Females have superior endurance?
Really?
Interesting, as Olympic competition shows otherwise.
Different muscle recruiting patterns between men and women may affect muscular endurance. According to Brian C. Clark and colleagues in a 2007 article in the “Journal of Applied Physiology,” women may have increased muscular endurance because of a more effective activation pattern than men. Women fatigued less quickly because they recruited more synergistic muscle groups. Men failed to recruit these muscles and therefore had less muscular endurance than women.
Blood flow restriction within the muscle during contraction may reduce muscular endurance. Women had better blood flow throughout the muscle and fatigued less quickly compared to men, according to Sandra K. Hunter and colleague in a 2001 article in the “Journal of Applied Physiology.” Men’s larger muscle mass and higher intensity muscle contraction may have constricted capillaries, and contributed to the decreased blood flow and reduced muscular endurance. However, David W. Russ and colleague in a 2003 article in the “Journal of Applied Physiology,” stated no difference in blood flow between men and women. Instead, men may have fatigued earlier because of a less efficient metabolism within the muscle when compared to women.
men tend to gravitate towards maximal exercises with high weight and low repetition to gain muscle bulk, strength and power. Women tend to use lower weight and more reps. Women usually want to slim down or tone, which is accomplished with endurance exercises. When men and women equally participate in endurance training, similar levels of muscular endurance may be achieved between both sexes.
Testosterone is a hormone that helps to build lean body mass or muscle. Men have more testosterone and more lean body mass or muscle compared to women. However, more muscle does not mean more muscular endurance. In fact, testosterone, increased muscle mass and strength may decrease muscular endurance compared to women.
Some people may think it rather obvious that, on average, men have an advantage over women when it comes to distance running. However, a 1992 analysis of track and field records (
Whipp & Ward, Nature 355: 25, 1992) suggested the possibility that the fastest women in the world might catch up to the fastest men in the not-too-distant future. Such a scenario would imply that women have the same athletic potential as men. So, is that really true? Or, alternatively, do men have certain biological advantages that they are unlikely to relinquish within the next century?
I'm not going to attempt a comparison of male and female sprinters. For distance runners, however, we can compare men and women using the endurance performance model described in
my February column. You may recall that the model includes three components -- maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max), the lactate threshold, and running economy -- each of which is considered an important determinant of success in races ranging from 3 to 30 miles.
[h=3]Looking for biological differences[/h]A natural question to ask is: do men and women differ with respect to these three traits? For VO2max, the answer is yes. The average VO2max is about 33 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body mass per minute for sedentary young women and around 42 ml/kg/min for sedentary young men (
Bouchard et al., Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 30: 252-8, 1998). Elite female distance runners can sometimes reach VO2max readings of 70+ ml/kg/min (
Pate et al., International Journal of Sports Medicine 8 (Suppl.): 91-5, 1987), whereas elite men can attain values in the 80s (
Pollock, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 301: 310-22, 1977).
The lactate threshold -- the percentage of VO2max at which lactic acid begins to accumulate in the blood -- has not been extensively studied in female runners. Nonetheless, the available data indicate that elite women can run marathons at about 75-85% of VO2max, essentially the same as for elite men (
Davies & Thompson, European Journal of Applied Physiology 41: 233-45, 1979;
Iwaoka et al., International Journal of Sports Medicine 9: 306-9, 1988).
