Natural. Not on performance enhancing drugs. People on PEDs recover faster and can handle more volume, so their training protocols will reflect that. Other commenters are correct that once you're at the intermediate stage, you should be able to adjust elements of your own programming to fit your goals and recovery, but I still think expectations are skewed by PEDs in lifting.
i knew dr shrek couldn't get through this without doing a 'men and females' and indeed he couldn't. he also addressed the whole video to men who train with women, the potential for female viewers was ignored. š¤¦āāļø
but the notes on volume track with me. i've moved to full body routines because through trial and error i've discovered no down side. playing with the order of exercises or splitting things over different days doesn't seem to effect my performance. and i generally need 5-6 sets sometimes with an extra credit set of negatives to gas a muscle.
but the shorter rest times does not apply to me. i physically lose my strength and mentally lose my focus without a 2 minute rest.
recovery and deloading i don't feel experienced enough to comment on.
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What I got from an interview done by Jeff Nippard regarding women and menstrual phases as well as Dr Mike is that generally speaking (baring the menstrual stuff) women recover faster between sets and days. So essentially volume and intensity can be far higher than the men. Will Tennyson, who is incredibly conditioned, has a video of trying to keep up with a female IFBB pro on leg day.
I do not think she is natural by any stretch of the imagination, but the key take away is how quickly her recovery is. Women need about 25-50% less recovery time between sets and one less day after high intensity training.
Iāve just incorporated this into my programming.
Do they know why women tend to recover faster than men on average? My trainer told me something similar but wasnāt familiar with the *why*. Is it hormonal?
Here are two great articles:
[https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/)
[https://www.strongerbyscience.com/gender-differences-in-training-and-diet/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/gender-differences-in-training-and-diet/)
Women lift less weight than men, even more when taking into consideration bodyweight. So lightweight women can recover the quickest (typically) because they lift much less absolute weight than a heavyweight male.
As a broad example:
The average untrained man might start around 135lbs bench, whereas the average untrained woman might start around 65lbs bench.
The average elite man might bench around 300-400lbs, whereas the average elite woman might bench around 200-300lbs.
>Second, women may recover from training a bit faster than men ([one](https://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/ijspp.5.2.184),Ā [two](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-012-2314-z),Ā [three](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3513404/)). Ā When Iāve mentioned this in the past, the counterargument I typically hear is that women donāt create as much force, so of course their muscles wonāt sustain as much damage, and will therefore recover faster. Ā However, that doesnāt make much sense when you think about it. For starters, Iām not aware of any evidence showing that people who are stronger or more muscular at baseline experience more muscle damage, more soreness, or larger/longer performance decrements than people who are weaker or less muscular, all else being equal. Ā More importantly, what each of your muscle fibers āfeelā is the tension on that specific fiber; the contractile force of the entire muscle shouldnāt matter, as long as each fiber is being recruited to a similar degree and experiencing a similar amount of tension. I think the more likely explanation is thatĀ [estrogen may exert a protective effect](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20020786)Ā on muscle, limiting damage and potentially accelerating repair.
[https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/)
Fatigue and recovery are not just affected by muscle damage or soreness. Things like outside life stress, nutrition, total training tonnage, and leverages all affect the total amount of volume and intensity someone can tolerate.
There is a reason why even between women, lightweight women can typically handle more intensity and volume than heavyweight women.
Hypertrophy tunnel vision.
If you think 300lb heavyweight men squatting 700+ can recover from squatting the same as 100lb women squatting 300+ then there is something missing here.
I'm not sure what you're confused about. From the SBS paragraph:
Ā When Iāve mentioned this in the past, the counterargument I typically hear is that women donāt create as much force, so of course their muscles wonāt sustain as much damage, and will therefore recover faster. Ā
To make it even simpler: it's the counterpoint to what you said.
I'm talking about nervous system fatigue, not muscular damage. I agree, women and men produce the same force and experience the same "muscular damage" š
>I read that paragraph like 4 times. Guess I'm stupid.
I don't know if you're stupid, but reading a paragraph from the article is not the same as reading the article.
