065: Coaching the Female Athlete with Gee Cormack
Are you coaching women in surfing—or raising a daughter who surfs—and wondering why the usual “just go for it” approach isn’t working?
In this insightful episode, surf coach Gee Cormack unpacks the critical differences in how women and girls learn to surf. From emotional safety and communication to technique and confidence, Gee shares how most coaching models fail women—and what to do instead. Whether you’re a dad, coach, or aspiring female surfer, this is a must-listen.
Learn why emotional readiness, not physical force, is key to long-term surf progression for women.
Discover how to help female surfers build trust, overcome fear, and accelerate skill development.
Hear the #1 mistake surf dads make when teaching their daughters—and how to fix it instantly.
Listen now to discover the coaching mindset and strategies that help women feel confident, safe, and empowered in the surf.
Gee Cormack talks about some considerations to think about when coaching female athletes.
https://chixsurfschool.com.au/
https://www.instagram.com/chixsurfschool/
www.surfmastery.com
Key Points
Beginners, especially those with around 10 hours of surfing experience, often overestimate their abilities and require guidance to recognize and correct their mistakes.
Women's approach to learning surfing differs significantly from men's, emphasizing the need for knowledge, education, and confidence-building through instruction rather than trial and error.
Coaches need to break down surfing techniques more for women, especially beginners, and address their fears and anxieties to build trust and confidence.
Fathers teaching their daughters to surf often fail to communicate effectively, leading to frustration; effective communication and understanding the child's perspective are crucial for success.
Intermediate to advanced female surfers require coaching that emphasizes using their bodies with more power and aggression, tailored to their physical and hormonal cycles.
Male surfers, even at intermediate to advanced levels, benefit from coaching that encourages them to slow down, be more rhythmical, and focus on energy rather than excessive movement.
Outline
Beginner Surfers' Learning Styles
Beginners, having surfed for about 10 hours, often overestimate their abilities but recognize their mistakes.
Gee's surf school primarily caters to women, noting a distinct difference in learning styles between genders.
Women tend to lack initial confidence and prefer learning through instruction and knowledge before entering the water.
Physical differences, such as body size, influence confidence levels and approach to surfing.
Women require a strategic, knowledge-based approach to build confidence, unlike men who may rely more on physical trial and error.
Teaching Approaches for Women vs. Men
Women learn faster technically due to their preference for instruction and knowledge.
Men often prefer to jump into the water and learn through experience, showing less patience for prolonged instruction.
Coaches need to adapt their teaching styles, providing more detailed instruction and reassurance for women.
Safety and comfort are paramount for women, requiring a gentle, encouraging approach to build trust and confidence.
Challenges in Teaching Female Groms
Female groms, or young girls, overanalyze situations, requiring a different teaching approach than male groms.
Fathers often struggle to teach their daughters due to a lack of understanding of the female perspective and communication style.
Effective teaching involves acknowledging fears, understanding their origins, and breaking down techniques to build confidence over time.
Communication is key; fathers must explain what they see in the water to prepare their daughters, enhancing their surfing experience and performance.
Intermediate to Advanced Female Athletes
Advanced female athletes require teaching to be more forceful and aggressive in their surfing technique.
Young junior girls may struggle with confidence and technique, especially during puberty, requiring tailored coaching.
Coaching must consider the physical and hormonal changes in young girls, adjusting training to match their capabilities during different times of the month.
Advanced women, unlike junior girls, are more accustomed to their body's cycles and can adapt their training accordingly.
Teaching Advanced Male Athletes
Advanced male athletes often benefit from refining their technique, focusing on less movement and more energy.
Coaching involves challenging their concepts and getting them to focus on minute details to improve their performance.
Male athletes typically exhibit high confidence, which can be harnessed to encourage more rhythmical and efficient surfing.
Social Media and Online Presence
Gee promotes their surf school through Instagram, Facebook, and a website, providing a platform for showcasing their activities and teachings.
Transcription
Michael Frampton
Surfing, I don't know, like still beginners, but they've been surfing maybe 10 hours. They think they know what they're doing, but they don't. But obviously, they know that they're making mistakes and they're coming to...
Gee Cormack
You. Are you talking about my female clients or my male clients? Remember I am an all-women—generally an all-women—surf school. Women's mentality is not confidence first.
Michael Frampton
Tell me the women's mentality because that's the one thing I get on this podcast is just people emailing, "More women's opinions, please." Okay, yeah. So there's plenty of male opinion out.
