Is a woman capable of equaling the strength of a man and still looking like a woman? - JP Fitness Forums

4dhabibs · 12-03-2005, 07:28 AM

How real is the correlation between muscle mass and strength?

I often hear that the bigger the guy is then the stronger he will be, however, then how do you explain it when skinny guys can lift just as much as guys that are much bigger in size? What about Bruce Lee, wasnt he unbelievably strong? I am a 20 year old female that weighs 49-50 kg and 165cm in height, i am small in frame, but from observation i lift more weight that all other women i have encountered that are my size or even a bit bigger. I dont find building muscle too difficult, but i believe that the increase in my bicep size to be the result of a wrong style of weight training?

I've always been interested in developing my strength to equal that of an average man (lets say a man 75-80 kg) however, my question is, can this be done WITHOUT losing a feminine figure, without gaining masculilne looking mass?
I'm interested in a similar sort of training style i perceive to be Bruce Lee's, that is, strenght training every single muscle especially weaker ones, focusing on strength and not size.

I want to know firstly if this can be done, can a woman if she was prepared to put in much more effort than is required than of a man to build muscle , can she equal the strenght of an average man or is this physically impossible? I am presuming that it is possible because i look at female atheletes (that still look feminine!) and i presume that they are as strong as men.

Milko Georgiev · 12-03-2005, 08:57 AM

"Strength is a skill." - Pavel Tsatsouline
"A woman can't be stronger then a good trained man." - The Nature
I know ten ordinary (but trained) 50kg girls squatting 70kg and more. I olso know many ordinary men sqatting 50kg and less.
Generally you can have amazing strength without big muscles.
If we say human body potencial is 1000kg squat, so Pavel is 100% right, especially for ordinary people.

dos · 12-03-2005, 09:48 AM

There are many extremely strong females who don't necessarily look like they are borderline men. Shannon Hartnett and Heini Kouvenemi are two of the strongest women in the world although Heini is just FREAKISH with her strength vs. her appearance. here is one of my favorite pics of Shannon on the cover of Milo

Here are a couple of Heini....she is just amazing when it comes to her strength.

CC dad · 12-03-2005, 10:00 AM

Ok so this raises a question for me .

Does muscle size really have that much to do with muscle strength?

dos · 12-03-2005, 01:38 PM

Muscle size is a pretty good indicator of strength. In spite of the tales of bodybuilders being big yet are unable to lift heavy loads, well let's just say some of those guys are pretty frickin strong.

But then again, look at some of the lightweight powerlifters and Oly lifters, you might not even know they lifted by their appearance. So it it is VERY possible to be extremely strong without an huge amount of hypertrophy. You will get some hypertrophy with their type of strength-focused training but not nearly as much as a hypertrophy-style program (see our other threads regarding this topic...). These lightweights don't want to gain anymore weight so they train accordingly.

Here is one of my favorite little people, Tara Nott-Cunningham

82.5 kg snatch and 102.5 kg clean and jerk @ 105 lbs.

ninja · 12-03-2005, 01:50 PM

And doesn't she have mesh in her abdomen instead of ab muscles because of a previous tear or something?

She's from my area, so she was a star during the Olympics.

von_Hayes · 12-03-2005, 03:14 PM

dos, aren't we confusing strength vs. power. although the two are similar there are not the same. I always understood that the larger the cross sectional area of a muscle fiber the stronger it was provided you "learned how to recruit it" more effectively. in hypertrophy type programs the muscles enlarge somewhat by hypertophy, but also by the training state of the muscle i.e. capilarization, mitochondrial density, etc. etc. is this not true.

von_Hayes · 12-03-2005, 03:16 PM

more of my two cents. Bruce lee was strong alright, but in relative strengh. I would argue bruce lee was more powerful than he was strong.

dos · 12-03-2005, 04:36 PM

No I wasn't referring to power to all.

There is not a lot of power when a 140 lb. powerlifter benches 450 lbs. The point I was making is that while you can assume that someone who has a lot of muscle mass (i.e. bodybuilders) is pretty strong, he / she will not be as strong as someone who trains exclusively for strength. These strength athletes have trained their muscles to perform specifically....for strength. Just following the laws of specificity of training.

Lastly, 'strength' as we usually define it is mass x distance, power is mass x distance divided by time so while strength is important (as far as the load moved) in the power equation, time is generally more important. Was Bruce Lee powerful? absolutely. Was he strong? I would probably guess so especially in a muscular endurance capacity. Tara Nott is a powerful as they come and can probably squat a good amount of weight but she is not nearly as 'strong' as a 105 lb powerlifter who can squat 400 lbs.

The 'power' of the world record bench press of over 1000 lbs. gets blown away by every one of my volleyball girls doing their power cleans (when converted to power) in training .

CC dad · 12-03-2005, 04:49 PM

Ok so here is another one . How do these smaller weight class lifters continue to gain strength without ever gaining size? I know that they arent training specificaly for hypertrophy but wouldn't at least some growth be a byproduct of increased strength?

4dhabibs · 12-03-2005, 05:02 PM

Thats an interesting question C&C dad

dos · 12-03-2005, 05:26 PM

Some muscle growth but hopefully not enough to move them up the the next weight class. Sometimes that happens though. Tara Nott moved up to the next weight class as well. Goes to show you that high load / low volume training doesn't nearly elicit the hypertrophy gains that some people want like to claim.

Darkmind · 12-03-2005, 07:11 PM

Isn't training in a rep range of 3-5 a great way to increase strength without much hypertrophy? It trains more specifically your CNS, able to recruit more muscle fibers and motor neurons.. or something like that. And also I know there are 2 types of muscle hypertrophy, sarcoplasmic, and myofibrillic, the lower rep ranges being best for myofibrillic (muscle contractile strength), higher ranges (mostly 8-12 reps) being more toward sarcoplasmic - in which sarcoplasmic fluid in the muscle cell increases, barely to no strength increase.

I heard it's good to do both kinds of training, for best strength and size development.

CC dad · 12-03-2005, 10:13 PM

Wow thats pretty interesting Dos. that really opens up the door to lots of different training for different sports. This sports training stuff really interest me. If I wern't married with 2 kids I'd go back to school to do something like you do. Oh well woulda coulda shoulda. Thanks alot.

Jean-Paul · 12-03-2005, 11:34 PM

C&C dad,
Don't let life stop you from following a dream, if indeed it is a dream. As Joseph Campbell would say, follow your bliss.

von_Hayes · 12-05-2005, 10:34 AM

dos, I know what power is. I just thought we weren't taking all the variables into consideration. by in large the cross sectional area of a muscle fiber will determine it's strength among other things like cns activation, fiber type (genetics) etc., and lets not forget hormonal status.

dos · 12-05-2005, 11:31 AM

well, the initial question was 'Is a woman capable of equaling the strength of a man and still looking like a woman?'. The only thing I was referring to was the ability to get as strong as possible with minimal hypertrophy.

We know that this can be accomplished but in general, a person with lots of muscle mass will generally be 'strong'...at least stronger than the regular joe or jane so-to-speak.