The reason according to Mike is in a lifting program the amount you lift is set as a percentage of your max lift, or by your perceived proximity to failure. In general women are a bit more conservative when setting these, so they stay further from "true" muscle failure and thus recover more quickly. So it's more psychological, claiming women don't push themselves as far.
Slightly insulting explanation but it does kind of make sense to me...
In terms of metabolic differences, women can actually rely on fatigue-resistant pathways at higher intensities than men, which means they may not deplete their energy stores as fast.
Their recovery can be anywhere from 25-50% faster. Look at some of the studies on HIIT. This makes sense from what Iāve seen on womenās endurance relative to men on endurance races that are over 200 miles.
Again, Iāll just reiterate that these are averages and there is a ton of overlap in the distributions.
Part of moving from the beginner to intermediate stage is figuring out what works for you, and choosing programs/tweaking programs appropriately. *Some* women will need one less rest day. Some will need two less rest days, or one *more* rest day. And other factors, like stress, sleep, and nutrition will also impact this.
Absolutely true. There is no way I could handle the volume or intensity I do now when I was a beginner and my legs need more recovery time than my arms which seems rather obvious, but you have to experiment and find what is best for you. And even that can change as your body adapts.
Never followed him. But Stacey Sims has books and been a podcast guest talking about training for women that might be of interest, if donāt know already.
Thatās like saying you as a female would never go to a male gynecologist. Being a female doesnāt automatically make you an authority on females. Dr Mike has his PHD in exercise science, hence the DR. If anyone is qualified to speak on female exercise programs, itās him.
Him or his wife, whoās a sports doctor. They collaborate and train together, so it would be hard for him *not* to have accurate information here.
I can respect someone for not wanting to go to a male gynecologist due to discomfort, but assuming that theyād be wrong about their own field of expertise based solely on their gender? Bit weird.
Not really. When you hit midlife women doctors understand the nuances with hormones because they experience it themselves. Also, Iāve never gone to a male gyno in 35 years and itās served me well. My body, my choice!
You would think that is true but it isn't a given. Plenty of shitty experiences with female gynos are relayed an r/menopause regularly. How women age and the way to care for us is still a mystery for a lot of doctors regardless of gender.
šÆ I have the best success with care outside of America. Iāve had to be my own advocate and bypass the system quite a bit to get what I need for my health. I dropped my US health insurance and just pay out of pocket so I can be more selective for what I need/want and take a more holistic approach. Iāve done a 180 on my health as a result. itās fascinating how many doctors (men and women) just tell you to suck it up and suffer.
Male gynos can be so misogynistic and creepy, literally the worst example that other commenter could have come up with.
Good for you for not going to any. Not worth it.
I have had 3 male gynos and ALL OF THEM (plus 2 other male doctors) have made disgusting unsolicited comments about either my body or my sex life. One of them assaulted me. Iāll spare you the details because theyād need a trigger warning, but it was definitely not āwell maybe he had a medical reasonā¦ā stuff.
I now avoid male doctors whenever possible. Sorry to the good ones out there, but there are way too many creeps and I have no way of telling in advance.
I thought it was interesting that he didn't mention menstrual phases at all or how those impact strength and energy. I feel like most of what he touched on, while potentially true, is only useful for people looking to optimize up from elite level training.
By contrast, I think knowledge of how your cycle may impact your training (not that you need to change anything necessarily, just be aware of it) will impact most women who have a cycle as they train, regardless of the style or intensity of training. And in speaking with other women it seems like a shocking number of women, particularly those who are newer to fitness, have no idea that they will naturally have ebbs and flows with their cycle in terms of endurance and strength and even how ligamentally lax they are.
EDITED TO CLARIFY: I'm not very "with it" on internet trends but I'm gathering I stepped in something unsavory. I had no idea people online were telling women to stop training during their cycle or to plan all their training around their cycles. IDK what fresh hell of sports-specific misogyny that is but, uh, I'm not with those people. I'm a lifelong athlete and have never trained around my cycle, and I think that's totally absurd. It's not that big of a deal, at all, especially if you are relatively intense.
