The Manosphere Is Already Coaching Your Players
A lot of what I try to do with TeamsOfMen content, both here in the blog, on our YouTube Channel, and in person with whatever team we present to, is take real world studies and facts and TRANSLATE them for coaches. We want to take huge amounts of data and research and both break it down into “Why You Should Care” for coaches and “How You Can Act On This With Your Players” for entire programs. That’s our “We Read It So You Can Act On It” pledge.
This recent article on line is a great example of that. We take 15 bullet points from an author’s interviews and research into terrifying teachings of the Manosphere and condense them here into WHY COACHES OF MALE ATHLETES should give a damn.
But because this article is built as a list of 15 disturbing examples, I don’t think the best use of our time is to walk through every single one like we’re doing a book report. Coaches don’t need another recap of internet weirdness. You already know the internet is weird. You already know some of your guys are consuming things online that would make you want to throw their phone into the nearest body of water.
What I think matters more is asking which pieces of this actually show up in our team rooms, locker rooms, buses, group chats, weight rooms, and relationships. Which beliefs are most likely to travel from a podcast clip into a player’s sense of identity? Which ideas are most likely to hide underneath “confidence,” “leadership,” “discipline,” or “self-improvement”? Which ones, if left untouched, become the invisible curriculum our athletes are learning while we are busy trying to install an out-of-bounds play?
So here are the three reveals from the article that should hit coaches of male athletes the hardest:
1. Algorithm-to-identity pipeline
“The word refers to a sprawling network of male influencers who’ve built massive followings of young men by promoting misogynistic, racist, and far-right ideas under the guise of self-improvement and male empowerment.”
2. Women’s autonomy framed as a threat to male status
“Women don’t want to work or have careers. They prefer staying at home and just having children.”
Or the stronger relationship-control version:
“When we try to (politely, teeth-achingly politely) ask her husband about work, he’ll casually say, ‘Nah, you’re not smart enough to understand it, and I don’t feel like explaining it to you.’”
3. Grievance as masculinity
“He launched into an unprompted rant to me about how women were unfair to short men like him and how they don’t want short men and only want tall men.”
Now, as a coach, this is where you would say “I don’t want my guys going down that pathway. But what do I do besides say ‘Don’t listen to this stuff.’?” And that’s where we come in. We are here to say “Oh, these are your worries coach. We gotchu. Here’s 3-12 min sessions we would run (us OR you OR together) that we think will help your guys unlearn this nonsense.”
The best way to start that conversion flow?
Coach Prompts
What manosphere-adjacent messages have you heard your players repeat as “common sense” without realizing where those ideas came from?
When your athletes talk about discipline, confidence, leadership, or self-improvement, how do you help them separate healthy growth from Manbox nonsense?
If the algorithm is already shaping your players’ beliefs about women, relationships, and manhood, what intentional conversations are you putting in front of them instead?
Player Prompts
Who are the online voices shaping what you believe about women, relationships, and manhood?
How do you know the difference between someone helping you grow and someone teaching you to resent people?
What is one belief about being a man that you picked up online and probably need to examine more closely?
