Coach Her Game

Coaching Girls: How to Give Feedback So She Doesn’t Shut Down

• Coach Bre • Season 1 • Episode 24

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Ever tried to correct an athlete and made things worse? 😣 Instead of improving, she overthinks, shuts down, and spirals. It’s time to turn that around! Grab more coaching tools →https://coachfreetraining.com 

Coaches, we all want to help, but without the right approach, even the best feedback can have the opposite effect. In this video, I’m walking you through 3 simple strategies that will help your girl athletes hear and apply your coaching—without getting stuck in their heads. 

🎯 You’ll Learn:

  • Why “Connect Before You Correct” is a game-changer (especially for girls)
  • The power of Feed Forward Feedback to build trust and motivation
  • How to give athletes ownership and voice (without losing control as the coach)
  • Why mental training is the missing piece that helps them handle hard coaching 

🎙 I’m Coach Bre, mental performance coach for girl athletes and co-founder of The Elite Competitor. I’ve led teams to 4 state championships, and I help coaches like you build confident, mentally tough athletes—without guesswork. 

🕓 Key Moments: 

  • 00:00 Introduction & Common Coaching Challenges 
  • 00:43 Understanding the Female Athlete’s Perspective 
  • 01:05 Connect Before You Correct 
  • 03:33 The Power of Feed Forward Information 
  • 05:21 Encouraging Athlete Autonomy 
  • 07:39 Incorporating Mental Training Skills 
  • 09:06 Resources for Coaches 

📢 COACHES: What’s your go-to strategy for giving feedback? Share it in the comments 👇 

📌 Want more tools to help your athletes thrive? 

