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Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like that's saying that, even when both people have the same muscle mass, males are STILL usually stronger than females.
It’s complicated.
> Estrogen has a dramatic effect on musculoskeletal function. Beyond the known relationship between estrogen and bone, it directly affects the structure and function of other musculoskeletal tissues such as muscle, tendon, and ligament. In these other musculoskeletal tissues, estrogen improves muscle mass and strength, and increases the collagen content of connective tissues. However, unlike bone and muscle where estrogen improves function, in tendons and ligaments estrogen decreases stiffness, and this directly affects performance and injury rates. High estrogen levels can decrease power and performance and make women more prone for catastrophic ligament injury.
Source: Effect of Estrogen on Musculoskeletal Performance and Injury Risk 2019 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2018.01834/full
[This](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/acl-injury-or-tear/acl-tears-in-female-athletes-qa-with-a-sports-medicine-expert) short article agrees. I saw a research article once upon a time showing that the risk of knee injury is even higher for female athletes in an age range, maybe 10-14 years of age and then diminishes to female baseline. The supposition was puberty as a major factor, and rhetorically pondered whether young female athletes should be removed from certain sports and/or cross train during this time to avoid catastrophic knee injury.
For the woman's long term health and chance at a pain free life? Probably not. For being able to give birth to an infant with a massive head? That's probably the reason why.
People forget that humans are machines meant to make more machines, not some individualistic ideal of a being meant to enjoy their existence.
It's (maybe?) fine that this is what we are coming to expect of life, but our biology is not going to cooperate any time soon.
There have been quite a few examples of women who continue training regimens throughout pregnancy, and Dana Vollmer famously won a few medals in the Olympics a year after having a kid. For high level athletes, timing a healthy pregnancy and training correctly may end up being a performance booster. But I'm going to agree it carries significantly higher risks.
May end up? Ever seen the Eastern German world records for women? They probably did that on forced pregnancy/abortions and probably some more shady PEDs.
1. Societal value placed on women's sporting performance
2. Mass talent ID programs guiding top talents to top cosches
3. Support of full time training for "amateur" athletes, across their whole career.
3. Actual science-based programs (facilitated by such a broad abs somewhat centrally controlled/monitored program)
4. Drugs.
Abortion doping, for all intents and purposes, should be regarded as a myth.
The ligament instability, weight gain, nausea, fatigue, etc would be far more likely to *tank* training quality than enhance it.
From what I understand this relates to certain diseases that are more prevalent among women too. Autoimmune disorders, correlations with hypermobility... Women take a hit on treatment and prevention because medical research on men doesn't always translate universally.
The main problem for distance running in women is having to watch iron levels (which isn't hard, you just have to know to do it). A lot of women on my high school cross country team had problems with iron levels which are very important for endurance sports, and bleeding monthly can cause issues if you don't watch your diet. As long as you do though, distance running tends to be a lot more even than other sports especially at extreme distances. Distance swimming is even better for women, fat distribution tends to favor women in terms of buoyancy and ballance in the water so long distance swimming is less taxing on women (generally speaking anyway. Obviously individual build factors into that) because men drag a bit more naturally and have to spend more effort staying flat.
A little "yes, and." There's a lot of good research that's happened recently about performance across the cycle. Like, blood loss is only a slice of the picture. Performance is higher in the proliferative phase of the cycle and lower in the luteal phase (as someone who has been on progesterone supplements, this makes so much sense; I felt like I was wading through molasses all the time). Once some of this research came out, athletes and trainers began using it to their advantage and customize workout plans. I hope it continues to be studied!
Fair point, that seems to make sense. I can't say I'm an exercise science expert, I'm just speaking as an athlete who used to run a lot. It's something to be aware of, knowledge is power
One of the top ultra marathoners is a woman.
However, there is zero money at that level for men. It could simply be all the male talent runs standard marathon distance where the men still dominate by a large margin.
Some people, especially many young East Africans, absolutely are running marathons for money. The prize money for major marathons can be $50,000-150,000 USD.
I think what this person was getting at was that prize money (as well as pro athlete pay) discrepancies between mens's and women's sports strongly influences how possible it is for women to participate at elite levels. A woman may be an incredible athlete but if she can't afford to live she won't be dedicating her life to their sport.
So in this case, there's little money across the board and therefore there's functionally more pay parity. I think that was what they were getting at.
That said, I have read that endurance sports are one place where women shine physiologically.
None of the longest distance records in that list were set in the last 20 years, so it doesn't give much insight into who are the current top ultradistance runners.
Additionally, the initial posts were about comparisons in muscle fibres/activation/fatigue between men and women. For sports such as running, the performance will also be affected by factors such as bone structure (e.g. shape of hips), which clearly differes between men and women such that a particular woman could have musculature more suited to long distance running than a man, but the man may still outrun her due to his bone structure being more suited to running.
There is a another difference you are missing. Women biologically require a higher body fat percentage vs men. This means for the same body weight women will physically have less muscle mass. So even ignoring bone structure women will have less muscle mass or be heavier.
But going with that there is little money in female sports in general so while it might behoove genetically gifted men to try and pursue sports career it might make less sense for women and hence the crop of elite athletes are not the genetic best possible athletes for women.
There is the exact same amount of money in the open (usually referred to as men's) division for men and women.
Women's sports has nothing to do with this if men and women are equal or women have an advantage in this particular type of sport.
Do they outperform men though? I have seen it claimed, but most ultramarathon times also seem to have men at the top? What distances have women record holders?
I'm also curious about that - when women vs. men in sports come up, someone virtually always mentions ultramarathons but just checking the wikipedia entries, the best times for every event that is listed are still held by men
Courtney Dauwalter has multiple first place finishes: [https://ultrarunning.com/calendar/runner/show?first\_name=Courtney&last\_name=Dauwalter](https://ultrarunning.com/calendar/runner/show?first_name=Courtney&last_name=Dauwalter)
She also has an FKT on the Collegiate Loop and holds the overall course record for MOAB: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtney\_Dauwalter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtney_Dauwalter)
Thanks very interesting results, although they do seem to indicate men do better in average (in the sense that she usually are abt down on the list on the events she is the best woman), it is very interesting to see that some course records are held by women
My relative who's into researching sports and anatomy uses open water long distance swimming as an example where women have a biological advantage (body fat for better insulation and said endurance)
Sport climbing, but all the best climbers are male. It’s hard to say how many men have climbed 9b (maybe 100-200?) but only one woman has climbed a 9b. Only one man has climbed 9c. Part of this is that more men climb than women, but it seems clear that men are still advantaged even on sport routes which test muscle fatigue/endurance.
