Many women who work 9-10 hours a day do their workout and yet, they’re not tired, lethargic, or fatigued by the end of the day. When it comes to physical endurance, men have received the short end of the stick. Let’s understand why that is and also recognize the differences in biomechanics in men and women. We will also find out how does all this affect the training approach for women when they are aiming to build strength and add muscle mass.
Better with more volume
Women have proportionally larger type 1 (slow-twitch) muscle fibre than men which makes them more resistant to fatigue than men. In multiple studies where strength levels of men and women are compared, women can generally do more reps at a given intensity than men. This is the primary reason why women should train their type 1 fibres more than men to grow to their full potential. They can do so by performing more reps per set. This, however, does not mean a 15-20 rep range is ideal for women. A better way to measure effort and load which might be useful for women is through RPE (or Rate of Perceived Exertion) or RIR (Reps In Reserve).
RPE is how much one rates the effort they had to apply in completing a rep. An RPE of 10 implies an all-out effort with little to no possibility of doing any further reps. This reduces in scale from 10 to 1, as the rate of exertion reduces. Another measure of intensity is RIR. It is an estimate of how much reps one can still do at a particular load. For example, the training plan will mention this as 3 sets of squats with 2 RIR. This implies that you select a load and start doing reps till you hit a rep after which you believe you can do possibly two more.
For strength gains and muscle growth, the load selected cannot be too light. It needs to be heavy enough so that within 10-12 reps, you reach the target RIR. The ability of women to do more reps simply implies that if a woman is lifting 70% of their 1RM (where 1RM is the maximum weight that one can lift for only 1 rep), she can do more reps at a certain intensity as compared to a man. Having larger and more type 1 fibers is not the only reason why women can handle more volume than men; the dominance of estrogen hormone is another important reason.
Estrogen is an anti-catabolic hormone that aids in muscle repair, reduces protein breakdown during exercise, and protects against muscle damage. This allows women to train with a higher training volume without becoming overtrained. Therefore, a man will find it difficult to match a woman’s volume where both have the same muscle mass. The women will also recover faster from their lifts as well as their workouts compared with men. So, women can not only train with more volume but also need less rest between sets as they are less fatigable than men. [1][2] [3]
The Ideal Rep Range and Tempo
When it comes to rep-range and tempo, most research studies compare the hypertrophy results for men specifically. From our search, there was only one study that looked at rep ranges as it applies to women. 34 untrained women were divided into different groups on the basis of the intensity of the resistance training protocol and also the tempo of the movement.
Tempo refers to the speed of the exercise. The conclusion was that women who trained at a higher intensity (80-85% of 1RM, 6-10reps) at normal speed (2-4s), gained the maximum muscles of both type 1 and type 2 fibers. This was followed by the group that trained for the (40-60% of 1RM, 20-30reps) at slow speed. However, only their type 2 fibers showed an increase in size. There was no change in the muscles of the group that followed the low intensity and normal speed protocol [10].
With high intensity at normal speed, comes the full benefits of the increase in cross-sectional area of not just type 1 fibers but also type 2 fibers. Irrespectively, rep ranges of 20+ do not seem to assist in building any muscle mass and corollary strength. It seems that lifting weights at this rep range turns into an endurance exercise for women.
Better With Eccentric Training (Not With Explosive Strength)
During exercise, when a muscle contracts, the movement is called a concentric movement, and a movement that stretches a muscle under load or resistance is called eccentric movement. Women generally are more resistant to muscle breakdown post an exercise session and that extends to the microtears from eccentric movements.
Men find that it takes them longer to recover from the stress of eccentric training. In a study, 6 trained men and women performed elbow flexors 3 days per week for 20 weeks. One arm performed 3-5 sets of 10 maximal concentric actions in each session on an accommodating resistance device, the other arm performed 3-5 sets of 8-12 coupled eccentric/concentric actions on a weight training device. The results showed that biceps, brachialis, and total elbow flexor cross-sectional area increased significantly in both men and women, but their results were better with the women group.
