Men are stronger than women - that's universal knowledge. There are exceptions to this rule but generally, this holds pretty well.
Why is it so that men are stronger than women though? Or how much stronger are they exactly? Have you ever wondered about that? Of course, you have, that's why you are here.
Becca Swanson and Eddie Hall - two people who hold the deadlift record in female and male divisions respectively
Men are not only stronger, but they are also, in general, bigger than women are, they are around five inches taller and weigh about 21.3% more (though this varies from region to region, the difference in the United States is 14%). Size gives the advantage in strength.
If this was not enough men also have lower body fat (on average, 18% to 24% for males, 25% to 31% for females) and higher muscle ratio (more muscle mass, especially in the upper body). They also have higher lung capacity because they need more oxygen delivered to the muscles (body fat do not need oxygen).
All this combines to give men an advantage over women in body strength.
The difference in upper body strength is huge, and lower body difference is somewhat lower – because for the evolution to succeed, women too have to carry their body weight as efficiently as men do, thus they must have strong enough legs.
A study in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that men had on average, 14% more muscle mass than women. The study also found that women have about 40 percent less upper-body strength and 33 percent less lower-body strength, on average.
When it comes to hand grip strength, the difference between men and women is huge:
About 89% of men have a stronger grip than 89% of women.
But what about the overall strength difference. How much stronger males are than females in overall body strength in humans. To answer this, we came up with this ingenious way.
We will simply pick a strength testing exercise and analyze the world records in male and female divisions.
The deadlift is such a core exercise, which fits our bill. We thought this strength exercise was good enough to compare male and female strength differences. Although there is a need for a strong upper body in deadlifts too, which will give males a bit of an advantage.
Let’s take a look at the difference between genders in deadlifting:
Eddie Hall holds the deadlift record by lifting successfully 500 kg (1,102.3 lb).
The female record holder is Becca Swanson who has successfully lifted 314.79 kg (694 lb).
But the strength difference is somewhat different if we consider Olympic weightlifting. Here are the Olympic weightlifting records of +109 kg male and +89 kg female.
Lasha Talakhadze of Georgia holds the record for snatch, clean, and jerk. The combined weight he lifted is 474 kg (1045 lb).
Tatiana Kashirina of Russia holds the female record in snatch, clean, and jerk. The combined total weight lifted by her is 330 kg (727.52 lb).
huge female bodybuilder - bigger than the male one
Famous Russian bodybuilder, Natalia Trukhina with a male bodybuilder
By the first analogy, on average, women have about 61% overall strength of men. By the second analogy, the difference stands at 69.62%. Therefore, on average, women are around 61% to 70% as strong as men in overall strength. We think this is pretty close to the truth.
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