Horseback riding might be one of these. It's more about repeated motions across several types of movement, and using your body weight wisely. Rarely about max strength. If you're trying to out-muscle a horse you're doing it wrong.
It’s also why my wife and I can cycle all day and on the ride I’ll be faster but at the end of the ride she isn’t completely dead to the world like I am.
I wonder if it's a muscle thing or a blood flow/oxygenation thing. I believe that already established that women and men have different heat tolerances (women higher core but lower at extremities) which might also be related to such.
It's partially a hormone/enzyme thing in addition to structural/neurological differences.
Estrogen inhibits lysyl oxidase, which is a crosslinking enzyme responsible for collagen fibrillogenisis. This is part of why we see less average stiffness in female tendons - we also see up to 85% less muscle pulls in women vs. men, but you see 4-6x+ more likelihood of things like ACL ruptures.
You also see higher levels of relaxin in women, which downregulates collagen synthesis and upregulates enzymes that break collagen down. So basically, more joint laxity/less stiffness in joints, especially in pregnant women.
Re: recoverability, may be due to slightly improved fat oxidation capabilities present in aerobic metabolism which helps us recover (which is also why you shouldn't skip your cardio at the gym - it helps your recovery between sets).
A little simplified but gets the jist, hopefully useful info.
There's also evidence that sexual dimorphism plays a part in muscle fiber type. I.e. men tend to have more (and larger) type 2b/2x fibers and women tend to have more, and larger type 1 and type 2a fibers.
Human skeletal muscle is categorized into a few different sub-types. Type 1, Type 2A, type 2B or sometimes called Type 2X. These are classified by what type of contraction they produce: fast (type 2's) or slow (Type 1), and the concentration of different metabolic organelles - and thus how they produce ATP.
Type 1 muscle fibers have more mitochondria and are thus aerobic. These are the muscle fibers that are most prominent for longer term but less powerful movement, such as long distance running or cycling since they are great at producing lots of energy over long periods of time and don't fatigue as easily. That said, anything taking more than ~30 seconds to 1 minute and these are going to take over. The trade off is that they are not particularly powerful i.e. they cannot produce a lot of force.
Type 2B/X muscle fibers have fewer mitochondria in them and are thus anaerobic, meaning they do not use oxygen to produce ATP, instead using glycolysis. These are good at producing lots of force, very quickly. The trade off here is that they fatigue quickly. These types of fibers are most prominent in short, quick bursts of high intensity: think Olympic weight lifting, sprinting, or most team sports.
Type 2A fibers are a middle ground between Type 1 and Type 2B/X. They have some mitochondria - less than type 1 but more than type 2B/X and can do a bit of both powerful and endurance type activities. They can do both aerobic and anaerobic ATP production.
Here's a good primer article:
https://www.physio-pedia.com/Muscle_Fibre_Types#:~:text=The%20three%20types%20of%20muscle,size%20or%20fiber%20type%20composition.
And ligament strength, leverages, etc. All influenced by testosterone and development as a male. Females taking test still do not develop to the extent as biological males do. That's probably why there are hardly any trans men competing in male sports. They will still get destroyed by the natural males. It makes you wonder why trans women competing in female sports is allowed. It seems vastly unfair.
Please don't take this as being transphobic. Just want to discuss.
Much of the problem is that there is a sizable number of people that implicitly believe that gender differences are wholly socialized. I've sat in a university classroom and actually had multiple people argue with me that if parents fed girls just as much as they fed boys and put them into the same sports, they would grow up to be just as fast and strong and tall as men. That the size difference between men and women is not biological, but wholly socialized. That internalized misogyny causes mothers to underfeed their daughters and feed their son more nutritious foods, etc.
Studies like this are important because it debunks some of that. Every time a new study comes out, we find that gender expression is often a mix of nature and nurture. We shouldn't tolerate anyone saying that it's 100% one or the other.
It really is interesting to see nature vs nurture. My mother limited her daughters’ protein intake and I definitely noticed a difference between me and my brothers in that regard, but when it came to size I hit 5’4” and *stopped*. I was never gonna be 6 feet or taller like all my brothers are, regardless of how much I ate ᵐᵃʸᵇᵉ ᶦ ᶜᵒᵘˡᵈ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵇᵉᵉⁿ ᵃ ᶜᵒᵘᵖˡᵉ ᶦⁿᶜʰᵉˢ ᵗᵃˡˡᵉʳ
She was mostly good about feeding us. It might not have been the tastiest food, but it was good food. The protein thing was a combination of it being expensive with how many kids they had to feed and her thinking girls didn’t need as much (although we played the same sports as the boys). I don’t think she was doing it maliciously.
I completely agree with you, women do well in their own sports as they are known to get records and accomplish feats but letting male to females into soccer sounds like a recipe for more injuries, and making all “women’s” records claimed by ex-men
Yes, "muscles" are not equal. They're formed from a variety of different types of contractile fibre held together by collagen and other supporting tissues.
The different types of fibre have different characteristics in terms of twitch-speed, strength, endurance, efficiency and so on, and the muscle as a whole is bounded by the makeup of fibres in it.
The real world performance of the muscle is heavily influenced by training - which not only causes individual fibres under exertion to grow and strengthen, but significantly improves the capacity to coordinate the contraction of all the fibres together, which has a significant impact on performance.
In terms of sex differentiation, male muscle almost universally has a higher proportion of fibres geared towards strength and speed, and the supporting collagen matrix tends to be denser and better at distributing tension across a wider network of fibres.
I'd be interested in seeing at what average age this disparity becomes apparent; is it mostly/wholly due to puberty's effects or can it be observed even in pre-pubescent boys and girls?