Also, it showed that women can handle more training volume and also heavy negatives, i.e. eccentric actions [4]. This heavy lengthening muscle contraction is known to cause a great deal of muscle damage [5]. Women can tolerate this training stress better than men. However, the higher volume work capacity of women disappears when training close to their maximum strength (or 1RM).
Men have a more efficient nervous system and can create more explosive force than women. Men are more powerful during explosive, dynamic contractions, but not during heavy negatives or isometric contractions even at high intensity [9]. So, it’s not true that women should never train heavy. However, women should train to their strengths avoiding explosive workouts.
Explosive exercise does not allow women to exercise with as much volume as men. Women also recover less well after explosive exercises like sprints. In contrast to women’s generally greater recovery capacity, high volume sprint training can take over 72 hours to recover from in women. This results in worse training adaptations for explosive exercise in women.
For example, women don’t build as much muscle protein after high-intensity sprints as men. This is striking because after regular strength training women build just as much muscle protein as men [9]. If a training program is forcing women to use a fast tempo with explosive movements, it does not take advantage of their higher endurance to deliver good muscle growth.
Different Biomechanics
There are various differences in the bio mechanism between men and women. For example, during childhood and adolescence, the rate of growth of hips increases similarly in both males and females, while the shoulders and thoracic cage (i.e. rib cage) grow more rapidly in males.
Therefore, although hip-width ends up about the same in both sexes, men tend to have wider shoulders in relation to their hips. When it is said that women have wider hips, factually they are wider only in relation to their shoulders and not when compared to that of men. You can anatomically and factually correct someone when they say that women have wider hips than men.
Another ratio, of hips to leg length, is greater for women than for men. This creates a larger Q-angle which creates stress on the knee. Due to their greater Q-angle, women will in general experience greater forces on the patella than men during equivalent exercise. As a result, they are more prone to knee injuries and extra care should be taken to avoid these. To avoid knee injuries, proper tracking of the knee during squats is paramount to avoid caving in of the knees (knee valgus).
Since women with few exceptions have their hips exercises higher on their priority list than their quad-focused exercises, and the hip joint being very sturdy in women, a low bar and hip dominant squats is recommended as the default squat for women. [9] It is often noted that the mean height of the center of gravity of a woman is lower than that of a man.
This gives females a natural advantage in balance sports. Activities such as the high jump and long jump in which a higher center of gravity at take-off will enhance performance may slightly favor male athletes [6]. Females who participate in these events normally have a specific body type with a higher average center of gravity. [7] In terms of flexibility, it is generally agreed that females are more flexible than males in most joints. In a recent study comparing male and female volleyball players, it was found that the female players had greater hip and shoulder flexibility than their male counterparts. No explanation was given for this finding, but it was suggested that flexibility differences may be related to anatomical differences of the hip joint.
Conclusion
The differences in men and women pointed here are to stress an important point that women should not train with the same routine, tempo, reps, rest interval, or even load capacity as men. A woman’s program can handle more volume at a given intensity than a man’s. This does not necessarily mean higher rep ranges of 15-20 reps. It means that with heavier weights, where a man can do 4 reps, a woman can probably hit 6-7reps.
However, as the load approaches their maximum strength (1RM), they lose the advantage of more reps. So, if the load is lets say 90% of 1RM, this high volume advantage disappears. Women also differ from men in the load intensity; they need to lift to see benefits in both muscle fiber types. For men, as long as the volume is equated, the advantage of higher intensity over lower intensity disappears.
This does not seem to be the case with women, although admittedly, this particular topic needs more supporting studies replicating the findings and results. Further, women can tolerate the stress of eccentric training better than men. This means they can easily incorporate negatives in their exercise routines without the long recovery period thereafter.
A workout that uses explosive movements or fast tempo, does not build as much muscle mass in women as it does in men. It takes them longer to recover from these workouts too and hence should ideally be avoided. The difference in biomechanics requires women to take care of their knees to prevent them from stress and injury. Balance sports and those that require flexibility provide a natural advantage for women. Therefore, a training program should be prepared differently for men and women keeping in mind the factors discussed in this article.
Please note: The content has been taken from INFS’s women health series ebook. You can now download this eBook for free. There are various topics related to women’s health and wellness in this eBook.
