You “throw like a girl.” The “like a girl” insult is so ubiquitous, such a strong underlying current in our culture, that a maker of feminine hygiene products took it head-on with the #LikeAGirl campaign, which turns the insult into an inspirational compliment.Look, I’m not one to sugarcoat anything, so I’ll give it to you straight. Yes, in head-to-head objective physical performance comparisons, women have some disadvantages. We also have some distinct advantages, but you never hear about those. So let’s set the stage here with a complete look at your female physiology in action.
SUGAR AND SPICE AND EVERYTHING NICE: WHAT WE’RE REALLY MADE OF
No surprise: Women tend to be smaller and lighter and have a higher portion of body fat (hello breasts, hips, and all things childbearing!) than men. But dig a little deeper and the comparisons become more interesting and revealing.
First, let’s talk about body mass and how it’s distributed. Our mass is the stuff we’re made of, which everyone commonly refers to as weight—the number you see on the scale. That’s not exactly accurate. For one, technically weight is determined by gravitational pull, so you’d weigh less on the moon and far more on Jupiter, but that’s being picky. The more important factor is that the number you see on the scale—your weight—fluctuates widely depending on fluid intake, what you’ve eaten during the day, salt intake, and how much glycogen you’re storing in your muscles (for every 1 gram of glycogen, you store 3 grams of water; as you get fitter, you become better at glycogen storage, so before a big event, you can gain or more pounds that you will blow through during your event, but you haven’t gained or lost any fat). Body mass, by contrast, is the actual stuff you’re made of—bone, muscle, fat, and organs—which requires tissue loss or gain and is harder to change.
We’ll cover bones , because a strong skeleton is essential for vibrant living, and women’s bones are vulnerable to getting brittle. For now, however, let’s focus on muscle and fat.
When researchers take core needles and pull out a column of muscle tissue from the designated muscle of interest (usually the shoulder, biceps, or quadriceps) of men and women, what they find might surprise you. There’s not much difference. Men and women generally have the same muscle composition as far as the percentage of type I endurance (aerobic) fibers and type II power (anaerobic) fibers. What is different is that the largest fibers in women’s bodies tend to be type I endurance fibers, while in men the type II power fibers take up the lion’s share of real estate.
Since type II fibers are used to hoist barbells and push broken-down cars to the roadside, it’s not surprising that in head-to-head strength comparisons, women fall a bit short. Studies show that women are about 2 percent as strong as men in their upper bodies and 66 percent as strong as men in their lower bodies. In well-muscled women, those strength differences evaporate a bit. When you look at sheer strength relative to lean body mass, a trained woman’s strength shoots up to 70 and 80 percent as strong as men in the arms and legs respectively. Still less powerful, but definitely closer.
Women give men more of a run for their money in the leg-press department because we tend to carry most of our lean muscle tissue below the waist. This is also why women’s-specific bikes are designed with geometry that balances our center of gravity over the bottom bracket (where the pedal cranks are attached). Our power comes from our hips and legs.
Then there’s fat, which is still a four-letter word for most athletes I work with, even though you can’t train, race, or even live without it. Most of us think of fat as the stuffing we see under our skin (usually in places where we don’t want to see it). That’s our storage fat. Those are energy reserves we accumulate. That fat also acts as padding and generates key hormones such as adiponectin that regulate insulin (the hormone that helps your body use and store blood sugar). We need some, but not an abundance of, storage fat to perform our best. Most of the fat you don’t see in the mirror is essential body fat, which is in your nerves, bone marrow, and organs. Essential fat in men is about 4 percent, but in women, it is about 12 percent (because we are designed to reproduce!). As a woman, your breasts are also largely fatty tissue.
How much fat either men or women carry depends largely on lifestyle, but you can’t dismiss the fact that there are also very distinct body types. For instance, there are people who are simply endomorphs. They tend to be larger, and they carry more body fat. On the other end of the scale are the wispy ectomorphs, who are naturally slim. And in the middle are mesomorphs, who tend to be lean and naturally muscular. You can also be a blend of the two; for example, a mesomorph with endomorph tendencies. How active you are and the type of activity you do can impact the dominance of one body type over another. Your physical activity directly affects your body-fat levels and distribution.
We’ll delve into the topic of body composition in great depth , but generally speaking, healthy body fat ranges span from 12 to 30 percent in women and to 2 percent in men.
In the athletic world, muscle is usually prized, while fat is shunned. As I see it, however, what you’re made of is important, but more important is the impact of what you’re made of on what you do and/or want to do. Take two cyclists, for instance. A man may have big pectorals (pecs) and biceps, but those heavy upper-body muscles will only weigh him down when faced with a 10 percent climb. A woman who is lighter in the torso but still powerful in the hips and legs will have a far easier time pedaling her way up the mountain.
Likewise, women often dominate in the sport of open-water swimming. According to Open Water Source, female swimmers often perform better than their male counterparts, especially as the swims get longer. In fact, the average time for women in the Catalina Channel swim—an arduous 20-mile swim from the Southern California coast to Catalina Island—is 7 minutes faster than the average time for men. What’s more, women hold the overall records in both directions—mainland to island and island to mainland. (In 176, Penny Dean set the record from mainland to Catalina in 7:1:, and Karen Burton set the record from Catalina to mainland in 7:37:31 in 14.)
And let’s not forget that in 2013 Diana Nyad became the first person ever to swim the 110.86 miles between Cuba and Florida in a mind-boggling 2 hours and 4 minutes. Fat is more buoyant than muscle, so that extra padding may be a distinct advantage in the open water.
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