and have fun that is enough for me. If they are in the sport long enough they may get interested in the history.

I agree that we as coaches shouldn't coach based on stereotypes. As for the menstrual cycle thing, I've found that some of my runners can actually run better during that time of the month.

Well, Matt Tegenkamp said he never got into the history of the sport. His sports idol growing up was michael jordan..haha.

Anyway, that is strange about the girls running better during the period. Loss of blood (however insignificant it might be for some) = lower iron and in some cases transiently bordering anemia, or in bad cases anemia. In college women, I found (and the female head coach taught me about how to do it right) that the mileage needed to drop just slightly for some women.

I agree with the poster that said "men tend to race workouts" and "question the workouts". I found this to be quite common. Maybe the women I have coached tended to believe in my philosophies more or just went along with them.

I think it is easier to get women to buy into the team concept for xc more than men. With the men I coached it seemed like they were more interested in beating other people on the team then on opposing teams.

I'm not quite sure this supports your argument. Wouldn't you want your athletes to question the workouts, so they can learn? If you just do what your told without ever questioning, then you really don't know whats good/bad for yourself, especially in the long run. Maybe this makes girls EASIER to coach, i.e. tell them to run for 10 minutes then stretch for half an hour and they will do it.But I'd rather have it the other way around and have ultra competitive runners who question what they do so they can learn as opposed to submissive, always just do what's told without wondering why runners.This way, you as a coach have to be more knowledgable about the sport in order to answer questions about why the do the workouts they do, etc.

rib nerd wrote:

I agree with the poster that said "men tend to race workouts" and "question the workouts". I found this to be quite common. Maybe the women I have coached tended to believe in my philosophies more or just went along with them.

I think it is easier to get women to buy into the team concept for xc more than men. With the men I coached it seemed like they were more interested in beating other people on the team then on opposing teams.