I train a mix of men and women in my daily training practice—fifty percent men and fifty percent women. My male clients hinge, squat, pull, and press, and my female clients hinge, squat, pull, and press.
In regards to differences, men are better at upper body pulling and pressing while women progress faster at squatting and hinging. The rep ranges for women are slightly higher because this seems to have a more positive training effect. In addition, women generally recover faster between sets than men do. There are basic physiological reasons for this that I think are fairly well-known, but as far as differences go, that’s it. Everyone is lifting the same barbell, everyone is putting the same plates on, and everyone is training to add weight to the bar. Everyone is training to move better, and everyone is putting forth effort. And everyone is training to get strong(er).
Strong is strong. Can men move more weight? Sure they can. Can women still move heavy weight? Sure they can. Does being male or female have anything to do with making this choice to be stronger? No, it doesn't. Strength isn't a “male” quality. It isn't something that only men have. Everyone has it, everyone can have it, and everyone can build it. It's universal.
The state of masculinity in this country is often observed to be in a sorry state for a variety of reasons. Men are often said to be spineless, immature, and weak both of body, mind, and spirit. Why has this happened? Look what we've done to the women!!Strong is strong.
If you want to look at the state of a society, look at the physical state of its citizens. We are a culture that has come to idolize and exemplify a skinny, malnourished, physically weak body as being the “ideal” for women to have. This isn’t a knock on women who are naturally thin. It's an observation. The media and popular marketing have created a body-hating culture that encourages you to rid yourself of all the things you don’t like about your body along with every bit of flesh. All sizes of women are included in this. So we idolize frailty and then wonder why men are so fucking weak. These things go together people. If you want strong men, you must have strong women.
I get depressed as hell at how women critique their bodies constantly. They do this in front of their daughters, and the daughters learn it from the mothers. Then I deal with it in my daily practice because I get 115-lb girls telling me that their arms are fat and women despairing that their thighs touch together and they’ve always hated X part of themselves. Then the entire fitness industry is built around profiting on this. God forbid that you actually be overweight or obese because the information out there will just make your mental status worse and leave you diet-hopping and guru-shopping and static in your efforts.
So the most beautiful women in the world are emaciated blondes completely lacking in muscle who follow bullshit diets and look like waifs who would get knocked over by a strong wind. And we wonder why men today are cowards who don’t want to be big and muscular? We’ve popularized this weakness. We’ve made it cool to be frail and OK to be feeble. We told ourselves that women don’t need to be strong, and if they don’t need to be strong, we don’t need to be very strong either, do we? Somewhere along the way, we made strength a man thing and skinniness a women thing. What we’ve ended up with is weak men and weak women to match them and vice versa.
“She’s strong…for a girl.” Stop fucking saying this! This just exemplifies the whole clusterfuck of the state we're in. What does that even mean? Strong for a girl in the context of what? A man? A man doing what precisely? Because most men I see today are weak pieces of shit who couldn’t do a pull-up or dips to save their goddamn lives. All the girls who train with me for any length of time are able to do both, so fuck that statement and that shitty double standard.
The fitness industry and society at large have ignored this concept though. Instead, they've created a mockery of health by presenting a gender-specific cesspool of ineffective methods and marketing specifically around the concept of how different men and women are. It’s in the health clubs, it’s in the classes, and it’s in the magazines. It’s also in the fact that until the last five years, you couldn’t find a single woman who was a respected authority on anything pertaining to lifting weights. That was the man section of the gym.
And that’s bullshit. Its total fucking bullshit and we all know it, yet we let it perpetuate somehow. You want this to change? It won't come from liking some ridiculous motivational quote superimposed over a half-naked fitness model in Spanks. A paradigm shift in the way we all think and act needs to happen, and it starts with picking up the damn bar and putting actual weight on it.
You all want to joke about the guys curling in the squat rack? Kick that son-of-a-bitch out and go make that thing shake with heavy squats. The women I train fucking train. I'll slap my own ass and say there isn't anything more satisfying than seeing my girl deadlift more weight than the guy next to her and front squat while some kraven 150-lb sap has to put a pad on the bar to do quarter squats. Women can’t be as strong as men? Fuck that noise.
Strength is mental. Strength is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. That’s a choice. That isn't a gender.
If the weight is heavy, it's heavy, so make it move. Strength is a universal physical quality that can be proportionately developed and progressed in man or women and is completely measurable. Regardless of any innate physical/hormonal advantages that men have compared to women, strength is something that you train. And everyone starts at the same place—with an unloaded bar. You decide how much you'll add to it.
Beyond the physical benefits, strength becomes entirely mental. How far, how hard, and how long you progress is a personal process that makes anyone, man or woman, a tougher and more complete human being. You can't be mentally strong and physically weak just as you can't be mentally weak and physically strong. At a certain point, these two qualities will intersect and intertwine with each other. They will become the same path and the same process. Absolutely none of this is dependent on whether you have a Y or double X chromosome. That doesn’t matter. It's never mattered, and it never will matter.
Physical strength is born in the mind and achieved through the body. Man or woman, we all have the means to possess it. We all have the means to build it, and we all can come to know it. Strength is a human right, so claim it.