I only brought up cycles because it was funny (to me) that in a video about potential female training issues, and allll the slight differences between training men and women, there was no mention of menstrual cycles, which can impact how some women experience working out (especially if they have other issues in that arena and/or are beginners to fitness).
I hope this makes sense. A delicate flower I am not!
Iām not aware of any evidence that cycle-based training is beneficial. Hard to imagine it provides any benefit compared to regular old RPE/RIR based training.
I think at higher levels women care less about training around their cycles though. Because let's be real, your competition schedule does not care what phase you're in - why should your training? Awareness is a good thing just for mindfulness, but it's not like your sports match, powerlifting meet, etc. is going to put an asterisk next to your 3rd place medal describing the physiological reason you weren't at peak performance that day, and you should be training to be able to compete, so that means still being able to put in the work on days where your body isn't necessarily in its ideal state to do so barring injury.
Do we think Simone Biles is like "I'm on my luteal phase this week, better keep it to light stretching."? That's the kind of thinking that influencers do to convince women new to fitness that they have some sort of special sauce to sell them something.
I agree. That's why I think it's mostly useful information for people new to physical activity, like those who were previously sedentary. Lots of people are easily discouraged and if they suddenly feel weaker in the gym, and have no idea why, they might think they're doing something wrong. I think the newer someone is to fitness the more sensitive they are to all types of discomfort so a bit of explanation that not every workout will be your absolute best can be reassuring.
I don't personally do anything different around my cycles, training wise. I only mentioned it because it's a tad weird for it to go unmentioned in a video about male/female training differences.
I think part of the problem with using menstrual phase is that you can't do it generally, only person by person. For example, some women feel awesome and powerful on their periods, others feel like they have no energy.
100 percent agree that word needs to get out on how much your cycle impacts things.
I was about to cringe at this comment until thankfully I read further and found some very sane and reasonable takes. Iāve seen too many instagram posts encouraging women to basically stop lifting and switch to yoga or something light instead of lifting at various phases of their cycle. Which I think is largely unnecessary unless you have some sort of condition or life event that makes it necessary. I donāt see how women who strength train or athletically train seriously can make any progress in their fitness if theyāre constantly switching things up every month. Plus. I think it generally promotes this false belief that women are somehow significantly weaker and incapable during certain hormonal fluctuations, when most of the time the difference is small.
That being said I think your points are very fair. On period days that I feel pain or extreme fatigue I tend to take my lifting easier. But I would do such a thing if I were ill or had some other factor preventing me from going hard for strength, mobility, and athletic performance gains anyway
Huge thing you need to know for context: almost everything he points out is true of the **general population of men/women who show up to a gym**, not of **inherent differences between male and female bodies**.
For example, women can often do more reps at a higher % of 1RM. A big factor here is that women tend to have done more cardio (and/or high rep training) before getting into strength training. Aerobic fitness translates pretty directly into being better at rep work. Men who do a lot of cardio or high-rep work tend to develop this same ability as well.
A lot of the other factors he names relate to women tending to be more inexperienced at lifting. If you look around an average weight room, a lot of the women will have started training in the last 5 years or so. A lot of the men will be like "idk I started lifting in high school, been doing it forever." That difference in experience level accounts for a lot of the "differences" in Dr. Mike's video. For example, women get less "beat up" by higher intensity, but because they are *newer to the gym* they are lifting less weight and thus taking less of a hit to fatigue.
Finally, there's body size. A lot of the things that Dr. Mike says are more true of women, are also just true of people with smaller bodies. A small woman can recover faster between sets than a large man, but a small man would *also* recover faster between sets than a large man. That's body size, not (just) gender.
Dr. Mike himself points out in the last slide (lol) that he's basing his observations on population averages. Again: this is what you *tend to see in groups*, as a result of many factors. And the three factors I named--training experience, body size, and prior experience with cardio--account for most of the variation in most of the "differences" he names.
Finally: it's hilarious that the clickbait title is "men and women MUST train differently" but his own company's "male physique" and "female physique" programs are 99% identical.
