Why Are Women More Flexible Than Men?

[Surreal]

Why is it that the average woman appears to be more flexible than the average man, physiologically speaking? I believe this is the case even in women who don’t do any stretching exercises.

Thanks.

[hedra]

1. Flexible in what way? Arms over the shoulder behind back? Splits? What?

2. How do you compare activity levels and general range of motions used in daily life? Perhaps women you know do more activities that involve ‘incidental’ stretching?

3. How do you compare flexibility with different substructures? That is, body proportion, joint shape and placement, etc., probably play a role in perception of flexibility, without necessarily having more range of motion within a joint’s normal range.

There are so many structural differences, I don’t know how you would compare the two. Or does that answer your question - perhaps what you see as more flexible is just normal range of motion differences based on narrower shoulders and broader hips? Or are you talking connective tissue differences?

[Squink]

Women tend to have fewer bulky muscles to get in the way of movement.

[dorkusmalorkusmafia]

What Squink said. The more muscular one becomes the less flexible one also becomes unless one does stretches and exercises to avoid this. Most men don’t bother.

[Mojo_the_Monkey]

*Originally posted by Surreal *
**Why is it that the average woman appears to be more flexible than the average man, physiologically speaking? I believe this is the case even in women who don’t do any stretching exercises.

Thanks. **

Ben Franklin once wrote that, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Maybe it’s the same reason.

[BrotherCadfael]

They have to fit around a 6" diameter baby’s head. That’s why.

[Ca3799]

It’s from picking up all those toys and junk all the time.

[ultrafilter]

It actually has to do with their joints, and nothing to do with muscle. People with little muscle can be inflexible too. I’ll try to dig up a cite tomorrow, but women’s joints are a little different from men’s.

[guava]

Not only are women more flexible than men, but pregnant women are more flexible than non-pregnant women. According to http://www.city-chiropractic.com/pregnant.html,

Chiropractic care is especially needed during pregnancy because of the many physical and chemical changes the women’s body is going through. Not only is her centre of gravity changing because of the added physical weight she is carrying, but her spinal structure becomes more flexible due to a hormone produced by her ovaries called relaxin.

Relaxin relaxes the ligaments in the pelvis, preparing them for stretching during childbirth and can, in an already unstable spine, aggravate spinal problems.

[sivispacem]

I want to say that testosterne acts to stiffen ligaments and tendons (among other things…) which is why teenagers are less flexable than kids, and adults the worst off.

[Tamex]

It’s true–pregnancy makes you more flexible. I was never able to touch my toes as a child, no matter how much cajoling the PE teacher and the other kids gave me. My mother and I were talking about this shortly after I gave birth to my daughter. I went to show my mom that my hands wouldn’t reach much past my knees, and, lo and behold, I could actually reach my feet! Six years later, I still can do it. I assumed at the time that the process of childbirth had helped me stretch out in some way, but it was probably the hormones, as guava said.

I also think that it might be cultural. Flexibility is valued among little girls. Do you think a boy would have despaired so much about not being able to touch his toes in PE that he would be talking about it 20 years later? No, it’s mostly little girls who spend their recesses showing off their “American” and “Chinese” splits and their weekends taking gymnastics classes. All that practice probably helps build flexibility (didn’t do much for me, but, as I said, I was unusually inflexible until I got that shot of hormones!)

[Surreal]

Update: A recent New York Times article discusses this subject.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/phys-ed-how-necessary-is-stretching/

Overall, the women were more supple, as might have been expected. Far more telling was the correlation between the various runners’ tight or loose hamstring muscles and their running economy, a measure of how much oxygen they used while striding. Economy is often cited as one of the factors that divide great runners from merely fast ones. Kenyan distance runners, for instance, have been found to be significantly more economical in their running than comparable Western elites.

When the Nebraska Wesleyan researchers compared the runners’ sit-and-reach scores to the measurements of their economy, which had been garnered from a treadmill test, they found that, across the board, the tightest runners were the most economical. This was true throughout the groups and within the genders. The inflexible men were more economical than the women, and for both men and women, those with the tightest hamstrings had the best running economy. They also typically had the fastest 10-kilometer race times. Probably, the researchers concluded, tighter muscles allow “for greater elastic energy storage and use” during each stride. Inflexibility, in other words, seems to make running easier.

In short, men are less flexible than women because we’re more athletic.

[Gary_Robson]

[moderating]
We don’t mind the occasional zombie thread, but this one is over six years old. If you want to talk about it, let’s start a new thread.
[/moderating]