SIB #414 - Strength Gains- College Aged Women VS. Men

The Study: Comparison of Upper Body Strength Gains Between Men and Women After 10 Weeks of Resistance Training                  

The Facts:

a. There is little scientific literature regarding the response to resistance training (RT) on the upper body strength of women compared to men.

b. Subjects 47 college age women and 44 college age men.

c. They used the elbow flexor strength for the test.

 d. The study lasted 10 weeks.

e. They wanted to see if there was a difference in increases between men and women.

f. Both the men and women showed a significant increase in strength after the ten week training period.

g. Subject performed the resistance exercise protocol, “including leg press, knee flexion, chest press and lat pulldowns” two days per week.

h. They performed three sets of each exercise.

i. When a subject could perform 12 or more repetitions in a set the weight was increased to keep the number of repetitions of from 8 to 12.

j. The rest periods were 2 minutes between sets.

k. The results showed improvements in muscle strength “were not significant different between sexes (11.61 and 11.76% for men and women, respectively).”

l. “Mostly, one should not expect to find limitations in upper body strength development in women.”

 Take Home:

The percentage of strength improvements following a period of resistance training is about the same for both men and women. 

Reviewer's Comments:

We’ve recently covered articles showing that younger and older people, as well as both men and women all improved when they underwent a reasonable program of strength training. I suspect aardvarks would show improvement if you could get just them to lift weights. [Note: aardvarks are notoriously lazy and mostly lay on the couch watching Hallmark Murders and Mysteries. I’m part aardvark.] That just leaves me with one thought as Nike says, “Just Do It”.

Reviewer:  Roger Coleman DC

Editor: Mark R. Payne DC

Reference: Gentil P, Steele J, Pereira MC. Comparison of Upper Body Strength Gains Between Men and Women After 10 Weeks of Resistance Training. PeerJ. 2016 Feb 11;4:e1627.doi: 10.7717/peerj.1627. eCollection 2016. 

Link to Abstract: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26893958/

Link to Article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4756754/pdf/peerj-04-1627.pdf