Gee Cormack
There. Of course there is, it's surfing. Look, I... I'm very masculine in my train of thought. I've grown up doing quite aggressive sports, but I am obviously a woman and I have worked with women very closely, physically and emotionally, for a long time. And there is a big difference. Women learning... They learn from instruction. They want knowledge. They want education. They want you to sit and talk to them on the beach before you go out in the water. They don't have the confidence. Physically, we are—I mean, you and I sitting here—you're bigger than me. We're both fit. We're both healthy. We both surf a lot. You are a bigger build than I am. So your body generally can manage a little bit more than what I can. So of course I'm not going to be as confident as you are in going out in six, seven, eight-foot surf because my body physically can't handle as much as yours can. So I need to be more strategic. Okay? So it's the knowledge, it's the education that will get me to where you are, forever. And this is generally speaking. Obviously not everyone is the same. Men have that physical confidence that they're like, "Yeah, well, I can go out there." Okay. "Well, I'll just go out there and give it a go." Women don't work like that. And if you want a woman to do well in the water, you don't have the luxury of them being smashed 10 times and expecting them to come back for more. You got one, two at most times that they can be beaten, and then they will not get back in the water. Because they don't have that physical confidence. So we need to create that confidence through knowledge. Women learn from instruction. So technically, women generally will learn faster than men because they learn from information—so from technique. They will practice on the beach 20 times before they ever go out and even catch one wave. Whereas in a guy's like, "Yeah, I got this. Okay, cool. All right, that's a pop-up. Sweet. I'm out there." You speak to them for longer than 10 minutes and they want you to bugger off. You know what I mean? Like, just get in the water. Let's get in the water. So, you know, it's a lot of work. When you've got beginners, you need to choose. Great. The women, young girls, older women—very differently to the way that you would treat men. You need to teach them what the water is doing, get them to understand the sounds and the feels and all that sort of stuff. Prepare them for the dangers that are out there—if there are dangers—and then teach them about the technique of surfing. And then go out there and just... and gently encourage them, but always saying, "If you don't feel comfortable out there, that's fine. We can come back in." You know, it's that gentle approach that gets a woman to just go out there and give it a go. Okay? But you need to make sure as a coach that you keep them safe at all times. So for women, it's more learning from instruction first, and if they have a good experience, then they potentially will continue on. Whereas when you're teaching a guy, you can teach him how to pop up, you teach him the basics of what the water's doing, and they will—you say, "All right, stay in the whitewash." They will go out the back if they think that they can go out the back and it's small enough. They bugger off out the back, no matter if you say to them, "Stay in the whitewash," or not. They're just like, "That looks way more fun, I'm out there." You know? And so you have to work more with that mentality of—technically he may not get it because he's probably not quite listened to what I've said—but physically, he'll catch 20 waves. So he'll catch 20 to their three. So they learn from trial and error. Falling, getting up. "I fell that way. I fell that way. Okay, well, look up next time. Okay. I looked up that time. Sweet. All right, I got it." Women are like, "That wave looks a bit big," or, "I'm not quite sure." And so, you know, the progression is a little bit slower. But technically, they will pop up almost the right way the second or third time.
Michael Frampton
Okay, so you break things down.
Gee Cormack
More. Yeah, way more. God, most of my job is talking. I could talk all day, really. Yeah, a lot of it is talking and then being out in the water and talking about what the water's doing, talking about how it makes you feel, you know, talking about... everything. You know, everything. Today we spoke a lot about the onshore winds and the clouds and how that changes the look of the water and how that changes our perspective on how big the wave is, you know, and what it's going to do to us. Because it's not a clear day with beautiful blue skies and crystal clear see-through water with a nice clean one-foot wave. It's onshore, it's cloudy, the water's dark, and you can't get your centre of gravity because you're continuously rocking. So that accentuates our anxiety. So we need to talk about how that is going to affect us. Don't freak out, it is one foot. In your head, you're expecting it to be bigger because it looks scarier. You know, so... Beginner women... to beginner men is—I find our approach is very different. Yeah.
Michael Frampton
So more time breaking it down.
