I’ve seen it said in many places that women’s legs are stronger than men’s,so much so that this almost seems like common knowledge,but I don’t know of any solid biological evidence that supports the idea.I will say that the women I see seem to often have thicker legs than men,but is this because of more muscle mass or because women have more fat in that area?Also,if women really do have stronger legs,why do men have all the records in track and field and other sports that require leg strength?I’m not entirely opposed to the idea that women could have stronger legs than men,I just need evidence to back up the belief.I’m not much of an expert on biology,so any input from people who know more than me about the subject would be greatly appreciated.Thanks for reading.
No
I’ve never heard this before. Where did you see this?
Quote:
“Leg strength measured relative to lean body weight (leaving out the fat differences) actually shows women’s legs to be 5.8 percent stronger than men’s.”
From this book.
LOL,short and sweet!I can’t say that I disagree with you.I still never have seen a piece of real proof to back up the claims,so I’ll probably have to just assume they aren’t true.
I’ve never heard this before. And your quote refers to strength relative to weight which you forgot to mention in your OP.
I don’t see why it can’t be true. Perhaps the fact that women do have slightly more fat, combined with the fact that it’s harder for women to develop their muscles, explains the athletics thing.
Here’s a link to one of those places:
http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7501919888/m/34019556201
I’ve also seen it said on Yahoo!Answers and a few no-name websites.
@Ambivalid:One of the posters at the forum I linked to above quotes from the same book as you gave a link to.That passage is pretty interesting.
So women’s legs are stronger than mens in the same way an ant is stronger than a human.
Yes,perhaps I should have taken that factor into account.However,even if women are a bit stronger in their lower bodies pound-for-pound,they still aren’t literally stronger.They do have more strength in a technical sense(if that claim is even true),but in reality,they’re weaker.As I said before,I’m not against the idea that women could possibly have stronger legs than men,but I just want some evidence for it.
If that makes it more acceptable to you, sure. 
I can’t even decipher what that means.
It seems to be saying that if you measure the leg strength of women then they are capable of lifting, say, 158% of the lean non-fat mass of the body, whereas those of men can only lift 100%.
If that is what it is saying, it has no relevance to this thread, since it is not a claim that women have stronger legs, just that they are stronger relative to lean body mass. Since the lean body mass of women is >25% less than that of men, a 5% difference in *relative *strength still means that women have far, far weaker legs.
It is also makes damn near no sense and makes me highly skeptical about the credibility of the book.
Of course smaller animals have relatively stronger legs. Muscle strength scales to the square, weight scales to the cube. This is why ants can carry 10x their own body weight, a mouse can carry 4x, a man can carry 1x and a horse can’t even carry 1x. Women are smaller animals than men, of course they have *relatively *stronger postural muscles. The point is that it isn’t anything approaching actually stronger. If it were actually stronger then women would need to be at least 25% relatively stronger, not 5%.
Additionally it only considers lean body mass. The healthy body fat for a woman (~30%) is considered well into the overweight range for a a man (overweight at 25%). If you made the same measurements of overweight men, ie muscle strength relative to lean mass, you would discover they are also 5% stronger than men in the healthy weight range. That’s because the muscles have been conditioned to carrying around the extra weight. That doesn’t mean that overweight men are are capable of lifting more than other men, quite the opposite is true. The extra strength is just there to lift the built in weight of the fat.
This is shoddy science pushing a feminist agenda, and does a disservice to both fields.
The claim is that women are relatively stronger, not absolutely. Relative strength is definitely a thing, and it’s really the basis for the existence of weight classes in strength sports. Or are you claiming that a 165 lb. powerlifter should be competing directly against a 300 lb. one?
Any chance you might have heard longer rather than stronger?
For the same body height, on average a man will have a longer torso and a woman will have longer legs. That’s just an average of course. Cite (pdf).
Nobody in this thread made such a claim, and that is not what this thread is about.
That isn’t what that author is suggesting. She is suggesting exactly the opposite: that that a 300lb weightlifter carrying 150lb of fat should be competing directly against a 150lb weightlifter with no fat.
The weight classes in powerlifting are a good example of my point. Look at the weight records for a squat, which is a pretty good approximation of length strength.
276 class 1008 lifted = 3.6X body weight
198 class 838 lifted = 4.2x body weight
148 class 750 lifted = 5.0x body weight
114 class 663 lifted = 5.8x body weight
A pretty clear pattern of increasing *relative *strength with body mass and decreasing *absolute *strength. Since women are much smaller than men we would naturally expect them to be *relatively *stronger. This is further exaggerated in the study by looking at only lean muscle mass for averages of both sexes, when women are 20% smaller than men *and *carry 15% more fat.
The only way this comparison could possibly be considered good science is if it considered the relative strength of men and women in the same weight class. But of course if you did that women would be much, much weaker.
As I said, shoddy science in the advancement of an ideology.
How did you read that as such? I read it as when you make pound-for-pound LBM comparisons between males and females, females came out averaging leg strength about 6% stronger than males.
[She belongs in this thread.](I’m The Big Girl)
I assumed “158%” was meant to say “105.8%”.
If, hypothetically, women did have stronger legs than men in absolute terms, we might still expect men to excel in track and field.
Women’s pelvises are somewhat of a compromise between being able to give birth and walk (the Obstetrical dilemma). Obviously men’s pelvises can be more optimized for just movement.
I have heard it stated that women are proportionally stronger in their legs then men. I guess that sort of makes sense if you compare the proportions of the male and female body as clearly from a size perspective men’s upper bodies are bigger and the difference in strength between upper and lower body will probably be not as great as in females.
I am not sure this actually means anything though beyond some attempt to say women are stronger than men in some way.
I know from my own experience down the gym I never see females coming close to male numbers on things like leg press.
My acedotal evidence that it can be true.
My daughter was in HS and was a soccer player. She got into an argument with a male football player that her legs were stronger than his. They were both about 145 lbs. His leg press was 700lbs, she topped out at 1100 lbs. To her regret this caused her nickname to be “Rambo” from that day forward.