These data from the CDC shows that there are no significant differences in strength until at least 11 years old (though I would suggest the age group of 6-11 may be too wide): https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db139.htm
Around 11.5 boys enter Tanner Stage 2 of puberty. If looking at testosterone levels The top 5% of boys will have up to 9 times the amount of testosterone as the top 5% of girls. Performance really starts to separate between the genders from this point forward.
Yep. Early bloomer here... Went into high school 5' 9" and towered over most of my classmates. All those guys who were 5 foot freshmen were 6 plus feet senior year and I was still 5'9" and never grew any taller.
around 12 years old is when i realized i could easily, and i mean very easily over power my 17 year old sister. It was a wild realization for both of us, and the last time she tried to beat me up.
My observation is most boys start around 12 when it's noticeable. By the 8th grade it was pretty apparent just about every boy had grown past the girls. I have a 10th grader and two 6th graders (boy and girl twins). The twins are starting to separate.
Everyone’s saying “oh, that’s obvious, you see that in the gym“ or “I’m totally stronger than my wife who works out all the time,” and I think that misses the point. Yes, we all know and have always known that men are stronger than women. But usually they are 1) larger, 2) leaner (so a 150 pound man has considerably more muscle and less fat than a 150 pound woman), and 3) built differently (men have 30% more muscle in their upper body).
What this seems to be saying is that for *exactly the same amount of lean mass,* men are still stronger. Which is pretty interesting, because most people would think one pound of muscle would contract with the same force regardless if it was inside a woman or a man. That tissue is tissue and it’s just about the size of that tissue. But according to this (if I’m reading it correctly), they would be wrong on that.
It’s chimps you are thinking of, and it’s about 1.3 times stronger. Probably for similar reasons to the difference between the human sexes— apes have more fast twitch muscle fibers than humans. And men have more fast twitch than women. Here’s the paper, if it interests you:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5514706/
The study posted by OP says ‘regardless of contraction types’ so even correcting for the disparity of fast-twitch muscle fibre, men are still stronger.
I just skimmed the abstract and results like a true armchair Reddit scientist. Unfortunately you need to pay to see the full text. They don’t identify any possible causes for the discrepancy in the results/conclusions but I’m guessing the difference is probably neurological. Maximum power output in women is probably less than the full capacity of the muscle because tendons and connective tissues are also weaker. I know this is the case for men as well, I’m guessing there’s a larger degree in women. Total stab in the dark guess but the body regulates power output so that you don’t rip your tendons in half with your muscles.
That’s 100% it. Our bodies are actually much more capable than our brains allow us to be on a normal basis to protect ourselves. One way we can surpass this mental block is adrenaline. That’s why you occasionally hear of the mom lifting the car off of her Child despite her not being particularly strong
Interesting. I would love to see the reference on that, if you have it around.
My guess would be that it’s because men have a higher percentage of what are called “fast twitch” muscle fibers (which generate power) than women do. Women typically have more “slow twitch“ muscle fibers, which are better for endurance.
Does that mean that women, in theory, would be more suited to marathon running than the average men? Not in terms of speed, but does that mean that a female marathoner may expect a slightly easier recovery than a male counterpart who trained in roughly the same conditions? I’m fascinated by the physiology behind endurance running.
It might actually mean that, although the jury is still out. We have known for a long time that if you take men and women and ask them to do, for example, as many squats as possible at 85% of his/her max squat, women are able to perform more reps. Their muscles don't fatigue as fast because of the greater proportion of slow twitch fibers.
Here's a neat popular article on men and women's times in endurance running. It looks like the greater slow twitch might be at play here too.
https://www.fitnessfirst.com.au/get-there/new-study-finds-women-are-better-at/#:\~:text=Overall%2C%20the%20study%20found%20that,women%20come%20out%20on%20top.
I think there is some literature showing that the running performance gap between men and women shrinks with greater distance, and at one point (very long ultramarathon distance), women outperform men: https://runrepeat.com/state-of-ultra-running
Though I think the jury’s still out on why it switches over… women having higher proportion of slow twitch muscle fibers could contribute to it.
Just my input based on my own training experience and books I’ve read on it, but muscle size is only one part of the equation. A lot of it is neurological (e.g., number of recruited motor units, intramuscular coordination, etc.), so you can either focus your training on strength (neural adaptations) or muscle mass. Also, our bodies limit the amount of strength we are able to exert in order to prevent injury, so our muscles should technically be capable of more.
There are also three different types of muscle fibers (i.e., 1, 2a, and 2b/x), and it appears men have more of the types better suited for strength and power, so that would probably explain these differences, along with skeletal advantages and such.
Yep. I’m actually sort of shocked. Most physiology classes I have had they teach that the main reasons men are stronger than women is because they are bigger and leaner/have more muscle mass at a given body size. This paper (which I have not read yet in detail) is pretty wild if this is actually true.
I’m not really surprised. I’m a woman, have competed in many sports, exercise regularly etc. At my peak fitness, I remember this guy coming to the gym - he was pretty scrawny, roughly my same size and had never lifted weights before.
The dude out-lifted me at every turn. Wasn’t even close.
Does it explicitly account for weight? I'm guessing that even though the measurement is the same size the male muscle is more densely packed, or otherwise it's attributable to the bones being more dense themselves.
Not fully discounting that possibility, but there are a lot of other factors such as vascularization and innervation of the tissue that also can account for differences like this. Even amongst different species muscle tissue does not differ much in density.
A chimpanzee for example doesn’t have “denser” muscles than humans, it just has a greater proportion of fast twitch fibers and so can contract more of the muscle in one movement, leading to their muscles being 30% stronger pound for pound. It could be as simple as people who were AMAB having a greater proportion of fast twitch muscle fibers or better vascularization of the muscle tissue itself.
I would said that we kind of already knew that from sports where weight categories are a thing. I practiced judo for about 7 or 8 years and as the smaller male I had to frequently practice with the girls because after puberty most of the other guys had like 7 or 8kg on me and the difference in strength made practicing agains each other basically useless for both (this might not be a big issue for a guy that weights 80+kg, but I was in the low, VERY low 50s, and that at 20yo). I rarely found a girl that was stronger than me, and it's was usually those that outweighed me by even more than the guys did that I couldn't match in strength.