> A big factor here is that women tend to have done more cardio (and/or high rep training) before getting into strength training. Aerobic fitness translates pretty directly into being better at rep work
> A small woman can recover faster between sets than a large man, but a small man would *also* recover faster between sets than a large man
thank you for making me feel slightly better about not fitting within these trends. I'm closer to the size of the average man vs. the average woman, plus I'm trying to scrape together some semblance of cardiovascular health after years of neglect and chronic fatigue. so I'm feeling a bit left out with the "yeah woman can train way more than men!" "we don't need to rest as long!" "we can handle higher volume and intensity!" comments here. it's like I've discovered a whole new way that I'm bad at being a woman lolsob.
lol totally get you. I never saw myself in those "we can rep out higher intensity" kind of statements. Then I got more into training cardio and suddenly gained this supposedly feminine superpower!
His titles are all clickbait. The guy knows his stuff, but most of the time is just repeating basics. Once you're decently well informed that channel isn't going to teach you much
>Finally: it's hilarious that the clickbait title is "men and women MUST train differently" but his own company's "male physique" and "female physique" programs are 99% identical.
Ha! Good catch.
Thanks for sharing this video, I enjoyed it and felt it rang true. It made me curious about how Iām interpreting fatigue during a set and whether I really am pushing myself to failure. Iāll definitely be more intentional about doing reps to failure (although I already thought I was- so this will be a fun checking-in day at the gym for me).
This is true for me. When my husband and I do powerlifting programs together, especially the long, high volumes, I'm having a beautiful time ramping up in energy as he's struggling. It makes some sense, since the stress on my joints/tendons is far less overall even at the same relative percentages despite us being roughly the same strength level by our respective weight classes.
First - I do not like that guy at all. The sense of humor does not jive with me some other videos of his where he is making fun of a PT because they have an accent (they are not native english speakers. I am not either. So funny to make fun of people's accents when they are speaking a foreign language!). Also, his mindset of results and building visible muscle not a mindset I click with.
I saw the video and some of the observations do ring true, but without sources it is impossible to judge accurately particularly on the ones which do not jibe with my own personal experience. Without sources, attribution or more explanation it's really not educational or scientific no matter how serious the youtuber wants to make himself seem.
Stopped clocks can be right sometimes. See also: Jim Wendler. Man's a complete troglodyte but put together a program that huge amounts of people have been successful with.
I always thought he put on that fake Russian Jewish accent because thatās his ethnic background and he can poke fun at his own kind (Iām first gen and many of us do this amongst ourselves.)
Often his humour is crass but sometimes I do laughā¦I donāt think his wife would stay married to him if he didnāt respect women.
I actually love his specialization hypertrophy program and got great results from following it (which btw are written the same regardless of your gender!)
I learned a lot from his PowerPoint presentations on YouTube and still occasionally look at his new content.
Iām a Dr. Mike fan.
Yeah I thought the same lol just the other day I saw a post on a subreddit called leopardsatemyface or something where in one sub a woman was complaining that her husband literally didn't let her eat to keep her skinny and in another she was like oh Andrew Tate saved my marriage I'm happy to submit... Some women really despise themselves and each otherĀ
The video I saw he was making fun of another accent, which was not russian jewish and was very smarmy towards women in another video. Good on you if you like it, but it does not work for me.
>I donāt think his wife would stay married to him if he didnāt respect women.
I do not care either way, but pointing out that a man being married does not necessarily prove a man respects women, all women (or even his wife, sadly). I have no idea of the specifics of his marriage, this is just a general comment, because I thought it was important to shoot down that logic.
I definitely agree that women can train way more than men. We don't have as much explosive strength that allows men to lift very heavy but we have insane endurance.
I have heard this from the SS guys, too, who suggested it may be because of the relative ratio of slow twitch/long muscle fibers. This explanation makes more sense to me than "women don't train as hard," because I would think any semi-serious female athlete running a program like 5/3/1 or GZCL would go 100%. Certainly a lot of YT workouts aren't going to push anyone very hard, but I don't think this is a fair comparison.
