Hello, and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast that's been specifically designed for athletes, coaches, and parents who are out there looking to do their sport just that little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is an opportunity to look inside the minds of athletes and see what we can do just that little bit different. My name's Dave Diggle, and I'm your host for this show.
In this episode 53, I'm going to answer a question that was raised by one of our listeners, Oliver, who wanted to know what my philosophy was on teaching male versus female athletes. Is there a difference and do I do it differently? So let's get into that and jump in and first of all ask, is there any difference between working with a male and female athlete? Well, of course, there are some physiological differences. We can't get away from that. Some of us have different things in different places that do different things for us physically, mentally, and emotionally. However, from a mental coaching perspective, let's look at some of the science. Let's look at the neurological and physiological differences. In utero, there is little difference between us at the start.
Of course, we all start off as females. And then if the Y chromosome kicks in, we then get testosterone, get testicles, and we become males. If we stay with just the X chromosome, then we just stay as females. So initially, we're all just one bunch of cells. And then when certain chemicals kick in, we decide whether we're going to be a male or a female. If we look at the male brain, it is 13% larger than a female brain. There's no getting away from that. And that's not a sexist thing. That's a physiological thing. There's a larger brain inside a male head. However, I'm not always convinced it's doing the best job for us. And I'll tell you why. Males utilise seven times more grey matter and females use 10 times more white matter. Grey matter is for information, for action, for precision. Some would even say tunnel vision. White matter is used for networking, socialising, multitasking, and being able to transition from one skill to next skill much faster. So in the first box, let's give a big tick for the females for being able to multitask and get it done quicker. Us guys, we're probably one task orientated, and we do that really well, but we're not that crash at multitasking.
Just ask your wives or your girlfriends. Males and females process neurologically pretty much the same chemicals. Most neurochemicals in our brain aren't that different. Chemicals such as serotonin, testosterone, oestrogen, oxytocin, we all have these chemicals in our brain just at different quantities. Is depending whether a male or female. So what does that mean if we're a coach? Males are less calm, more action-orientated. Females are calmer and more driven by socialisation. If you You've ever taught anybody in groups, you can see this for yourself. The young boys are all over the place. They're not necessarily interacting too much, but they're hanging off the roof like monkeys. The females are more orientated to sit down and get into groups and talk a lot. There's the obvious things that we, as coaches, see in our locations, whether that be a gym, on a field, in a dance hall, all the time. There's key reasons for that. It's down to the chemicals in our brains. Females have a larger hippocampus and more driven for connexion and networking. A hippocampus is to do with memory. Again, females are better with memory, long-term memory. If you ask a male something, they'll tell you what happened just now.
Ask them what happened a week ago, and they will struggle. It's the flip side for females. They're not as good at the remembering the right now, but men, they'll be able to remember things a month, two months, six months ago, far better than the males. Females process more sensory information, and therefore, they remember things more emotionally, and our emotions have a greater impact on our ability to recall. Any of you guys out there who've ever worked with me know that we talk a lot about our brains being like a library, and where we put things is based on the emotions we give that memory. And this is a key reason why, because our memories are so driven by how it made us feel at the time or what categorization of memory, emotion, we gave that at the time. Females also tend to like to use more words to describe things, to get a better emotional take on something they're trying to give information on or receive information on. If you're a coach out there predominantly working with females, be prepared to be able to use your words more clearly, more precisely, and more descriptively. If you're working with predominantly males, make sure, as I talk about being the sniper with your words.
You don't have to use lots of words or descriptive words, but very targeted words. Also, when we go back to when we were in the womb, our brains are built differently. Once we do split between the male and the female, our brain structures are different. Female's verbal centres on both hemispheres of our brain. Again, there's lots of jokes going on out there. I'm sure people are listening to this, but as a baby, female brains are more driven by language, whereas the male only has left hamherths of the brain, that's a connexion between the word and senses and our memories. Again, we're more practical-driven for guys. Females are more emotion-driven and memory-driven. Females have more blood flow to their brain, too, which equals more oxygen, which makes sense when we're We're talking about our memories. Males, less blood. Need for speed, thought, or action. For guys, it's all about the now, get it done, move on. There's less necessity for the blood flow to the brain because it's a make a decision, move on. Females are processing more. Both male and female frontal cortexes don't develop or mature until the age of 25. Now, a frontal cortex of our brain is decision-making process, our conscious filtering, what makes us make those decisions, what we think is the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, that what we would call logic.
Now, if you think about those athletes that you work with, the majority of them would be under the age of 25. Yet what we're trying to get them to do is to think incredibly, logically, but their brains are not built that way yet. They haven't matured enough. The same thing goes if you think about some of the crazy things we did as teenagers, and we look back and go, Oh, what was I thinking? The reality is we wasn't. We wasn't thinking because we were stupid or because we didn't care. It was because we probably couldn't. Our brain wasn't functioning the way that it should do. And that doesn't happen till our mid-20s. It's something to think about when you think about the athletes in your charge, when you're giving them information, when you're asking them to think about something logically, something that's probably incredibly logical to you, how they process that, we're asking to do something with a piece of equipment that's not geared for it just yet. Something to think about there. So there's some of the physical differences between a male and female brain. And what does does that really honestly mean as a coach?