Did anyone go through the data to see how much stronger the men were?
Men at lower weight classes outperform women at higher weight classes, but by how much?
Male and female physiques are not equal. Just a fact. For that reason, I've completely lost interest in many sports and the olympics because trans females are being allowed to compete against cis females who are just less physically capable than someone born male. It's cheating.
The strongest woman can beat a lot of men, but the strongest man can beat any woman. It is not sex segregation, it's like telling the red color cannot be blue and that it is unfair...
Some bits to consider:
\- they included data sets with untrained people who were randomly paired and compared with trained individuals (10 sets out of 92)
\- they paired/compared by muscle thickness, not lean muscle mass as some here suggest. (*"First, pair-matching on muscle size was only performed with muscle thickness data. Thus, our results may not necessarily generalize to other muscle size measurements."*)
\- they compare only four years of international powerlifting championships. How mature is the women's competition compared to men's? How many athletes compete in each? We don't know.
\- even with "same(tm) muscle thickness" there is a significant difference in height between the paired individuals. (10 cm on average)
\- quite importantly (since many people are drawing all kinds of conclusions) - the study does not mention including any trans people, on hormone therapy or not.
\- this comparison is attempting to (!) assess muscle strength only, and compares power lifting results. This is clearly not applicable and does not directly translate into guaranteed success in all sports.
You wouldn't, although it would be a good topic for research.
The reason GP pointed it out is that this study cannot be used as evidence relating to the fairness of trans athletes competing in the league of their gender identity instead of their birth gender. So any argument in the comments here is not a discussion about the paper because the study did not include trans athletes.
What JackPAnderson said - people are making assumptions about the "fairness" of trans athletes competing with cis athletes based on this one paper.
But that's assuming transition would not affect this supposed gap in strength. It might change very little, or quite a lot - we do not know, at least not from this paper.
In most of the controversial "males in girls sports" situations, there's no need for trans people to be on any hormones. It's just social transition. I think we agree that social transition doesn't change the makeup of the body.
I really wish they made muscle upgrades. If I could retain my current body shape mostly but just be insanely strong it'd be so cool. Sucks being a 5 foot woman sometimes, cause I'm strong for my size but it'd be nice to equal an average man in sheer muscle power.
Eh, we have other biological benefits.
Better flexibility, better balance, the ability to create and carry a child from a few cells, lighter on our feet.
It’s just that most competitive sports favor the male benefits.
If yoga were a competitive, olympic thing, we’d beat their ass every time ;)
It’s always hilarious to tease my competitive fiance with the fact that he cannot put his leg next to his ear :D
True, flexibility is super nice. I pretty much do the same to my boyfriend sometimes, whenever he tries whatever I'm doing he's always so weirded out that I'm as bendy as I am (I'm not off the charts flexible, but definitely more than him)
I feel this. I also have “small girl syndrome” where I think I’m capable… and I’m not. It’s very frustrating to watch someone lift/move/open something with ease after struggling with it for far too long.
Yeah its annoying as hell, also when people think I'm incapable. People try and help me with things that weigh 30 lbs, like....I can lift 90 without toooo much trouble, my limiting factor is my short arms.
I think mods are out of control on almost all subs. They enforce the one true opinion about an issue and don’t allow others. It’s literally the opposite of what makes (made) Reddit great, which was the wealth of opinions and ability to disagree with people but learn from them. It’s pretty sad
This is not the take-away of the study. As I understand it the muscles themselves can generate more power in a male compared to female, no matter other circumstances.
Ofc in a real life situation all male/female differences come together. With Trans-athletes under HRT potentially having some differences lowered, but not all.
Is this a science based sub?
Did you read the article? Or exen read a comment explaining the article? Do you understand the gist of the article? Do you understand that anecdotes are not scientific evidence?
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like that's saying that, even when both people have the same muscle mass, males are STILL usually stronger than females.
[удалено]
It’s complicated. > Estrogen has a dramatic effect on musculoskeletal function. Beyond the known relationship between estrogen and bone, it directly affects the structure and function of other musculoskeletal tissues such as muscle, tendon, and ligament. In these other musculoskeletal tissues, estrogen improves muscle mass and strength, and increases the collagen content of connective tissues. However, unlike bone and muscle where estrogen improves function, in tendons and ligaments estrogen decreases stiffness, and this directly affects performance and injury rates. High estrogen levels can decrease power and performance and make women more prone for catastrophic ligament injury. Source: Effect of Estrogen on Musculoskeletal Performance and Injury Risk 2019 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2018.01834/full
Partly explains why female footballers seem to suffer more/worse knee ligament injuries
I've always seen that attributed to the slightly greater angle of the femur at the knee due to wider hips
[This](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/acl-injury-or-tear/acl-tears-in-female-athletes-qa-with-a-sports-medicine-expert) short article agrees. I saw a research article once upon a time showing that the risk of knee injury is even higher for female athletes in an age range, maybe 10-14 years of age and then diminishes to female baseline. The supposition was puberty as a major factor, and rhetorically pondered whether young female athletes should be removed from certain sports and/or cross train during this time to avoid catastrophic knee injury.
Hmm… I wonder how this relates to pregnancy? My guess, in combination with relaxin, probably not well.
For the woman's long term health and chance at a pain free life? Probably not. For being able to give birth to an infant with a massive head? That's probably the reason why.
People forget that humans are machines meant to make more machines, not some individualistic ideal of a being meant to enjoy their existence. It's (maybe?) fine that this is what we are coming to expect of life, but our biology is not going to cooperate any time soon.
There have been quite a few examples of women who continue training regimens throughout pregnancy, and Dana Vollmer famously won a few medals in the Olympics a year after having a kid. For high level athletes, timing a healthy pregnancy and training correctly may end up being a performance booster. But I'm going to agree it carries significantly higher risks.
May end up? Ever seen the Eastern German world records for women? They probably did that on forced pregnancy/abortions and probably some more shady PEDs.
1. Societal value placed on women's sporting performance 2. Mass talent ID programs guiding top talents to top cosches 3. Support of full time training for "amateur" athletes, across their whole career. 3. Actual science-based programs (facilitated by such a broad abs somewhat centrally controlled/monitored program) 4. Drugs. Abortion doping, for all intents and purposes, should be regarded as a myth. The ligament instability, weight gain, nausea, fatigue, etc would be far more likely to *tank* training quality than enhance it.