Gee Cormack
Yeah. Yeah. Actually being—okay, and we're talking about women here. We're not talking about little—I mean, little girls are very different. We get a lot of dads calling us who are like, "I need some help. I don't know what I'm doing. I've surfed my whole life and my daughter just... it's not ending well," you know, so... But it's—for women, I find it is acknowledging their fears. And getting them to understand where their fears sit... and working with it. Not going, "Don't be silly, just get out there. It's alright, you just got smashed, just go back out." It doesn't work like that. I mean, sure, you can do that, but you're not going to get a client back. You're not going to build trust. You can't tell someone to not be scared when they're scared. You've got to get them to understand where that fear comes from, how you work with that, and breaking that down so that fear becomes less and less over time.
Michael Frampton
So you mentioned the groms, the female groms. Why do dads have so much trouble?
Gee Cormack
I love our father-daughter classes. They're my favorite. Yeah, they're really good. It's that basic thing of, "I know what I'm doing." We do it with couples as well. Women overanalyze everything—even the young girl, you know, she overanalyzes everything. And so, if you're going to teach a male, you have to sit in a male headspace. If you're going to teach a female, you have to sit in a female headspace. We are only now starting to recognize that those headspaces are different. Why do you think couples find it so difficult to be in a relationship half the time? It's because a man thinks of one thing a certain way, a woman thinks of one thing a different way, and you're trying to make each other think the same way. It doesn't work like that. So when dads are teaching their daughters, a lot of them have surfed their whole life. So they're like, "I know what I'm doing." But you've got to understand that is a child, is a little girl who is petrified. Probably the biggest mistake—and I comment to guys all the time when I'm in the water—is a guy will, you know, has his daughter out in the water, and you see him holding the daughter on the foam board and he's looking for waves. And then he suddenly turns the board around, throws her on a wave, she suddenly scrambles to her feet and falls off and gets off, you know, and paddles back out, holds the board. He sees a wave, spins her around, does the same thing over and over again. She keeps falling. Why? Has he communicated at any time to her what he is looking for? What is coming at her? What she needs to look for? What to expect? So that she has some sort of preparation for what is actually coming. And I'll say, "What did you see out there?" "I'm looking for a line of whitewash." "Alright. Did you tell her that? Did you give her a second to even be prepared for what is coming?" And it's a basic thing. Every single dad makes the same mistake because he sees it. It doesn't mean he's communicated it. So all we do is—we are like the translator. We'll say to him, "Okay, what can you see?" And he'll explain. I'll be like, "Okay, how do you tell your daughter that? How do you prepare her for exactly what you can see?" You can't just throw someone around a corner and not tell them what's on around the corner. You know? You've got to prepare someone. When they start to do that, the daughter has more time to physically and emotionally prepare for what's going to happen. They always surf ten times better. And it's one basic thing of communication. Communicate what you see. And that simple thing—it's not saying to a dad, "You don't have the skill." It's saying, "You do have the skill, you need to use it this way." And they just—yeah, I've had dads in tears because it's a breakthrough. If you only have daughters and you're a father, really what are the things you get to bond with them on? And when you do bond with them, you want to implement those young because when they become teenagers, it's hard. You know? God, I'm a woman and I've got daughters and it's going to be hard. You know, so. It's... With the father-daughter programs, it's getting them to see things from the child's point of view and communicating some really key things in a way that allows the child to understand. And through that knowledge builds trust. Just like with my women. They trust me. And once you have that trust—I mean, I shouldn't say this—but you can do anything with them in the water. I can make them do anything because they trust my judgement. Trust doesn't come easily. You've got to earn it as a coach. You would know, you're a coach. You know, these people are our regulars. They come year in, year out. And they trust us in putting them in situations that sometimes can be extremely dangerous.
Michael Frampton
Yeah. That's gold. Yeah. Alright. What about the intermediate to advanced female athlete? Any, amen, mistakes that can be addressed?