Now, I'm going to put my hand up right at this point and turn around and tell you, not a lot for me. Because one of the key things that's been proven through many scientific tests is that once you increase the physical activity of elite athletes, when they're training multiple hours a week with strength conditioning, with endurance-based training, the brain brain chemical balance shifts. So there's a comparable difference between children in a classroom between those that are physically active and those that are not. When we look at the elite athlete, their brain chemistry makeup is different to the average kid that sits or maybe kicks a ball around in the afternoon or throws a ball with the dad. There's not a difference between the majority of kids unless you start to shift them into elite sport. Once they're in there, there's very little difference chemically between a male and a female. That becomes more neutral. So for me, when I start working with an athlete, I treat them as an individual. Sure, there's always going to be some underlining core behaviours that are predominantly male or female-orientated, but it's less prevalent if they're elite athletes. When you think about the kids that you coach, whether they be young kids or teenagers or late teens, the reality is our focal point should be on them as individuals.
What makes them tick? If you've listened to my previous podcast, when I talk about data collection, what we're doing is looking to better understand the athlete as an individual. That becomes more relevant and prevalent to us. If we're collecting data on that individual athlete, then we're tailoring their training, their development, their communication styles, our communication words, specifically to that athlete. If I was going back and becoming a teacher, I would be very, very focused now on the difference between an individual rather than an agenda. Some of the other key things that are important to me is there are physical and chemical differences We can see that. I've just listed a number of them to you. However, when we think about an athlete, they're far more comparable irrespective of their male or female, the more they train, the more they become a single unit. Now, I've got female athletes who I would communicate with in such a way that I would give them very singular, structured directives. I've I've got male athletes who I would give more emotionally-driven, greater communication-styled instructions. For me, it's about the individual. For you as a coach, I think if you take that tack, not necessarily looking, are they males?
Are they females? Are they more active? Are they more social? Do they need singular instruction or do they need multiple-leveled instructions? And simply look at them as an individual, I think you'll get a greater outcome, a more specific, more targeted, more replicable outcome than if you looked at them, are they male or female? There's always going to be some traits that are gender traits. The other thing to be conscious of is as humans, we're a social creature, we're a pack animal, and we therefore get pack mentality. If you put a bunch of boys together, you will get a pack of boys irrespective of the fact that they're athletes or not. You'll have the alpha male who will take dominance, and the pack will then remove as a pack. If you then put a group of girls together, you will find that majority of them will tend to socialise because it's part of their genes, part of their makeup. However, if you structure your training programme to treat them all as individuals and/or a team, it irrespective of the male or female, and they should slot within that system, within that training format, within the way you expect from them and they expect from you.
So be conscious of that. Another statistic that really interested me when I was reading this was they did a study on a group of US Marines, and what they did, they tested their testosterone when they first enlisted for the training. And periodically throughout, their basic training. And one of the key things was when they signed up to become Marines, their testosterone level was quite high. And throughout their training, their testosterone levels dropped and dropped and dropped to the point where just before they passed, their testosterone level was lower than when they were babies. So what does this mean? When you think about a bunch of Marines, Training together, you'd think about there would be full of testosterone, full of provider out there taking on the world, when in reality, what they've done, if they've worked so incredibly hard, they've trained, they've been mentally emotionally and physically put through the Ringer, that their testosterone levels have dropped. That's an interesting fact to think about when we think about the way that we train our athletes. There's not a lot of elite athletes that would be any different to the Marines. What I mean by that, they would go through very similar preparation processes, very disciplined, very physically demanding, very mentally demanding, and very emotionally fatiguing.
When we think about a group of athlete males, you'll find a lot of them have very low testosterone levels. What you'd also recognise is a lot of the female athletes would have raised testosterone, so it would be a balanced Interesting fact. Look for what drives them as individuals, what motivates them, what language that they use, what's their core functionality, how do they produce their performances, how do they communicate with you, what's the best environment that gets the best out of them, and understand that. Are they individual to the point where they're internally referenced, or are they more social, so they're more externally referenced? Again, you won't necessarily see that as a gender thing, more as an individual thing, and especially in the elite scenario. Keep a file on each individual athlete. Constantly reference them, collect data, look at the way that they're performing, understand what motivates them. When you get an outcome, look at what gave you that outcome. When you have a crash, look at what created that crash. You'll get more from understanding them as individuals, and you will do treating them male or female. For me, as a mind coach, when I first begin working with an athlete, and I start collecting all the information, all the data, all the relevant input, both from coaches, from peers, from parents.
I try to philtre out any generic comments such as, Yeah, well, it's just one of the lads, or, You know what? She's a typical girl. Those things for me aren't relevant. In fact, the more I can philtre those out, the better at my job I become. If you're a coach, I would urge you to do the same. As soon as we start to genericize what that individual should be like based on their gender, we stop seeing them for what they have or don't have. I'm not talking about physical things. We're talking about mental emotional, neurological, and psychological. We want to better understand the individual. We want to better understand what makes them them. And once we understand that the more we create an elite athlete, the less difference there are between the male and the female, the better our job we will become. So Oliver, I hope this has given you some information and given you a different perspective on how you can communicate and create the right environment for your athletes to perform. Are there physiological differences? Absolutely. Should that be the way that you gear your coaching? No, not in my thought process.
I just want to add a note in here. The majority of the statistics I referenced in this came from the University of Cambridge's papers on the difference between the brains of males and females. It's a great paper to read, and I'd urge anybody out there who's interested in neurosciences to read that. I've I hope you've enjoyed this. I hope you've got a different perspective on working with athletes. I hope you've looked at this from a different angle and thought, right, I don't coach a group of rowdy boys or I don't coach a group of chatty girls. I coach athletes. That's my want for this podcast. So until the next episode of Brain in the Game, train smart and enjoy the ride. My name's Dave Diggle, and I'm the mind coach.
