Trainers and coaches are always curious how training should differ between male and female athletes. Often coaches pose questions that begin or end with “but I coach women.” Female athletes are not physically different from their male counterparts, at least not as it relates to training. All muscles and bones are the same. Any differences really have no bearing on how a training program would be designed or applied. At no point should coaches lower their expectations for female athletes. Most of what I was initially told about training female athletes proved to be untrue. Whether this is unintentional is not clear, but most preconceptions about training female athletes are not accurate.
The old theory that female athletes need to stay away from body-weight upper body exercises is particularly untrue. What holds female athletes back is often the low expectations and preconceptions of those training them. Women and girls may not be able to begin with a body-weight exercise such as the chin-up, but they are able to progress to it quickly. After training elite female athletes in basketball, soccer, field hockey, ice hockey, and figure skating, we have found that they are easily able to perform push-ups and chin-ups when they are progressed properly. Although they may not possess the same upper body strength as elite male athletes, they can develop excellent upper body strength.
Female athletes are often no more flexible than male athletes in similar sports. Our elite women’s ice hockey players suffer from the same tightness in the hips that our men do. Our elite female soccer players are not significantly more flexible than their male counterparts. Athletes develop tightness and inflexibility based on the repetitive patterns of their sports, not on sex.
Women are more coachable and not as extrinsically competitive as men. By extrinsically competitive, I mean that women are not nearly as worried about what another athlete is lifting. Women tend to focus more on what they can do and less on what others are doing. This makes them easier to coach.
But body image is a huge issue for female athletes, who are much more concerned about not building muscle than male athletes are. This is a unique societal influence that coaches must be aware of and work to overcome. Statistics about weight and body fat percentages are often fabricated, inflated, or deflated and provide unrealistic expectations for female athletes. The only body fat information given to athletes should come from the coach, sports medicine staff, or exercise science department. Comparing the body composition of athletes at other schools or in other programs done with different methods, at different times, by different people is comparing apples and oranges. Female athletes must be reminded of what height and weight is normal for their sport and their body type.
Some athletic programs have adopted a head-in-the-sand approach to issues of eating disorders, body image, and nutrition by prohibiting coaches from weighing or measuring their female athletes. This does a great disservice to these women. The solution is addressing the issues, not avoiding them. Education and the promotion of positive role models are essential for female athletes.
Female athletes need to be exposed to photos of athletes similar to themselves who have a body composition that is considered acceptable. All too often visual role models for women are fashion models or entertainers who do not have the attributes of the average female athlete.
The major differences for training women and girls actually center around equipment needs and progression. Most personal trainers and strength coaches do not consider the unique equipment needs of female athletes.
All the following recommendations also apply to training young athletes of either sex.
15-, 25-, and 35-pound (7, 11, and 16 kg) Olympic bars. Many young and female athletes have
little or no strength training background and may need lighter bars to begin with. Buy lighter Olympic bars that take Olympic plates. Many companies now stock these new lighter, shorter bars. Also, don’t use conventional bars and one-inch-hole plates. Purchase full-size plastic plates that are the size of a regulation 45-pound (20 kg) plate. Younger and weaker athletes should look like everyone else in the weight room. Seeing themselves in the mirror with large- diameter plates provides a huge psychological boost.
Dumbbells in 2.5-pound increments. Dumbbells in 2.5-pound (1 kg) increments are ideal for
younger athletes and female athletes. Five-pound (2.5 kg) increments do not allow younger or less-trained athletes to progress at reasonable rates. Consider that when less-experienced athletes advance from two 15-pound (7 kg) dumbbells to two 20-pound (10 kg) dumbbells, they are progressing from 30 pounds (15 kg) to 40 pounds (20 kg), an increase of 33 percent. Would you ask a stronger athlete to go from 60-pound (30 kg) dumbbells to 90-pound (40 kg) dumbbells in one week? Having dumbbells from 5 through at least 50 in 2.5-pound increments is essential.
1.25-pound PlateMates. If you have only 5-pound-increment dumbbells, PlateMates are the
solution. PlateMates are simply 1.25-pound (.6 kg) magnets that allow you to increase a dumbbell’s weight by 2.5 pounds (one PlateMate on each side). Make sure to purchase the proper PlateMates for your style of dumbbell: hexagonal or round. Round PlateMates do not work well on hexagonal dumbbells and could pose a safety hazard.
1.25-pound Olympic plates. These are not common but can be purchased. The same logic
described earlier applies. Moving from 45 pounds to 50 pounds is only a 5-pound jump, but it is also a 10 percent jump. Many female athletes will not be able to make this type of progression. The male example again illustrates this point. Ask a male athlete to jump from 300 to 330 on the bench press in one week. This is only a 10 percent jump, but it would be impossible for any athlete.
Dip belts. As your athletes gain strength, they can start to perform weighted chin-ups and
possibly weighted dips. Conventional dip belts can fall off small female athletes. Belts need to be custom made to fit a female athlete’s waist.
Weight belts . Again most weight rooms are outfitted with weight belts. If you are a proponent of
weight belts, purchase some size 24 to 28 belts for the females. This is one clear area of difference. Females generally have smaller waists than males.
Once your facility is properly equipped, functional training for female athletes does not present any problems. With proper equipment, female athletes can use all the functional training concepts discussed in this book, and their training programs will have most of the characteristics of programs for male athletes. One possible exception is the use of body weight as the initial resistance for upper body work. Exercises such as push-ups and pull-ups may need to be modified for beginning female athletes. Although women and girls can develop excellent upper body strength, they may not have it to begin with. However, body-weight exercises can easily be modified for the female population.