How Women Lift and Train Differently Than Men

giusa

Just saw this article on TNation, How Women Lift and Train Differently Than Men by Mark Rippetoe. It's an older article dated 10/01/14 but first I've seen.

https://t-nation.com/training/strength-training-for-women

Would be interested to hear your thoughts and comments.

StephieWillcox

I found this a very good read, and very interesting.

In particular that women should be working with 5 sets of 3 and can progress very well at this level for a long time. Something to bear in mind!

Fittreelol

I've seen similar articles and never with any sources of actual studies/hard numbers. While Rippetoe is definitely knowledgeable he is an olympic coach not a powerlifting coach so I'm not even sure where he is casually observing this information.

My experience is completely opposite of this.

Claim: Women can do sets of 5 closer to their 1RM than men. I certainly can't. Even 3RM put into calculators come out less than my true 1RM.

Claim: Women can PR with less than perfect technique. USAPL nationals are streaming right now. Watch how many men have severe knee valgus and make their squat, or significant flexion during deadlifts (arguably bad form). Many of them getting PR's. 1RM's do not happen with perfect form period. There will always be *some* breakdown.

The last two claims I'm not even sure they're being measured.:Women require less rest between sets. Women can train heavier more frequently than men.

Llamapants86

That was interesting. Worth reading even though I find that my n=1 disagrees with the 5RM and 1RM stuff. I am all for the triples I triples.

Fittreelol

Llamapants86 wrote: »

That was interesting. Worth reading even though I find that my n=1 disagrees with the 5RM and 1RM stuff. I am all for the triples I triples.

Exactly. I'm willing to accept I'm one of the more special snowflakes, but I'm guessing no one has actual hard evidence for these types of articles.

awkwardsoul

I dislike that article as it's all personal accounts of Rippetoe with no science to back it up. He has been notorious in the past for being kinda sexist too.

I'd say more of what he says is from untrained female lifters. Good chance is small sample size (as there's not many women lifters) is all new lifters, especially the "women can slop through form" claim. We don't know what kind of women he trains more or all the biases he has of us. So yeah, Rippetoe, have research or GTFO.

Llamapants86

I guess I read it with a little bit of a different perspective. I didn't really expect him to have the data to do a scientific paper on this. I read it as more of a "things that I have noticed over the years" kind of blog posting. It's some what neat and if what he concludes doesn't apply to you then meh it doesn't really matter (and probably why I just glanced over the sloppy form thing). This is also why I would cringe if anyone tried to use this a source to back up some kind of claim.

And why I like to get a few different takes on programs, training frequencies and the like, mash it up until it fits me. Because lets face it, most of what these "experts" go on is just what they have seen and there are huge limitations on sample size, the newbie women bias that awkwardsoul mentioned and things like that.

canadianlbs

i'll read or watch more or less anything related to lifting when i'm in the mood, but it's more just information-gathering than looking to any one source for The Truth. i'm interested, but it's a pretty casual kind of interest. so i just kind of read/absorb in a gender-blind kind of way, and if something works for me then it works. if it doesn't, then it doesn't. no bets at all about whether the something was originally talking about men or women. there's no real correlation between the author's original target gender, and its applicability to me.

no matter how true something is in a general sense, it's not useful to me if it isn't true about me. so idk. about the only aspect of lifting where i find gender even relevant to me is in the social/interpersonal sense.

jo_marnes

For me the article makes a lot of sense in some ways. My max bench is only a few kg more than my 5 reps. Ditto all my upper body stuff really. And I am frequently stalled by the 5th or 6th rep in my set, preventing me from increasing as per my current plan. Triples seem much more achievable and can envisage more rapid increases. I am going to give this a try.

Also, agree on the deadlifts thing - I can totally deadlift more than once a week lol

DawnEmbers

It was interesting. Saw it on the main fitness forums and over in the female bodybuilding.com forums. I only skimmed but did make sense to some degree. On my power days, the ones I can do 5 or so working sets aren't that much below what is probably my 1 max, though I haven't tested that. Flat bench I barely got 3 reps at 105 and probably couldn't do much more even at the 1 rep, but I do okay at 100 for 3-4 reps per set. Haven't tried more than 75 on OHP but doubt it's much higher for max. Even on my lower body lifts, it's getting closer to being not far either. Like I can get the 5 reps on 175 but I'm not sure on 185 for one, but plan to try it after 10k. Though I do 8-12 reps on some lifts because they are more accessory. I can see a little the point strength wise on not needed that range, but for others it works fine.

I have a coworker who likes the strength classes and she was talking about wanting to get stronger in upper body. I'm slowly trying to convince her that more weight, less reps will help her more for her goal. Endurance has its place too but for strength, maybe I need her to read stuff like that article.


I think before vacation, for fun, I'm going to test some max lifts. Though I might have to try benching in the power cage. I've had one fail with 75 on incline where I could get out but it was awkward but on flat, might just be a little easier to do it in the cage. Or I could ask someone at the gym. I would kind of like someone to lift the bar off the rack at start, I'm so often a little off kilter just from the stretch it takes to get the bar free. I might film deadlift test, if I can get late enough when there is less people at the gym, or spend the small money for the closer gym to get a day pass as even in middle of day, not many lifting there. Should be fun though, after 10k, leading up to vacation to test some numbers out. Goals are 185 squat, 215 deadlift and maybe 115 bench though 110 would be fine too.