When it comes to pushing the envelope in the gym, women beat men hands down.
Once a woman passes the beginner stage of training and they start to learn how to contract muscle, lift a decent amount of weight and forget about their cardio-ridden past’s, something special always happens.
Here’re five ways women are better than men, in the gym that is…
1. Intensity
A trained woman will always, always be able to out train their male counterparts. It’s in their biological makeup to be able to withstand excruciating amounts of pain and their training attitude exemplifies this.
Whether it’s a ball-busting set of deadlifts or a barbaric full body death circuit, all you need to tell a woman is ‘where and when’ and they’ll go.
2. More Reps
Women will always be able to perform more reps with a given repetition maximum. This comes from their proportionally larger size and percentage of type 1 fibres which are more fatigue resilient in nature. To reap these benefits, women should train with higher volumes than men.
3. Burn More Fatty Acids
At any given training intensity, women will burn more fat, fewer carbohydrates and less protein than men. This is down to hormonal and neural differences, and perhaps more simply, that women have higher levels of body fat in their body and muscles. Women should embrace this by including a higher percentage of fat in their diet and train with lower rest periods, knowing they’re burning more fat and therefore not sacrificing any muscle tissue in the process!
4. Less Fatigue
Taking the above into consideration, it’s no surprise that women need less rest, both between sets and training sessions. They tolerate metabolic stress, or more commonly known as ‘the burn’, a lot better than men so can keep a muscle under tension for longer and with fewer breaks. Further, women suffer from less muscle damage and should use this to their benefit by adopting a higher training frequency.
5. No Ego
Training is very rarely ego driven for women. This means women will prioritise perfect exercise technique and feeling the muscle moreover increasing loads, something men are often terrible at!
Women should take these strengths into consideration when designing training programmes. Generally speaking, more volume and more frequency at an all out intensity will give excellent results!
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