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

Have you ever pulled aside a player to give her some coaching, some helpful advice. You know, what you do as a coach and instead of it actually being helpful, she ends up spiraling even more, getting in her own head, maybe even like avoiding you a little bit and you're like, what the heck? I was just. Trying to coach you and now you're shutting down, especially if you're a male coach. This can be a tough tightrope to walk, but it doesn't have to be. There are ways that you can really coach and give helpful feedback to girl athletes that help them instead of cause them to shut down. And in this episode, I'm gonna be going over. Three ways that you can give feedback and have hard conversations with your girl athletes without causing them to shut down. And I have been coaching girls for the past 14 years. I've won four state championships as a coach, and it hasn't always been easy. I am in the same boat as you are, but especially if you're a male. Coach, it can be a tough line to balance as well, because you're like, I don't even know what their world is like, and it can, it can be a hard thing. So let's talk about it. Three things that you can be doing, number one. I didn't coin this term. I'm not actually sure where it came from, but I use it all the time in my coaching. It's connect before you. Correct. And I'm sure you're familiar with the four to one positive, two negative ratio of feedback. So there's research around how. And not just girl athletes, but we all tend to do best when we're getting a four to one ratio of like four positive constructive things to one thing that we need to work on. So that kind of goes in this whole bucket of like connect before you, correct. Meaning they have to have some sort of like rapport and equity with you before you? Correct. And a lot of that can be built in various ways, um, you know, throughout the season or off the court, just like getting to know your athletes. I think that's like coaching one-on-one is like, make sure. Or you know your athletes on more of a level than just who they are as an athlete, because building up that equity with them allows'em to trust you more, and then you're going to be able to give them feedback and give them correction. Not that you like as a coach, sometimes you're like, well, that's my job. I'm entitled to give them feedback, but. Yes, you can, but there's an effective way to do it and there's an ineffective way to do it. So if you want your words to actually land, then it would behoove you to make sure that you are building that rapport with your athletes, connecting with them, and knowing about them outside of their sport a little bit. So connect before you Correct is good. Just like as a general theme, I even have like a four to one on my clipboard and on my whiteboard and my gym. So it just reminds me of like. Continue to point out the good and be specific. Like, it's not just a good job, it's what, what are they specifically doing? Like nice job angling your platform to target a good, we holding your finish. Like all of those things, just like, think of it like a piggy bank, like you're just, you know, boop, boop, boop, you know, inserting the coins because you're gonna have to make withdrawals from that. And correction and feedback. Although good and we need to do it and we want athletes to love it. They don't always, and they see it as criticism from time to time. So building up that equity, building up that rapport. The other thing is like literally when you're going to say something that's coaching to an athlete, like first say what they did well, like it can easily be like, Hey, nice job. Send up that screen next time. I want you to try to drive to the hoop. I don't know, that's a basketball thing. I don't play basketball. I don't coach basketball. I'm not sure why I chose that, but if that makes sense, great. If not. Make it make sense. Okay. But the whole idea is like, find out like one little nugget. Like, Hey, good job doing this next time do that. And that leads me to my next point. My next suggestion is to give feed forward information. So the first one was connect before you Correct. Find ways to do that outside of practice. Um, find ways to do the Bean in season. Do that when you're coaching, you know, make some sort of connection, um, what they did well, but then give feed forward information. As coaches, we like to point out the negative. It's what we're good at, it's what we're paid to do. Not very much, but we're paid to do it. Okay. But giving feed forward information is more about what is going to happen, like what you, what, what you see them doing, what you want them to do in the future, and it actually instills some belief in them that you. Can do it because feedback information is just about what you did wrong. Okay? So you didn't get your hands up over the net. I mean, that's truth, but what can we do next time? Okay. Hey, next time if you press your hands over the net, nice and big, you're gonna get that block. And so it's both like what you want them to do, so it's giving them. Feedback and criticism honestly, but it's also instilling a belief in them that they can do it. Like you're gonna get that block next time. So giving feed forward information is really great also, because it kind of removes some of the judgment, if you will. So a lot of times with girl athletes, they tend to internalize some of this feedback as like you are like personally. Not attacking, but like sort of attacking me when it's like, no, it's not. It's not you. It's just your skill and what you're doing out there. Okay. Which might not sound much better, but kind of de-linking those things and using this, like even just saying next time or you are so close in this next play, or this for this next ball, here's what I want you to do. Or let's adjust this one thing and see how it makes a difference. And so that feed forward information is. It's just a helpful way to think about it, like you're, we're looking towards the future because I know what you're capable of instead of just like focusing on past. Okay. The last one that I wanna cover today is ask for her input. Because athletes, not just girl athletes, they tend to do better when they have autonomy and, uh, just meaning that they are part of the process of their growth and of their improvement. And obviously you're not always going to have time to. Ask them questions. Um, sometimes you had a coach on the fly and you're just doing what you're doing. But if you are having more of like a pull them aside or showing them some film or, you know, you, you're shaking them out, asking'em a simple question on like, what did you see? Right? Or I saw that you went for that ball, or you shaded left and the ball was hit to the right. What did you notice? You know, and so you're asking them like, what was your perspective? It's helping you kind of get into their world a little bit. Instead of you just saying what you saw, because they probably do have a perspective, and if they don't, then it allows them to think about it. Like, what are you noticing? What are you gonna try next time would've been a better choice next time, here's what I'm seeing, what's your take on it? And so all of those are really good words that you can say to help kind of build rapport, autonomy, helps them. Take some ownership of their development as well, and recognize that like I'm part of this too, and what I think about matters. Okay. And so I love that to just think like, how can I bring her into this picture? How can I ask her? Because a lot of coaching you'll find, I mean, this is what I found, is that when I first started coaching, I felt like I had to give them all the answers and I had to kind of prove. That I knew what I was talking about, and so I had to coach a lot. As I've gotten older and coached more, I'm realizing that it's about helping them find the answers and you know, prompting them. Leading them, allowing them to dig a little bit to figure out like all these, all of the answers to these things, because they're not always gonna have me out there on the court. And your coach, you can't be everywhere, and you actually don't want them to be a hundred percent reliant on you for everything. You want them to have the skills to coach themselves out there. Of course, they're gonna need you for things and you're, you know, whatever, like you're gonna be teaching skills. But like, when they're out there in those big moments and they're out there playing the game. Sometimes they can't even hear you. And so allowing them to be like critical thinkers is really important. That's also why I'm so passionate about like making sure that athletes have mental training skills that they can rely on when they're out there without you. And so a lot of coaches are, you know, frustrated because their players can't come back from mistakes or they struggle when the pressure is on. The first question I ask is, well, what have you done to train them? And they're like, well, I'm telling them mistakes are okay, and I'm telling them to shake it off, but it's not working. I'm like, well, that's because that's not actually a skill that they can use. It's great. Like those are good words to say, but it's not actually getting them to actually shake off the skill and they can't even really hear you half the time. So give them a skill that they can use on their own. And we started, you know. Incorporating mental training into our program about six years ago. Teaching them things like the snapback routine, so they have that skill out there on the court, how to find their hike number and doing their own pre-competition routine so that they're ready for the competition. How to have good, productive self-talk and affirmations and reset words that they can fall back on when they're struggling, so that you don't have to be the person that's out there trying to like get everybody outta their heads. You can spend so much time coaching the emotions of the game, and you are gonna be left emotionally exhausted. So let's take some of that. Off of your plate so that you can actually get back to coaching and you can give feedback and you can be critical as a coach and your athletes have the skills to like handle your hard coaching and also handle the pressures of the sport. Which part of that, let's be honest, is tough coaching. So. Here is what I did with my team. I'm actually, I have a video that I, where I break down the three common skills, like the three most impactful skills that I teach every single day in every single practice. So there's a video that you can head to next. I also break it down even further at my free training for coaches. That's at coach free training.com. Um, you can learn more in depth these meta training skills and how you can. Actually incorporate these into your program in a really easy plug and play way. So those two resources are where you should go next. Either the coach free training.com or check out that next video, the three skills that I teach every single day in practice. So I will see you there.