One of the most common questions asked in the field of strength training is what are the differences in training females vs. males.

With strength training for women the important differences are:

1. Women should train more frequently. Most females need at least a frequency of 3 days a week per muscle group for optimal gains in the early stages. The Chinese have been very successful at training weightlifters at the international level both in males and females.  Upon analyzing their training system, what stood out is that they use much more training frequency for the females than the males.

2. Because of the lower levels of androgens, volume per training unit should be smaller in terms of sets and number of exercises. In most instances, the training volume per training unit should be about 20-35% lower. Most females get most of their hypertrophy in the first year of training.  It then plateaus dramatically, even though strength still increases through mainly neural adaptations.

3. It is harder for females to gain hypertrophy because of lower androgen levels. Women also only have 60% of the number of nuclei per muscle fiber than males.

4. The trainer should adapt to the client’s needs. The stronger the female, the more her training should be like the one of her male counterpart.

5. Biomechanical issues and cultural issues must be considered.  For example, North American women athletes are often weaker in relative terms in the vastus medialis muscles, hamstrings, erector spinae, and scapulae retractors than their counterparts in other countries.

6. Pound for pound, females actually have stronger legs than males. That is, of course, if they properly trained.

7. Contrary to popular belief, the upper body lift that females can approximate the most the performance of males is the chin-up or the pull-up. Again, that is if course, if they properly trained.

Note: Actually, I use this exercise to evaluate the quality of knowledge of a personal trainer/strength coach. A competent coach will ask a female to do 12 chin-ups in twelve weeks. That is based on the assumption that the client is not clinically obese. You know, the type that gets harpooned when she goes swimming.  Actually, in this morning's newspaper, they were relating the following story: A woman, standing nude, looks in the bedroom mirror and says to her husband, "I feel horrible, I look fat and ugly. Pay me a compliment.” Her husband replied, "Your eyesight's damn near perfect." He never heard the shot.

8. The most difficult lift for females to do well on, compared to males, is overhead presses. They tend do, on a pound for pound basis, about 58 to 66% of their male counterparts.

9. Female clients are far easier to coach than male clients, as they don't let their ego spoil the methodology and follow instructions far better than males. In 1994, I had 7 women who were World Champions in their respective sports,. What they all had in common was the good sense to communicate with me on a regular basis, so that I could finely tune their training loads. Interestingly, the worst individual to coach is the nineteen-year male, who usually goes through the life phase that he believes he is born with infinite knowledge.

That’s all for now. As always, feel free to contact me directly for more customized training tips. Each client is special and may need something extra to push them into achieving their best results.

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A woman, standing nude, looks in the bedroom mirror and says to her husband, "I feel horrible, I look fat and ugly. Pay me a compliment.” Her husband replied, "Your eyesight's damn near perfect." He never heard the shot.