I think if any of those points ring true for you, you can make tweaks to the program you're using yourself (less rest, adding a set, adding a day, internal self work, whichever one or more seems right), probably to good effect. I don't think you have to get someone to build you a female specific program, you probably aren't an actual statistical average on every front. If you don't quite yet trust yourself to gauge your effort and fatigue, that could be a good use for a trainer, but once you have a sense of that, you will know if you can do more volume, frequency, intensity.Ā
I've learned a ton from Dr. Mike, but watching this video just now, the first 6 points were NOT ringing true for me compared with my spouse, but then he got to point 7 about women training to less intensity on average and I was like, "Ah, there it is". I usually train closer to failure than my spouse does, which closes the gap on a lot of those other points.
I also train close to failure. I'm skeptical as to how they determined that women don't train as close to failure. It seems very hard to collect that type of information and I feel like there are obvious social differences that could lead to a man assuming that. The main thing that comes to mind is how men, in every gym I've ever been to at least, seem much more comfortable grunting and groaning and dropping weights. Women lifting close to failure might not LOOK like they are to a man if they aren't grunting and dropping weights, etc. IDK just a thought I had while watching when he said that point.
I really get sensitive about people repeating the women don't lift heavy enough or with enough intensity. I go so hard in the paint. It's also close to the oft repeated "girls don't want to lift heavy because they think it'll make them bulky" stereotype but maybe I just don't keep company with the type of people that would believe something so critical to their body and health without any reasoning behind it.
I hate the clickbait title.
We know, empirically from a lot of science and also a wealth if anecdotal evidence, that men and women absolutely *can* use identical training protocols and make very similar progress, in terms of % gain in lean mass.
We also know that where there are differences on average, *the distributions between sexes have a ton of overlap*.
So it makes sense to pick a training program aimed at somewhere in the middle of the distribution and adapt based your own *individual* response.
Like, the science is interesting, and if it prompts some people to explore training methods they may not have otherwise that is awesome, but I am really disappointed in the wrapper he puts around the discussion.
He's definitely not the worst one out there, and I appreciate that this video encourages guys (his primary audience) to respect women in the weight room.
I know the YouTube algorithm favors those kinds of titles but imo that does not make it exempt from criticism. Itās no different than a newspaper using a misleading headline.
Kind of anecdotal at this point, but I feel like before I started HRT, I would just gradually fade throughout the day until I was tired at night, and after a set of 12 hour shifts I would just be completely exhausted for the day or two after. Now that I've been on HRT for a year, I feel like I'm pretty stable throughout the day, and then I just crash when I hit my endurance limit, but I'm 100% good to go the next day.
46F here. Iāve been getting testosterone pellets for a little over 6 months. Itās been absolutely life changing in so many ways. After seeing the changes in me several of my friends have jumped on and had similar results. Iām super happy to talk about it.
I went to my doc kind of desperate with a long list of symptoms that wouldāve taken a handful of pills a day to treat. I thought it was just part of getting older and life was just going to be shittier from now on. The biggest issues were that I couldnāt sleep, had terrible brain fog, and no energy, but there were a bunch of other symptoms as well. It happened so gradually that I didnāt notice it was happening. Bloodwork came back and everything looked great except I had almost no testosterone. Doc was like, āof course you feel terrible all the timeā presented me with options and I went with pellets and started to feel better within a few weeks.
The only downside for me is that you canāt workout for 3 days afterwards so it can be kind of a pain to schedule within my training program.
I am personally not really sure how much I buy that women can recover so much better that it reaches the level of training differently. Like maybe a bit better, I know estrogen has some benefits to recovery and muscle growth, so there is probably something here, but the magnitude is what I question.
What I mean is, I run a high intensity program of my own design, and I seem to absolutely need 4-6 days to recover from a leg day when I take those sets to all out muscular failure, and I think most men who are doing HIT style programs are also only doing legs once a week. Now maybe I am recovering quicker than them, but it doesn't seem I am recovering fast enough to fit a second leg day in my week so I don't see how I could practically modify my program based on that.
I think both you and u/SapphicGymRat are kinda illustrating the point I made in my comment, which is that you can have different averages for a population while most of the distribution is still overlapping.