Gee Cormack
Intermediate to advanced. I mean, to be honest, an advanced woman—probably a little bit different to an advanced junior. Simply because advanced women, generally speaking, it's... using their bodies with more power. Not being lazy. Actually using that brute strength because they've analysed waves and are mature enough to really read waves properly. And they have, especially as a woman, they must have spent a lot of time in the water. And you can do the... rotations, that concept applies for women as well, but a lot of the time it's teaching them to be a bit more forceful. I like to say, you're in control of the wave, the wave's not in control of you. And it applies with their surfboards as well. So it's teaching women to be more aggressive, be more forceful, have more punch, compress more, drive off their feet, use their upper body in a way that is... with a lot of power. So I'd say intermediate to advanced women, that's generally it. Young junior girls, a lot of it is, I think, within the confidence. You know, obviously technique, definitely. But yeah. It's a mix of the two. With the advanced girls, you know, most advanced girls are learning in a squad or training in a squad, and there will be maybe, what, 15 in a squad? How many of those will be girls? And is the coach a male or a female? And is that girl going through puberty? Yeah. You know, we do a teenage girls' mental health program, and it's getting young girls to understand, hey, my body has massively changed. And a lot of the time, it's not putting on more muscle, it's putting on a bit of curve. Whereas in boys, they put on a lot more muscle. You know, they grow bigger and stronger. Girls grow—can grow with a bit more curve and a couple more bumps. You know, which you've got to then work with that. And they now go through monthly cycles of hormonal change, which is something that massively, hugely affects young female athletes in all sports, no matter what sport you're talking about. And you can't just go, you're feeling like crap, well just get out there. It just doesn't work that way. You know, so we work with how girls are feeling, what their bodies are going through, what time of the month it is, then what their bodies are capable of doing, and going, okay, if you are the week before you're getting your period—how you feel, what your body's capable of doing. Your core is crap when you're about to get your period because you've got gut pain. You can't do as much core work. Generally speaking, girls' legs don't come through as quick when they're doing their pop-ups or they can't create as much drive because their bodies aren't working the way it should. So you've got to alter the training that they're doing and how that makes them feel because it damages their confidence in the water and blah. There's all that stuff. Intermediate to advanced girl is very different to an intermediate to advanced woman because women are used to those cycles, they know how their body responds, they know what to look out for, they know all those signs, and they understand a little bit more on how to work with that.
Michael Frampton
Generally speaking, like you said before, the difference—like an intermediate to advanced male, sometimes it's about backing off a little bit and having a little more grace. Yes. Whereas intermediate to advanced female is about, no, you've got the grace, you just need to have more energy, more aggression. How many young—you would know this from doing the online training—but yeah, training on the skateboards. How many boys and men get on a board, wiggle around and then do a hack, you know, whip the tail out on a board? It's like, yeah, that's awesome. But why the hell were you wiggling before doing that hack? That's... it's not riding. It's doing a slack, sliding the tail out. Anyone can do it. I can do it. Anyone can do it. That's not riding. And remember, online training, riding those boards is... and mimicking your surfing. Do you wiggle when you generate speed? Stop thinking about the hack. What happens before that? What happens after that? You know, so guys love to slide the tail out, especially when they get a female coach. And they do—look at me—and like... you know, and then I'll do a hack just to prove that I... and ride exactly the way they are, but then... it's so good. I was working recently with Surfing Tasmania with their high-performance kids and yeah, most of them are boys. And these are teenage boys, so they're really at their prime of confidence in the water, feeling really good about their surfing. And I set up some cone setups for wave simulation. And in the beginning, they were doing these courses and they’re like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Alright, now I want you to do this," and refining, isolating different body parts, slowing it right down. And you know, they’re all laughing and giggling and making all these noises at the beginning. And by the end of it, it was silence. And they would not stop riding. And they were doing the most basic movements, but we were getting them to focus on very minute things, which allowed them to be challenged with their concepts. You know, and going, "I didn't even think about that. I didn't even realize I had to do that. My God, just doing that slight thing has such a big difference when I'm riding a wave simulation or when I'm in the surf." You know? So with guys, they really do have that confidence, which is amazing. I love working with it. But it's getting them to slow down, be more rhythmical, less movement, more energy. You know, less movement.
Michael Frampton
Remind people of your Instagram.
Gee Cormack
My Instagram is Chicks Surf School. Spelt D-H-I-N-X Surf School. Yeah, so yeah, you can see what we do on Instagram. We have our Facebook and our website.
Michael Frampton
Yeah, I’ll put links to all of that stuff in the show notes and thank you for your...
Gee Cormack
Time. Thank you very much for the interview.
65 Coaching the Female Athlete with Gee Cormack
For the passionate surfer—whether you're a weekend warrior, a surf dad, or an older surfer—this podcast is all about better surfing and deeper stoke. With expert surf coaching, surf training, and surfing tips, we’ll help you catch more waves, refine your paddling technique, and perfect your pop up on a surfboard. From surf workouts to handling wipeouts, chasing bigger waves, and mastering surf technique, we’re here to make sure you not only improve but truly enjoy surfing more—so you can get more out of every session and become a wiser surfer. Go from Beginner or intermediate Surfer to advanced.