Women Recovering Faster Than Men

[theoriginal]

I have often read that women have superior recovery abilities compared to men, and can handle greater training volume and frequency due to this. However, I have never seen evidence cited to support this claim. Does anyone know if there is any evidence to out there?

[TheBeastTyler]

I'd imagine it'd be the opposite. I dunno, where have you read this? Link me some articles, and I'll prolly read them in the morning or in the afternoon at the campus library cuz I'm goin to get some shut-eye now.

[theoriginal]

Bret Contreras makes the claim in this article :

http://bretcontreras.com/2010/10/training-women/

I'd imagine it'd be the opposite. I dunno, where have you read this? Link me some articles, and I'll prolly read them in the morning or in the afternoon at the campus library cuz I'm goin to get some shut-eye now.

[NZninja101]

He says

1. Women Can Tolerate More Training Frequency than Men

A very recent study showed that following a bench press training session, men took 48 hours to return to their previous levels of strength, whereas women took only 4 hours (Judge & Burke, 2010). Women are simply not as physically strong as men (especially in upper body strength) and don’t tax their muscular and nervous systems to the extent of males. For this reason, they should not be trained the same way as men and should be prescribed higher training frequencies.

Study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20625191



But I'm pretty sure he's wrong about that.

Look at this part of the study: 'During the testing sessions, subjects performed five sets of the bench press exercise at 50% to 100% of perceived five repetition maximum (5-RM).'

I think it's clear that the men wanted to look strong, as men do, and so pushed themselves harder than the non athlete women, who probably didn't push themselves very hard. I think it's also more likely that the male athletes lifted weights, while the female athletes had less of a tendency to do so because of the notion that generally, weights are a masculine activity.



He's also wrong in his statement that it took men 48 hours to return to their previous level of strength, based off the study. The study only showed performance after 4, 24 and 48 hours. To assume 48 hours rather than being open to the possibility that they were recovered some time after 24 hours and before 48 hours doesn't make sense.


So basically when you combine that the men pushed themselves harder, as well as them having better means to actually work their muscles due to having previously performed the exercise, its easy to see how the study came out with those skewed results.

[Botika]

I have often read that women have superior recovery abilities compared to men, and can handle greater training volume and frequency due to this. However, I have never seen evidence cited to support this claim. Does anyone know if there is any evidence to out there?

According to The New Rules of Lifting for Women, females regenerate ATP faster than males which means faster recovery.

[PTmonaco]

According to The New Rules of Lifting for Women, females regenerate ATP faster than males which means faster recovery.

Women want to be fit and do more cardio than men.
Women do often more reps less heavier than men too.
Also Really hard to compare as everyone is unique.

I

[Determinednoob]

I don't really know the answer to the question, but I can say I have seen tons of women that have gotten great results using the exact same routines as men.

[ironwill2008]

I have often read that women have superior recovery abilities compared to men, and can handle greater training volume and frequency due to this. However, I have never seen evidence cited to support this claim. Does anyone know if there is any evidence to out there?

I've never seen that trait demonstrated IRL. Back in the day, I used to train legs with a Fitness competitor (who also would occasionally compete as a bodybuilder). Workouts included multiple sets of heavy Squats, Leg Presses, Lunges, RDLs, Leg Curls, etc. She had the very same recovery issues and timetable as I.


IMO, recovery is dictated by the level of intensity of the training. Bust your tail, and it'll take 'X' amount of time to recover, regardless of gender.

[messnwitsquatch]

I do not have access to the article since it's at home, but I do remember the jist of it.

When referring to Chinese weightlifting system. Girls train more volume, but then take longer to recover. So for example a male lifter may do 3 sets of 3 at 90% while the female does 5 sets of 3 at 90%. So they can do more volume any given day.
When it came to recovery, though the females needed longer to recover. Male athlete may take 5-8 days to deload, while the female may take 8-12 days.

Don't know if any studies were actually done on this as well as this is referring to olympic weightlifting so it's very specific and more CNS taxing.