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Create Women of Strength

A large part of your job as a Strength Coach or Personal Trainer is keeping your athletes and clients motivated. Highly motivated individuals will train harder, reap better results and are much more likely adhere with your program in the long-term. Well motivated individuals are usually a pleasure to be around, making your job that much easier. While the science of motivation (internal/external motivation, positive/negative reinforcement) has been studied and well documented, I have found that Strength Coaches and Personal Trainers need to be greatly aware of the motivational differences between men and women. As a male, it is much easier for me to identify with the motivational processes that many of my male athletes use to keep themselves focused and working hard in weight room. While we all share many common motivational foundations, it has been my experience that females can be motivated from a wider variety of factors than their male counterparts.

Here are some key points to use when training female athletes or clients:

Show a genuine interest in the athlete/client.

Women tend to place greater value on relationships and view the world as an interconnected web where relationships are of primary importance (19). The athlete-coach relationship falls into this category. Making the effort to find out more about your athletes (where they are from, family, educational background, hobbies etc) adds to the development of the athlete-coach relationship and shows that you view them not only as an athlete/client but also as a person. It is also important to be sincere while maintaining professional boundaries.

Set realistic, meaningful, measurable goals.

Women train for a variety of reasons and their goals directly reflect these reasons. Goals should be set by both parties in mutual agreement. Whether her goal is to jump higher, lift more weight, lower her blood pressure or to fit back into a pair of old jeans, the goal should be clearly explained and detailed. This makes the goal much more authentic in the athletes mind and thus more attainable. As always, break long-term goals into several smaller short-term objectives. They can be as simple as “Not missing a workout for the next 2 weeks” or as complex as “Learning an Olympic lift each month”. Positive feedback is extremely important while working towards these goals. Some may be dissuaded by a bad training session or by not progressing as fast as they would like to. Focus your athletes on the importance of the journey and not always on the outcomes.

Educate.

I cannot stress this point enough. Client education is key to training adherence and should be the primary goal of any coach or personal trainer. Females are targeted by advertisers and bombarded with tons of fitness information and misinformation. As a coach, it is your job to dig in and help her make sense of everything from Dr. Phil’s Diet Book, the low carbohydrate craze, to concerns with weightlifting and body image. Realize that each person comes to you with their own unique training and diet history and beliefs. Some will be open and willing to listen, understand, accept and apply the knowledge you provide to them, while others will not be so ready to let go of old ideas.

A main concern for females who begin weight-training is the fear of developing bulky muscles. In a study of Division 3 college athletes, female athletes perceive resistance training to be a masculine activity (1). Their confidence in their ability to adhere to a resistance training program was significantly less than the male athletes’ rating of confidence when an increase is muscle size was perceived (11). Therefore, this process of listening and educating may help to promote adherence through identifying motivating factors, addressing the athletes’ fears, and developing appropriate expectations (1).

Body image, the gender appropriateness of resistance training, and the importance of a well constructed resistance training program to her overall fitness/athletic goals are all issues that must be tackled by the fitness professional. Direct education is one method that can be used to alter the way in which the female athlete perceives the way others will judge her, how she will judge herself, and the degree of confidence she has in her abilities (2, 4).

Construct a program appropriate to goals.

Goals can range from a wide variety of measurable things and while many goals can be reached at once as side effects of training (e.g. fat loss, improve cardiovascular endurance, better health, better performance), you must first focus on achieving the goals initially set up together in the start of the program. Because the process of weight training may not be valued by the female athlete in and of itself, the connection between the achievement of process goals and the achievement of highly valued outcome goals (improvement in sport performance) should be reinforced (1).

Be cautious with the use of hard numbers.

Periodic tests and measurements are an excellent way to assess progress and to augment training protocols. However, the resistance-training professional should caution against using improvements in these measures as the primary way to reinforce female athletes (1). Some female athletes demonstrate a strong desire to develop their muscular strength, but the majority still have fears of becoming too muscular and unfeminine. Therefore, there may be a conflict between the female athlete’s confidence in here ability to demonstrate strength and power and the perceived social consequences of demonstrating this ability (3). This perceived fear can cause the athlete to under perform in testing and throw off the validity of such tests. Instead of weightlifting based tests, use more functional testing such as jumping or medicine ball throwing to simulate sport movements. These forms of tests will be perceived as less masculine and the athlete is more likely to participate fully.
Hard numbers can also be a means of reward to athletes. It is common in weight rooms to see a posted “Leader Board”, displaying the names of the athletes that are able to lift the largest amounts of weight. In the survey, Resistance Training Adherence in Division III Intercollegiate Athletes, the female athletes expressed significantly less confidence, in comparison with the male athletes, in their ability to resistance train at least twice a week if strength tests and functional tests were publicly displayed (11). However, the use of leader boards that emphasize commitment to the team through exercise adherence may be more appropriate and may have a motivating affect (1).

Create a training environment conducive to adherence.

The ability to make the training sessions a positive, fun and overall enjoyable experience will go far to improve retention rates for all clients and athletes. This is especially important for females as some can feel intimidated in a predominately male social setting such as a commercial gym or local weight room. This is one reason for the creation and success of female-only facilities giving them a place in which they can be free from any perceived social stigmas that may come from women training with resistance equipment. As a trainer/coach, is it also paramount that we breakdown gender based exercises and teach that each exercise can benefit both sexes equally. A common example is female use of freeweights, which carries a social stigmatism as a masculine mode of exercise. We should reassure our female clients that freeweight exercises can be extremely beneficial and will not cause them to become unfeminine. By giving equal value to exercises that may be predominately seen as “male”, such as the bench press, back squat, deadlift, Olympic lifts etc, we help to overcome some of the perceived gender divisions in the weight room and encourage our female clients to try new things which can add to the overall training experience.

References:

1. Balady, G.J., K.A. Berra, L.A. Golding, N.F. Gordon, D.A. Mahler, J.N. Myers, and L.M. Scheldahl. Methods for changing exercising behaviors. In: ACSM’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription. 6th ed. Phildelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2000. pp. 237–257.

2. Bandura, A. Social foundations of thought and action. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1986.

3. Bandura, A. Self Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: Freeman, 1997.

4. Bussey, K., and A. Bandura. Social cognitive theory of gender development and differentiation. Psychol. Rev. 106(4):676–713. 1999.

5. Gilligan, C. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

6. Fischer, D.V., J.L. Morrissey. Resistance Training Adherence in Division III Intercollegiate Athletes. Unpublished Research Study.

Mark-Anthony Bailey is the Editor-in-Chief of MostMuscle.com. As an Exercise Physiologist and competitive natural bodybuilder, his goals have been to ensure that his clients get the latest information on training techniques, nutritional guidelines and lifestyle modifications needed to obtain optimal health. He can be contacted at: markanthony@mostmuscle.com