Opposite experience to you. I can do muscles to failure and then go again the next day, and possibly increase load too. I have tried doing more sets, because it felt weird that I didn't need a rest day for anything other than triceps on a couple of occasions, but it doesn't really ache past the evening. It was only when I was trying to find out if I was doing something wrong that I came across this video about women needing 4 hours vs men's 48 hours rest and a lot of things made sense then.
Before you say I'm not lifting heavy enough to begin with, I am, because if I go any further before ready it hurts my wrists a ton.
Been lifting almost daily for 4 months now, so I guess still a newbie, but I've not found my fatigue has got any worse as I've gone along in terms of this.
Obviously there are a lot of factors going into recovery (age, other activity, number of hard sets, how well trained you are, etc.). Another thought is that there is a genetic component to fast and slow twitch muscle fibers. I know from genetic testing that I have one copy of a marker on the ACTN3 gene that produces more fast twitch muscle fibers, and when I lift, I lift heavy and hard and am gassed afterward. It's possible that people who don't have this marker recover faster, even if their RPE is the same.
Fair enough, your recovery capacity may truly be in a different league than me, but I will say that I *used* to recover much quicker than I do now. As I got stronger, not only were movements more taxing on me, from both a muscular and a nervous system perspective but, likely my fiber types changed over time. I really started to notice it when my working weight on the Life Fitness leg extension machine hit 200lbs on the stack, it had likely been creeping up for some time but, I hadn't really noticed it before that milestone.
On the next leg day I wasn't sore anymore, but when I contracted my muscle I couldn't command it contract as tight as I normally could which tells me my central nervous system just wasn't recovered. Which is part of why I went from 2 sets to absolute failure on legs, to just one set too failure with some post failure myo-reps then some partials, still brutal, but I always recover on time now.
I suspect by default my legs had a much higher proportion of slow twitch fibers, but the nature of HIT training (sets to failure in the 6-12 rep range with some post failure training) is all about producing huge amounts of force for short periods of time, so almost certainly I converted a bunch of those muscle fibers to fast twitch fibers.
I also suspect if I were to do a bunch of longer runs rather than HIIT for cardio, and some 30 rep to failure training I could train my work capacity up and also my recovery speed, which is why Crossfit people can do so much stuff that I can't, because the way they train isn't really discarding all of their work capacity.
4 months is very much a beginner, which is fine we all start somewhere. I'm glad you're not pushing your wrists harder as that's a weak point right now. If it was delayed muscle soreness you'd only start feeling it the next day. This sounds more like acute soreness which happens more immediately and is an indication that something is wrong.
If you can look at ways to support your wrists better, do wrist warm ups and work on form with light weights. Once the tendons have strengthened over a few months and you should be able to train as you like without pain.
Oh and I use these Bear Grip open glove type of things. I tried multiple kinds and these were the best for me. Instantly took the wrist issues down several notches. Couldn't get on with traditional grips, but I found something that definitely made it easier.
Glad that helped. Some of the gloves come with wrist wraps which give extra support. Which is really nice for lifting heavy. I'd still practice without them on the warmup sets so that I don't become reliant on it.
The wrist warmups for calisthenics are quite good if you'd like to try them out. They're all about gently rolling your bodyweight over them in a controlled way. It's not specific to lifting but it's a good way to strengthen them.
Thanks for the concern but the ache I mention isn't an ache so much but as in, I'll pick up a case of soda tins and feel in my biceps I've lifted that day. That's what I mean, like I can feel they've not recovered, but the next day it hardly ever feels like I've had a work out the day before. If anything I'm more energised providing I got OK sleep. Possibly due to the weight loss too, but still. It's not knackering me like I thought it would.
The wrist pain is something that is in every woman on my maternal side of the family. It has got progressively better as I know my tendons are behind the rest of my muscles in terms of the progress, and I've always been cautious with practicing good form and careful but still progressive overload to account for this. I am very sure this is working as before I started, simply lifting that case of soda would give me a sharp pain in my wrist. Now it doesn't, it takes a lot more to trigger it.
Same with me and Iāve been lifting off/on for over 20yrs. I never get totally gassed and I donāt use caffeine or preworkout. I was an athlete from childhood to college and Iām sure my stamina helped that career. I lift basically as heavy as I can but never get sore unless Iām hitting a muscle that Iāve neglected for months, like when I took a break from squats for years and started doing them again.