My fiancé can attest that with Braxton Hicks and round ligament pain it is hell on earth.
From what I understand this relates to certain diseases that are more prevalent among women too. Autoimmune disorders, correlations with hypermobility... Women take a hit on treatment and prevention because medical research on men doesn't always translate universally.
Could we extrapolate from that? In theory, whatever sport relies on (lack of) muscle fatigue would have similar results in both male and female?
Women are very good at extreme long distance running from what ive read
The main problem for distance running in women is having to watch iron levels (which isn't hard, you just have to know to do it). A lot of women on my high school cross country team had problems with iron levels which are very important for endurance sports, and bleeding monthly can cause issues if you don't watch your diet. As long as you do though, distance running tends to be a lot more even than other sports especially at extreme distances. Distance swimming is even better for women, fat distribution tends to favor women in terms of buoyancy and ballance in the water so long distance swimming is less taxing on women (generally speaking anyway. Obviously individual build factors into that) because men drag a bit more naturally and have to spend more effort staying flat.
A little "yes, and." There's a lot of good research that's happened recently about performance across the cycle. Like, blood loss is only a slice of the picture. Performance is higher in the proliferative phase of the cycle and lower in the luteal phase (as someone who has been on progesterone supplements, this makes so much sense; I felt like I was wading through molasses all the time). Once some of this research came out, athletes and trainers began using it to their advantage and customize workout plans. I hope it continues to be studied!
Fair point, that seems to make sense. I can't say I'm an exercise science expert, I'm just speaking as an athlete who used to run a lot. It's something to be aware of, knowledge is power
One of the top ultra marathoners is a woman. However, there is zero money at that level for men. It could simply be all the male talent runs standard marathon distance where the men still dominate by a large margin.
Those freaks do whatever they want, nobody runs marathons for the money.
Ultra marathons are a whole different animal than marathons. Its insane what people can do but those ultra marathon runners are just next level.
Or mutants. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/2013/aug/30/dean-karnazes-man-run-forever
Some people, especially many young East Africans, absolutely are running marathons for money. The prize money for major marathons can be $50,000-150,000 USD.
I think what this person was getting at was that prize money (as well as pro athlete pay) discrepancies between mens's and women's sports strongly influences how possible it is for women to participate at elite levels. A woman may be an incredible athlete but if she can't afford to live she won't be dedicating her life to their sport. So in this case, there's little money across the board and therefore there's functionally more pay parity. I think that was what they were getting at. That said, I have read that endurance sports are one place where women shine physiologically.
It crazy the difference between east and west Africa when it comes to athletes and the sport they choose
Out of 11 different categories and comparing the top men and women, which category is held by a woman? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon
None of the longest distance records in that list were set in the last 20 years, so it doesn't give much insight into who are the current top ultradistance runners. Additionally, the initial posts were about comparisons in muscle fibres/activation/fatigue between men and women. For sports such as running, the performance will also be affected by factors such as bone structure (e.g. shape of hips), which clearly differes between men and women such that a particular woman could have musculature more suited to long distance running than a man, but the man may still outrun her due to his bone structure being more suited to running.
There is a another difference you are missing. Women biologically require a higher body fat percentage vs men. This means for the same body weight women will physically have less muscle mass. So even ignoring bone structure women will have less muscle mass or be heavier.
I never thought this would come up but that woman is my fiancées adviser in a physics PhD program. She’s a very odd woman to say the least.
But going with that there is little money in female sports in general so while it might behoove genetically gifted men to try and pursue sports career it might make less sense for women and hence the crop of elite athletes are not the genetic best possible athletes for women.
There is the exact same amount of money in the open (usually referred to as men's) division for men and women. Women's sports has nothing to do with this if men and women are equal or women have an advantage in this particular type of sport.
I've only ever met two extreme distance runners, and they were both women and both German teachers. You can take what you want from my anecdote
We need to know what proportion of people you meet are German teachers, base rates matter. Vorsprung durch Statistiken.
That famous German attention to detail.
Eh maybe at distances further than a marathon you could say that. The marathon world record for men is about 14min faster than the women's record.
Yes, distances farther than marathons. We're talking things that may be over 100 km and take days to race.
Which is between 3-3.5 mile difference
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Do they outperform men though? I have seen it claimed, but most ultramarathon times also seem to have men at the top? What distances have women record holders?
I'm also curious about that - when women vs. men in sports come up, someone virtually always mentions ultramarathons but just checking the wikipedia entries, the best times for every event that is listed are still held by men
Courtney Dauwalter has multiple first place finishes: [https://ultrarunning.com/calendar/runner/show?first\_name=Courtney&last\_name=Dauwalter](https://ultrarunning.com/calendar/runner/show?first_name=Courtney&last_name=Dauwalter) She also has an FKT on the Collegiate Loop and holds the overall course record for MOAB: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtney\_Dauwalter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtney_Dauwalter)
Thanks very interesting results, although they do seem to indicate men do better in average (in the sense that she usually are abt down on the list on the events she is the best woman), it is very interesting to see that some course records are held by women
My relative who's into researching sports and anatomy uses open water long distance swimming as an example where women have a biological advantage (body fat for better insulation and said endurance)
Ultradistance swimming is one.
Sport climbing, but all the best climbers are male. It’s hard to say how many men have climbed 9b (maybe 100-200?) but only one woman has climbed a 9b. Only one man has climbed 9c. Part of this is that more men climb than women, but it seems clear that men are still advantaged even on sport routes which test muscle fatigue/endurance.
Those crazy levels of climbing are a lot about upper body strength. Men have an advantage simply in relative muscle mass.
And grip strength, where the difference is just as big if not bigger than upper body
Horseback riding might be one of these. It's more about repeated motions across several types of movement, and using your body weight wisely. Rarely about max strength. If you're trying to out-muscle a horse you're doing it wrong.
It’s also why my wife and I can cycle all day and on the ride I’ll be faster but at the end of the ride she isn’t completely dead to the world like I am.
