What Male Coaches Get Wrong About Girls and Emotions

Coaching female athletes as a male coach? It’s a different game. Girls respond to emotion, connection, and trust. When you coach them like boys, it backfires. Grab more coaching tips → https://coachfreetraining.com
 
In this episode, I’m sharing the top 3 mistakes male coaches make with girl athletes—and how to fix them with strategies that build resilience, regulation, and results.
 
🎯 Learn:
Why aggressive motivation shuts her down
What her brain needs to feel safe and perform under pressure
The Snapback Routine every girl athlete should know
Coaching emotionally while still demanding excellence
How boundaries build leadership (and avoid blurred lines)
 
🎙 I’m Coach Bre, mental performance coach for girl athletes and co-founder of The Elite Competitor. I’ve led teams to 4 state titles, and I’ve learned that great coaching girl athletes starts with intentional structure—not just drills.
 
KEY MOMENTS:
00:00 Introduction: Coaching Girls vs. Boys
00:34 Common Mistakes in Coaching Girls
00:44 Mistake #1: Handling Errors
01:33 Mistake #2: Silence Isn't Golden
02:11 Mistake #3: Over Coaching
03:35 Conclusion and Additional Resources
 
📢 COACHES – Ever felt unsure how to handle the emotional side of the game? Drop your experience in the comments. Let’s support each other. 
 
📌 Want to coach the mental game with confidence?
🔹 Learn more about Plug & Play Elite Mental Game → https://elitecompetitor.com/plugplayemg 
🔹 Follow us on IG → @elitecompetitorcoach
🔹 FREE Mental Game Training → https://coachfreetraining.com

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:04

If you are a man coaching a girls' sport, please, please, please, I speak for all of the female athletes that you coach. Please stop trying to deal with the emotional intensity of your girls in the same way that you would boys. What often motivates boys, crushes girl athletes? And this doesn't mean that you need to be soft and you need to lower your expectations or anything like that, but. As head volleyball coach for the past 14 seasons, I've led my team to four state titles. I've been coaching girls the whole time. There are some common mistakes that male coach make when they're coaching and leading girls teams and some really simple shifts that you can be making to make it a whole lot easier for them and for yourself. So let's go over'em. Number one, teaching mistakes. Like there's some sort of motivational moment. If your girl athlete is shutting down and she's spiraling after a mistake or something that she did wrong and then you go yell at her, belittle her, tear her her apart. You better bet she's gonna, she's already shut down. She's gonna shut down even more and she's gonna shut you out. And oftentimes I can motivate boys because it like gets some sort of emotional response, although I would argue that that's not really like best coaching practice. But anyways, girls are a little bit more socially attuned as well. So if you are like doing this, especially like harshly publicly, like you're just gonna allow her to shut down. Even more. So what do you do instead? Connect before you. Correct. Especially if this is in front of other people. Make sure to, you know, point out what's working and then layer in some of that feedback. So that's mistake number one. Mistake number two. A lot of times you're like, oh, I just noticed that that backfired, that intensity, you know, calling her out and yelling and it backfires. So I'm just gonna like be quiet and I'm not gonna say anything. Now you're causing your athlete to become more anxious. More nervous. She's probably gonna like fill in the gaps with some sort of ridiculous story about how you don't like her and doesn't, you don't believe in her. And so when we swing ultimately to the other direction of silence, that can also backfire. So acknowledge what you see, right? I see you're frustrated. Take a minute, let's reset. Okay. That builds trust. Like it can be as simple as just stating what you see. Okay, number three. Over coaching and giving them the pep talk overload. All right, so you're trying to talk them outta their feelings. I go back to like when she makes a mistake or an error, she's spiraling or f feeling down on herself, and you're trying to be like, come on, you got this. Like you're trying to get her head back in the game. Like, be confident, let's go. Let go of it. All of that. The truth is like her nervous system is already overwhelmed. And this goes for all athletes. Like when she's spiraling out there, your words like that are not gonna be helping. And what actually helps is giving her simple skills so that she can regulate herself in those moments. It actually like makes it easier for you as a male coach because now you're not trying to regulate her emotions, which is really tough and. There's a trust factor and there's all sorts of stuff. So like give her something simple like we teach a mental training skill called the snapback routine. It's a combination of a breath, a reset word, a reset signal. All my athletes have a custom routine so that I am coaching the emotional side of the game, less. They have a way that they can reset and I'm just reminding them of like, Hey, do your reset word, like what's your snapback routine so that we have a shared language, and it can also allow you to coach. Harder. You know, they're able to handle more if they have a way to emotionally regulate and reset themselves. And the snapback is like the simplest way to do that. So if you wanna learn more about that, go to our free training. It's at coach free training.com. I teach snapback routine plus two other like really simple mentored training skills that you can be doing with your team, especially if you coach girl athletes as a male coach. And we'll make things like. A lot easier for you. Now, this also hopefully goes without saying, but make sure that you are clear, calm, consistent. The more that they can trust you because they know how you're going to show up and you know you're creating a space for them to fail and, and learn and grow, like that's gonna be the best. And also make sure you have boundaries. Okay. Like you are their coach. You're not their friend. Never be alone in a one-on-one situation with your girl athlete in a car, in a gym, anything like that. Protect yourself. Protect them. Make sure that you have those boundaries well established and. So that they can trust you and that you're also consistent in how you show up. So hopefully that's helpful. If you're a male coach, coaching girl athletes, I would love to know below what are other things that you've learned along the way? Any questions that you have for me. And then if you wanna know more about just really simple skills, if teach your team, go to coach freetraining.com.