Not Just a Man's World

When doing the research for the Women’s Strengths article, I found that there was an interesting comparison to be made between different weight classes for the same sex.  So I started to ask myself whether it makes any difference to your relative strength if you are at the top of the range of weight classes or if you are at the bottom.

Data source and presentation of results

The data I used was the same data gathered for my Women’s Strengths research – you can read about how I selected the data in that article.

The graphs that I’m using to show the results show the percentage of bodyweight for each of the main powerlifting and Olympic lifting lifts (to make the data comparable).  I then deducted the lower weight class percentage from the higher weight class percentage.  Therefore if the result is positive, the higher weight class has greater relative strength in that lift.

So what did I find out?

The results didn’t show what I expected, especially when you compare the results graphs for men and women.  However they do suggest that for women there is generally no significant difference in relative strength between the weight classes (except in bench press) while men have a definite difference.

As a woman, writing for women, I found this result to be a great importance to me.  It’s really fired me on to push through my previous lifting plateaus.

Does size matter for men?

We all know that size matters to men.  We’ve heard the jokes.  But does size make a difference to their relative lifting prowess?

Immediately we can see a pattern here.  In fact in terms of relative strength, lighter is, apparently, better for men. 

A lot of what goes behind the Olympic lifts is a squat so if heavier men are better at the squat then why are they not better at the Olympic lifts?  I think there is probably something in here about neural efficiency.  However I’m also convinced that some of the difference is to do with the type of squat.

A basic consideration of how we gain weight and its impact on lifting

I’m shortly going to set out on a muscle building phase.  Let’s say I start it weighing 50kg and finish it weighing 55kg (and for this, we are assuming that I only gain weight as muscle and I don’t gain any fat – perhaps a bit of a pipedream). 

That extra 5kg of muscle will hopefully be evenly spread across all the places that need it – quads, glutes, back, arms, traps and so on.

Olympic lifting requires you to get out of an ass-to-grass squat while a powerlifting squat is to parallel.  To get out of the bottom of that ass-to-grass squat your glutes are going to do a lot of the initial work. 

If I’m now 5kg heavier there’s a likelihood that only 1kg of that is extra glute muscle (to be generous).  3kg may have gone onto various parts of my upper body (traps, arms, back etc).  So to get the same percentage bodyweight snatch, I need my glutes to move the extra kilos that have gone on the bar, plus the extra kilos of weight in my body that need moving but I’ve only got an extra kilo of glute muscle to use.  Does that extra kilo have that much extra proportional strength?  Probably not.

Is it the same story for women?

In short, no.

These results are all over the place.  While men of different weight classes had an almost identical bench strength and lighter men had a better relative strength in the deadlift, this result gets reversed for women where relative strength on the deadlift is the same but lighter women excel at the bench press.

Interestingly there is a similar correlation between the squat and the Olympic lifts as we saw for men, but it is much less pronounced.  I’m suspicious that this has a lot to do with neural efficiency. 

The comparison I did between men and women the other week showed that the relative strength difference between men and women was least pronounced on the Olympic lifts.  At the time I concluded that this would suggest women were almost as good as men at building neural efficiency.  I’d like to revise that.  I think we’re actually better at it and therefore the muscular differences which I proposed to explain the difference between men’s Olympic lifts and squats have less impact for women.

So where does that leave us?

If you want to find yourself a man with amazing strength in relation to his weight then find yourself a light-weight man!  However, if you’re a woman then it seems that size doesn’t matter as much (unless you specifically want to excel at bench press).

So no more excuses from me about having a biomechanical disadvantage in some of my lifts.  I’d better just get on with it and work through my sticking points.

Do you think there’s a different explanation for the differences shown by the results?

Related posts:

1. Women’s strengths
2. Impact of menstrual cycle on exercise: recent observations