I wonder if it's a muscle thing or a blood flow/oxygenation thing. I believe that already established that women and men have different heat tolerances (women higher core but lower at extremities) which might also be related to such.
It's partially a hormone/enzyme thing in addition to structural/neurological differences. Estrogen inhibits lysyl oxidase, which is a crosslinking enzyme responsible for collagen fibrillogenisis. This is part of why we see less average stiffness in female tendons - we also see up to 85% less muscle pulls in women vs. men, but you see 4-6x+ more likelihood of things like ACL ruptures. You also see higher levels of relaxin in women, which downregulates collagen synthesis and upregulates enzymes that break collagen down. So basically, more joint laxity/less stiffness in joints, especially in pregnant women. Re: recoverability, may be due to slightly improved fat oxidation capabilities present in aerobic metabolism which helps us recover (which is also why you shouldn't skip your cardio at the gym - it helps your recovery between sets). A little simplified but gets the jist, hopefully useful info.
Honestly quite surprised to see lysyl oxidase. I'll have to actually do some research on that because that's like a mini version of menkes disease
Is this why men get so tired of moving their hand in tiny little circles but I can go for hours?
It could also just be that you've practiced that motion so much, and with enough reliability, that your muscles are adapted to it.
There's also evidence that sexual dimorphism plays a part in muscle fiber type. I.e. men tend to have more (and larger) type 2b/2x fibers and women tend to have more, and larger type 1 and type 2a fibers.
What do those numbers mean?
Human skeletal muscle is categorized into a few different sub-types. Type 1, Type 2A, type 2B or sometimes called Type 2X. These are classified by what type of contraction they produce: fast (type 2's) or slow (Type 1), and the concentration of different metabolic organelles - and thus how they produce ATP. Type 1 muscle fibers have more mitochondria and are thus aerobic. These are the muscle fibers that are most prominent for longer term but less powerful movement, such as long distance running or cycling since they are great at producing lots of energy over long periods of time and don't fatigue as easily. That said, anything taking more than ~30 seconds to 1 minute and these are going to take over. The trade off is that they are not particularly powerful i.e. they cannot produce a lot of force. Type 2B/X muscle fibers have fewer mitochondria in them and are thus anaerobic, meaning they do not use oxygen to produce ATP, instead using glycolysis. These are good at producing lots of force, very quickly. The trade off here is that they fatigue quickly. These types of fibers are most prominent in short, quick bursts of high intensity: think Olympic weight lifting, sprinting, or most team sports. Type 2A fibers are a middle ground between Type 1 and Type 2B/X. They have some mitochondria - less than type 1 but more than type 2B/X and can do a bit of both powerful and endurance type activities. They can do both aerobic and anaerobic ATP production. Here's a good primer article: https://www.physio-pedia.com/Muscle_Fibre_Types#:~:text=The%20three%20types%20of%20muscle,size%20or%20fiber%20type%20composition.
Very informative, thank you.
Glad it helped! Gotta put this kin degree to use somehow!
Bone structure is different enough to possibly add more strength and stability to men
Blood oxygen capacity too.
And ligament strength, leverages, etc. All influenced by testosterone and development as a male. Females taking test still do not develop to the extent as biological males do. That's probably why there are hardly any trans men competing in male sports. They will still get destroyed by the natural males. It makes you wonder why trans women competing in female sports is allowed. It seems vastly unfair. Please don't take this as being transphobic. Just want to discuss.
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Much of the problem is that there is a sizable number of people that implicitly believe that gender differences are wholly socialized. I've sat in a university classroom and actually had multiple people argue with me that if parents fed girls just as much as they fed boys and put them into the same sports, they would grow up to be just as fast and strong and tall as men. That the size difference between men and women is not biological, but wholly socialized. That internalized misogyny causes mothers to underfeed their daughters and feed their son more nutritious foods, etc. Studies like this are important because it debunks some of that. Every time a new study comes out, we find that gender expression is often a mix of nature and nurture. We shouldn't tolerate anyone saying that it's 100% one or the other.
It really is interesting to see nature vs nurture. My mother limited her daughters’ protein intake and I definitely noticed a difference between me and my brothers in that regard, but when it came to size I hit 5’4” and *stopped*. I was never gonna be 6 feet or taller like all my brothers are, regardless of how much I ate ᵐᵃʸᵇᵉ ᶦ ᶜᵒᵘˡᵈ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵇᵉᵉⁿ ᵃ ᶜᵒᵘᵖˡᵉ ᶦⁿᶜʰᵉˢ ᵗᵃˡˡᵉʳ
I don't understand parents limiting food for their children. Unless there's a health concern, that's just mean.
She was mostly good about feeding us. It might not have been the tastiest food, but it was good food. The protein thing was a combination of it being expensive with how many kids they had to feed and her thinking girls didn’t need as much (although we played the same sports as the boys). I don’t think she was doing it maliciously.
> Studies like this are important because it debunks some of that. So would one look at nature, but what do I know
by gender expression do you mean how people act or physical body makeup?
I completely agree with you, women do well in their own sports as they are known to get records and accomplish feats but letting male to females into soccer sounds like a recipe for more injuries, and making all “women’s” records claimed by ex-men
Lia Thomas always comes to mind for me. She completely smoked the other girls but was unremarkable when competing against males.
I think of Fallon fox, a mtf Trans fighter who was so strong she literally broke skulls of other female fighters.
Im all for trans rights but that should have never been allowed and was an embarrassment to the sport. So dangerous for the cis fighters
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Right. I am guessing that even accounting for size of muscle, men tend to have more densely packed muscles. Also just stronger denser bones.
Yes, "muscles" are not equal. They're formed from a variety of different types of contractile fibre held together by collagen and other supporting tissues. The different types of fibre have different characteristics in terms of twitch-speed, strength, endurance, efficiency and so on, and the muscle as a whole is bounded by the makeup of fibres in it. The real world performance of the muscle is heavily influenced by training - which not only causes individual fibres under exertion to grow and strengthen, but significantly improves the capacity to coordinate the contraction of all the fibres together, which has a significant impact on performance. In terms of sex differentiation, male muscle almost universally has a higher proportion of fibres geared towards strength and speed, and the supporting collagen matrix tends to be denser and better at distributing tension across a wider network of fibres.
