What physical feats should a *woman* be able to do?

Sounds about right, & I share your pain with pubmed. Have you tried isi web of knowledge? Much handier

The problem is that the study will almost certainly report the strength findings alone, but not their cause. Men/boys will generally be exposed to a lot more activity that strengthens the upper body than women/girls, take a group of schoolboys and have one lot play rugby for 12 years whilst the other plays netball and I reckon the rugby lot will be stronger.

So whilst the pubmed article will be an accurate report of the average situation, it may not be a accurate indication of what is realistically achievable through training; because cultural factors predispose the 'average' woman to a complete lack of strength training.


PS. Obviously men are notably stronger than women, even on a pound-for-pound basis, I just suspect that cultural factors exacerbate the natural difference.

 

I think this is a good excuse to post this tabata squats video which I never get bored of...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4e-dp97Jfc"]YouTube- CrossFit Tabata Squats[/ame]

 

Cheers for the tip, and I agree with you on problems with that kind of study. Observational studies can only ever show correlations - not cause and effect. As you pointed out, they don't control for confounding variables.

I did actually manage to dig out a couple of articles and type up a quick summary. However, my browser crashed before I could post it. IIRC, a brief summary was:

* Muscle is muscle, regardless of whether it appears on a male or female body.

* Women tend to be smaller, lighter, and have proportionally higher levels of body fat (around 10% higher as a rough rule of thumb). Meaning they have far less muscle than men.

* An average untrained man and a woman of the same stature with the same quantity of muscle would have very similar levels of strength.

* Both articles broadly agreed with my assertion that women were proportionally relatively weaker in the upper body than the lower body, compared to men. They gave slightly different figures in both cases, but we were all in the same ball park.

* When women gain strength they tend to adapt in ways other than hypertrophy (muscle cell size increase). This means that a) trained women have an increased potential to gain greater relative strength and b) they don't naturally become big and bulky like men.

* The last point is why I highlighted the word "untrained" in my third point. In an average trained man and woman - the woman would very likely have a higher relative strength owing to gaining strength by relying on adaptions other than hypertrophy.



P.S. Cheers for doing the leg work for me digging out that study, Coma!

 

I had it bookmarked with all my other 'useful studies'.

 

I've heard things like this before, I think it was in one of Desmond Morris's books, and the specific thing looked at was Javelin and sprinting. The womens olympic javelin record is about 78% of the mens record, while the sprinting is about 91%.

However by the same token in shotput its about 95.5%, and in the discus the men's is only 98% of the womens.
So what that means in the end I'm not sure, but it seems like women can come pretty damn close to men in certain upper body activities. Maybe one of our PT people can say what different muscle groups these exercises are using that would be relevent.

 

To bring this down another avenue of discussion, what do you think this holds for martial arts?

There has already been discussion along the lines of 'would you give a black belt to an old/disabled/young person?' but what about women. The rank itself is arbitrary of course but how would you hold this in terms of women who are naturally going to be less strong, or at least to require much more work to reach the same standards as men. Add to that there are the arts that require certain physical test to reach a certain grade e.g. 1000 pushups, 2000 squats for black belt or whatever. As said before, even with these bodyweight exercises to reach this level, it takes more of a commitment to training for a woman than a man. I don’t have a high opinion of arts that have this sort of test for more than just this reason.

Personally I’m in a situation where I am the only woman training amongst men and has been that way for all but about six months of training when another woman started but didn’t stick around. I’m in the situation where I see what some of the guys can do and think ‘sheesh, I could do maybe that eventually, after about 6 months of training specifically for it’. In my case, I lack somewhat of another woman to use as a benchmark of what I could reasonably expect to do and aim for, and I think a lot of other women are in the same situation, whether it’s in martial arts or other activities. And when you only have men to look up to, it can become too easy to think along the lines of ‘well he’s a man, I’m never going to reach that same level physically, so why bother’.

In terms of woman compared to man for various physical feats I think recognition should come from how much effort it takes to achieve it and also take into account the proportional improvement seen.

 

I think the biggest obstacle is not strength but size to a woman. Having a variety of good training partners is always going to be difficult and without them improving is always going to be limited. There just aren't that many women prepared to put the work in that it takes to get good.
I've known a few and there have been a couple on Map but female fighters are very few

 

I think it means that competitions should stick to male and female groupings for much the same reason there are weight classes.

For self defence it means little, a trained female is still going to have a better chance than an untrained female, like anyone else it's about maximizing your own potential.

 

Trouble is there are seldom enough women at the top end. It usually ends up with 2 or 3 girls fighting each other continually. Even then it can often be a very poor performance at title level compared to men.

 

Oh for sure trained it always better than untrained. But the trouble I've seen sometimes is people judge training attitude or effort based on the physical tests where it's only natural that women will on average not be able to do the same achievements as their male counterparts. It should always be about your own personal improvements and goals, what tends to happen with women is that they receive less recognition for achievements that are just as impressive.

For example take female fighters and female athletes in most sports for that matter. The monetary reward in both prize money and sponsorship opportunity and general recognition is significantly less for women compared to men. With less of a carrot to motivate you, it’s a no brainer that not as many women are going to choose that option and in a lot of cases it’s not even a matter of choice. The reduced opportunity of monetary reward both in terms of the successful pay packet and opportunity to compete in the first place means that one can’t train as hard or often due to the commitments of a full time job to feed oneself. Of course this same issue of work and other commitments comes up with most men as well. But I feel ashamed that one of my personal female rolemodels and heroes Hayley Bateup (Ironwoman and probably one of the fittest women alive) was forced to work part time to support herself and athletic career.

So when you ask what physical feats should a woman be able to do, I will ask as well "how long does she have to train"?

 

There's not much money in martial arts either way. It's just most women have different priorities. The ones that do go the extra mile then get stuck as they're so few and far between they rarely get to mix it with another female.

This thread needs a Frodo

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjuULPqI-WY"]YouTube- Overhead Squat - Bodyweight x 15 reps[/ame]

^t3h strong!

 

Heck, guys are too. There must be millions of guys out there who were quickly classified as "good at sport" or "not good at sport" depending on how well they played football and only later found that finding a sport that interests you is as important as "natural talent".

 

"Sometimes it's hard to be a woman"

I forget the next line but I'm sure it has something to do with martial arts

 

Thanks for contributing everyone! I see a number of good points made here. I'll comment later, I'm dead tired