Not Just a Man's World

While writing my post on pull ups, I decided to do a little bit of research of my own to investigate whether women really are weaker than men when it comes to arm strength.  I’ve read plenty of articles where trainers have said that women have more difficulty putting on arm strength.  Fair enough, I’ll accept that.  But I’m stubborn and wanted to find out if this was something that could be overcome or if my arms will always be my weakness, no matter how hard I try.

Finding the right data

I wanted to avoid any risk of under-training skewing the data and I wanted to know about where we are all aiming for in the long-term.  At first I contemplated using powerlifting competition qualifying numbers.  But those weights would be unrealistic for a few key reasons:

1. The number of men who powerlift is much higher than the number of women.  To get a good size competition group there is a possibility that the bar will be set slightly lower for women.  This may not be true but I couldn’t risk it potentially skewing the data.
2. The qualifying weights vary between associations, so I would have to use numbers from a single association.  I wanted a wide range of data to avoid any skew.
3. Qualifying weights are not aimed at those who have reached their full potential.  They are just a minimum benchmark.

So I used:

• Record numbers – to get the best performing people.
• Unequipped/raw numbers – to avoid skew created by any assistance.  I want to know about our true strength as humans.
• Drug-free – again, I’m on a quest to know what I, as a human being, am capable of the way Mother Nature designed me.
• Open class – I want people at the peak of their performance.

The competition record weights I gathered were:

• British Drug Free Powerlifting Association
• World Drug Free Powerlifting Federation
• American Raw Competition (Men and Women)
• Olympic Records (as recorded at Olympic Games)
• World records – Olympic lifting

Data was gathered during September 2009.

Problems with the data

To compare men and women fairly, I couldn’t use the same weight classes for them.  For example, if I used a 75kg weight class for both I would have really big women, but fairly average-sized men.  I did some analysis on how performance varies across the weight classes and yes, there is a difference.  I’ll do a separate article on that.

I ended up using the 75kg weight class for men and the 56kg weight class for women.  Perhaps a little low for men, but it means I’ve got roughly average size men and women with minimal skew from any biomechanical issues caused by extra small or tall people.

So are women just not made to lift heavy things?

1. Taking the lifts as a percentage of bodyweight (to get rid of the weight class difference and make the data comparable), the difference of the lifts between men and women looks upsettingly (but unsurprisingly) like women are always going to be weaker than men.  In fact, there’s nearly an entire bodyweight difference with the powerlifting lifts as you can see from the chart below.  So yes, it’s true.  We are the weaker sex.
   
   
2. Looking at the graph above it seems that we’ve got a better chance against men when it comes to the Olympic lifts which I believe is due to the explosive power element.  If you want a fuller reason, I’m sure someone would tell you to consider evolution and our need to be able to run away from danger (probably carrying the children).  This suggests that we are almost equivalent to men when it comes to building neural efficiency.  It may also suggest that we do better with movements that involve the quads more (see below).
   

   Of course, men need to be able to carry more than us when running
   (Image courtesy of Andrew Dobson)

3. It gets interesting with powerlifting.  If women did have relatively greater strength in their legs than their arms, the squat would have a smaller difference than the bench, not 23% more.  The squat uses the legs.  The deadlift, in my humble opinion, is the world’s greatest total body lift using legs, glutes, core, arms, back, grip – you name it, it’s probably being used.  The bench primarily focuses on arm and upper back strength.This suggests that once you push through the beginner weaknesses, our arms are not our weak point.  Unexpectedly, our legs seem to be our weakness.  But this seems odd when compared with women’s ability in the Olympic lifts.  This result may be the lack of quad involvement in the powerlifting squat and the increase in lower back involvement.
4. Comparing how different lifts make up the total lift I found that the bench press makes up about the same proportion of a woman’s lifting prowess as it does for men.  In fact there isn’t a huge difference in any of the lifts.  A 5% difference on the deadlift is probably not anything to shout about.
   

So women should ignore those who tell us that we will, by the nature of our sex, have weaker arms.  Yes, we are weaker than men, but keep working at that arm strength because it seems to have more potential than we’re led to believe.

Would you agree?

Related posts:

1. Does size matter?
2. Women can do pull ups too
3. Weight training women
4. Why do women start weight training?