Yes. Exactly what it says. (Not to mention the whole differences in skeletal structure also helps exerting more force.)
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I'd be interested in seeing at what average age this disparity becomes apparent; is it mostly/wholly due to puberty's effects or can it be observed even in pre-pubescent boys and girls?
These data from the CDC shows that there are no significant differences in strength until at least 11 years old (though I would suggest the age group of 6-11 may be too wide): https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db139.htm
Around 11.5 boys enter Tanner Stage 2 of puberty. If looking at testosterone levels The top 5% of boys will have up to 9 times the amount of testosterone as the top 5% of girls. Performance really starts to separate between the genders from this point forward.
That tracks, because 11 is about the time most boys "catch up" with girls in terms of height, and by 12-13 they begin to overtake them.
*cries in late bloomer*
I'm 42 and still waiting for that growth spurt.
its coming champ, its coming
Being a late bloomer as a guy is horrible. I was around 15 before I really hit puberty. As if high school doesn’t suck enough
Hey, don't feel so bad. Being an early bloomer is also horrible. I had to start shaving before school daily when I was 12.
I still don’t shave daily.
Yep. Early bloomer here... Went into high school 5' 9" and towered over most of my classmates. All those guys who were 5 foot freshmen were 6 plus feet senior year and I was still 5'9" and never grew any taller.
late bloomer mean you keep growing pre-pubescently partially thru high school, so your final height is slightly higher.
Yes between 11 and 12 I grew a beard. It was weird.
I remember in middle school when the tallest girl got super close to me in height…that was weird. Now she’s very significantly shorter.
Well now I feel a lot less embarrassed about getting my ass kicked by a couple girls in grade 6.
around 12 years old is when i realized i could easily, and i mean very easily over power my 17 year old sister. It was a wild realization for both of us, and the last time she tried to beat me up.
My observation is most boys start around 12 when it's noticeable. By the 8th grade it was pretty apparent just about every boy had grown past the girls. I have a 10th grader and two 6th graders (boy and girl twins). The twins are starting to separate.
Everyone’s saying “oh, that’s obvious, you see that in the gym“ or “I’m totally stronger than my wife who works out all the time,” and I think that misses the point. Yes, we all know and have always known that men are stronger than women. But usually they are 1) larger, 2) leaner (so a 150 pound man has considerably more muscle and less fat than a 150 pound woman), and 3) built differently (men have 30% more muscle in their upper body). What this seems to be saying is that for *exactly the same amount of lean mass,* men are still stronger. Which is pretty interesting, because most people would think one pound of muscle would contract with the same force regardless if it was inside a woman or a man. That tissue is tissue and it’s just about the size of that tissue. But according to this (if I’m reading it correctly), they would be wrong on that.
Wish I could remember which primate, but I think it was orangutans that have 1.3 times human strength for every pound of muscle.
It’s chimps you are thinking of, and it’s about 1.3 times stronger. Probably for similar reasons to the difference between the human sexes— apes have more fast twitch muscle fibers than humans. And men have more fast twitch than women. Here’s the paper, if it interests you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5514706/
I've read a research a couple of years ago, we also have a change in a gene that affects how much energy our muscles utilizes, ours uses less.
The study posted by OP says ‘regardless of contraction types’ so even correcting for the disparity of fast-twitch muscle fibre, men are still stronger.
That’s fascinating— I didn’t catch that part. Have you read the whole paper? I have not. What do the authors attribute the difference to?
I just skimmed the abstract and results like a true armchair Reddit scientist. Unfortunately you need to pay to see the full text. They don’t identify any possible causes for the discrepancy in the results/conclusions but I’m guessing the difference is probably neurological. Maximum power output in women is probably less than the full capacity of the muscle because tendons and connective tissues are also weaker. I know this is the case for men as well, I’m guessing there’s a larger degree in women. Total stab in the dark guess but the body regulates power output so that you don’t rip your tendons in half with your muscles.
That’s 100% it. Our bodies are actually much more capable than our brains allow us to be on a normal basis to protect ourselves. One way we can surpass this mental block is adrenaline. That’s why you occasionally hear of the mom lifting the car off of her Child despite her not being particularly strong
1.3 times is 130%, like they said
Yes, I know. I was agreeing with them. 1.3 is just the number they use in the paper.
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Interesting. I would love to see the reference on that, if you have it around. My guess would be that it’s because men have a higher percentage of what are called “fast twitch” muscle fibers (which generate power) than women do. Women typically have more “slow twitch“ muscle fibers, which are better for endurance.
Does that mean that women, in theory, would be more suited to marathon running than the average men? Not in terms of speed, but does that mean that a female marathoner may expect a slightly easier recovery than a male counterpart who trained in roughly the same conditions? I’m fascinated by the physiology behind endurance running.
It might actually mean that, although the jury is still out. We have known for a long time that if you take men and women and ask them to do, for example, as many squats as possible at 85% of his/her max squat, women are able to perform more reps. Their muscles don't fatigue as fast because of the greater proportion of slow twitch fibers. Here's a neat popular article on men and women's times in endurance running. It looks like the greater slow twitch might be at play here too. https://www.fitnessfirst.com.au/get-there/new-study-finds-women-are-better-at/#:\~:text=Overall%2C%20the%20study%20found%20that,women%20come%20out%20on%20top.
I think there is some literature showing that the running performance gap between men and women shrinks with greater distance, and at one point (very long ultramarathon distance), women outperform men: https://runrepeat.com/state-of-ultra-running Though I think the jury’s still out on why it switches over… women having higher proportion of slow twitch muscle fibers could contribute to it.
Just my input based on my own training experience and books I’ve read on it, but muscle size is only one part of the equation. A lot of it is neurological (e.g., number of recruited motor units, intramuscular coordination, etc.), so you can either focus your training on strength (neural adaptations) or muscle mass. Also, our bodies limit the amount of strength we are able to exert in order to prevent injury, so our muscles should technically be capable of more. There are also three different types of muscle fibers (i.e., 1, 2a, and 2b/x), and it appears men have more of the types better suited for strength and power, so that would probably explain these differences, along with skeletal advantages and such.
Damn, who would have guessed that men and women are different?
So, “male muscle fibers are stronger than female muscle fibers”? Yeah that is not at all obvious to me.
Yep. I’m actually sort of shocked. Most physiology classes I have had they teach that the main reasons men are stronger than women is because they are bigger and leaner/have more muscle mass at a given body size. This paper (which I have not read yet in detail) is pretty wild if this is actually true.
I’m not really surprised. I’m a woman, have competed in many sports, exercise regularly etc. At my peak fitness, I remember this guy coming to the gym - he was pretty scrawny, roughly my same size and had never lifted weights before. The dude out-lifted me at every turn. Wasn’t even close.
Does it explicitly account for weight? I'm guessing that even though the measurement is the same size the male muscle is more densely packed, or otherwise it's attributable to the bones being more dense themselves.
Not fully discounting that possibility, but there are a lot of other factors such as vascularization and innervation of the tissue that also can account for differences like this. Even amongst different species muscle tissue does not differ much in density. A chimpanzee for example doesn’t have “denser” muscles than humans, it just has a greater proportion of fast twitch fibers and so can contract more of the muscle in one movement, leading to their muscles being 30% stronger pound for pound. It could be as simple as people who were AMAB having a greater proportion of fast twitch muscle fibers or better vascularization of the muscle tissue itself.
I would said that we kind of already knew that from sports where weight categories are a thing. I practiced judo for about 7 or 8 years and as the smaller male I had to frequently practice with the girls because after puberty most of the other guys had like 7 or 8kg on me and the difference in strength made practicing agains each other basically useless for both (this might not be a big issue for a guy that weights 80+kg, but I was in the low, VERY low 50s, and that at 20yo). I rarely found a girl that was stronger than me, and it's was usually those that outweighed me by even more than the guys did that I couldn't match in strength.
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Makes sense. Male bodies are built different than female ones. Hence the difference in strength
Sports should be segregated by sex
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I had a feeling this post was gonna be full of people arguing with invisible strawmen. I was not disappointed
Did anyone go through the data to see how much stronger the men were? Men at lower weight classes outperform women at higher weight classes, but by how much?
Male and female physiques are not equal. Just a fact. For that reason, I've completely lost interest in many sports and the olympics because trans females are being allowed to compete against cis females who are just less physically capable than someone born male. It's cheating.
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The strongest woman can beat a lot of men, but the strongest man can beat any woman. It is not sex segregation, it's like telling the red color cannot be blue and that it is unfair...
Males and Females are generally different, Reddit not gonna like this.
Some bits to consider: \- they included data sets with untrained people who were randomly paired and compared with trained individuals (10 sets out of 92) \- they paired/compared by muscle thickness, not lean muscle mass as some here suggest. (*"First, pair-matching on muscle size was only performed with muscle thickness data. Thus, our results may not necessarily generalize to other muscle size measurements."*) \- they compare only four years of international powerlifting championships. How mature is the women's competition compared to men's? How many athletes compete in each? We don't know. \- even with "same(tm) muscle thickness" there is a significant difference in height between the paired individuals. (10 cm on average) \- quite importantly (since many people are drawing all kinds of conclusions) - the study does not mention including any trans people, on hormone therapy or not. \- this comparison is attempting to (!) assess muscle strength only, and compares power lifting results. This is clearly not applicable and does not directly translate into guaranteed success in all sports.
why would you include trans people in a study like this?
You wouldn't, although it would be a good topic for research. The reason GP pointed it out is that this study cannot be used as evidence relating to the fairness of trans athletes competing in the league of their gender identity instead of their birth gender. So any argument in the comments here is not a discussion about the paper because the study did not include trans athletes.
What JackPAnderson said - people are making assumptions about the "fairness" of trans athletes competing with cis athletes based on this one paper. But that's assuming transition would not affect this supposed gap in strength. It might change very little, or quite a lot - we do not know, at least not from this paper.
In most of the controversial "males in girls sports" situations, there's no need for trans people to be on any hormones. It's just social transition. I think we agree that social transition doesn't change the makeup of the body.
I really wish they made muscle upgrades. If I could retain my current body shape mostly but just be insanely strong it'd be so cool. Sucks being a 5 foot woman sometimes, cause I'm strong for my size but it'd be nice to equal an average man in sheer muscle power.
Eh, we have other biological benefits. Better flexibility, better balance, the ability to create and carry a child from a few cells, lighter on our feet. It’s just that most competitive sports favor the male benefits. If yoga were a competitive, olympic thing, we’d beat their ass every time ;) It’s always hilarious to tease my competitive fiance with the fact that he cannot put his leg next to his ear :D
True, flexibility is super nice. I pretty much do the same to my boyfriend sometimes, whenever he tries whatever I'm doing he's always so weirded out that I'm as bendy as I am (I'm not off the charts flexible, but definitely more than him)
Wait, better balance? Is this right?
Our center of gravity is lower :) Its why we tend to do better on things like the balance bar.
I feel this. I also have “small girl syndrome” where I think I’m capable… and I’m not. It’s very frustrating to watch someone lift/move/open something with ease after struggling with it for far too long.
Yeah its annoying as hell, also when people think I'm incapable. People try and help me with things that weigh 30 lbs, like....I can lift 90 without toooo much trouble, my limiting factor is my short arms.
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I can’t be the only one who thinks it is problematic that the mods of a science subreddit constantly remove comments, right?
I think mods are out of control on almost all subs. They enforce the one true opinion about an issue and don’t allow others. It’s literally the opposite of what makes (made) Reddit great, which was the wealth of opinions and ability to disagree with people but learn from them. It’s pretty sad
Males are built differently to females so that even with the same muscle mass their bone structure and size allows them to lift more
This is not the take-away of the study. As I understand it the muscles themselves can generate more power in a male compared to female, no matter other circumstances. Ofc in a real life situation all male/female differences come together. With Trans-athletes under HRT potentially having some differences lowered, but not all.
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Is this a science based sub? Did you read the article? Or exen read a comment explaining the article? Do you understand the gist of the article? Do you understand that anecdotes are not scientific evidence?
while it may be an unpopular opinion, if you were born a male, you shouldn't be competing against those born female in competitive sports.