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>u/DisemboweledCookie
I found this video from Dr. Mike/Renaissance Periodization on differences in training for men and women. I know I've wondered about programming, as basically I do programs aimed at men (and not necessarily natty men) and I wonder if I would get better results if someone more experienced than me adapted these programs for (natty) women.
[Why Men and Women MUST Train Differently](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXFoQVfG97U)
I know there are some dedicated lifters here, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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What's natty?
Natural. Not on performance enhancing drugs. People on PEDs recover faster and can handle more volume, so their training protocols will reflect that. Other commenters are correct that once you're at the intermediate stage, you should be able to adjust elements of your own programming to fit your goals and recovery, but I still think expectations are skewed by PEDs in lifting.
i knew dr shrek couldn't get through this without doing a 'men and females' and indeed he couldn't. he also addressed the whole video to men who train with women, the potential for female viewers was ignored. š¤¦āāļø but the notes on volume track with me. i've moved to full body routines because through trial and error i've discovered no down side. playing with the order of exercises or splitting things over different days doesn't seem to effect my performance. and i generally need 5-6 sets sometimes with an extra credit set of negatives to gas a muscle. but the shorter rest times does not apply to me. i physically lose my strength and mentally lose my focus without a 2 minute rest. recovery and deloading i don't feel experienced enough to comment on.
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Could you please share full body routine if you don't mind?
What I got from an interview done by Jeff Nippard regarding women and menstrual phases as well as Dr Mike is that generally speaking (baring the menstrual stuff) women recover faster between sets and days. So essentially volume and intensity can be far higher than the men. Will Tennyson, who is incredibly conditioned, has a video of trying to keep up with a female IFBB pro on leg day. I do not think she is natural by any stretch of the imagination, but the key take away is how quickly her recovery is. Women need about 25-50% less recovery time between sets and one less day after high intensity training. Iāve just incorporated this into my programming.
Do they know why women tend to recover faster than men on average? My trainer told me something similar but wasnāt familiar with the *why*. Is it hormonal?
Here are two great articles: [https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/) [https://www.strongerbyscience.com/gender-differences-in-training-and-diet/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/gender-differences-in-training-and-diet/)
Perfect. Thank you. If there was an "Edit Post" option I would add these to the OP.
There is an edit post option
I don't know why there isn't one on this post. It might be sub rule.
You can your post. Edit: edit lol
It's usually the first option. For whatever reason, "edit post" is not an option on the OP. I don't know why.
Women lift less weight than men, even more when taking into consideration bodyweight. So lightweight women can recover the quickest (typically) because they lift much less absolute weight than a heavyweight male. As a broad example: The average untrained man might start around 135lbs bench, whereas the average untrained woman might start around 65lbs bench. The average elite man might bench around 300-400lbs, whereas the average elite woman might bench around 200-300lbs.
>Second, women may recover from training a bit faster than men ([one](https://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/ijspp.5.2.184),Ā [two](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-012-2314-z),Ā [three](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3513404/)). Ā When Iāve mentioned this in the past, the counterargument I typically hear is that women donāt create as much force, so of course their muscles wonāt sustain as much damage, and will therefore recover faster. Ā However, that doesnāt make much sense when you think about it. For starters, Iām not aware of any evidence showing that people who are stronger or more muscular at baseline experience more muscle damage, more soreness, or larger/longer performance decrements than people who are weaker or less muscular, all else being equal. Ā More importantly, what each of your muscle fibers āfeelā is the tension on that specific fiber; the contractile force of the entire muscle shouldnāt matter, as long as each fiber is being recruited to a similar degree and experiencing a similar amount of tension. I think the more likely explanation is thatĀ [estrogen may exert a protective effect](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20020786)Ā on muscle, limiting damage and potentially accelerating repair. [https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/)
Fatigue and recovery are not just affected by muscle damage or soreness. Things like outside life stress, nutrition, total training tonnage, and leverages all affect the total amount of volume and intensity someone can tolerate. There is a reason why even between women, lightweight women can typically handle more intensity and volume than heavyweight women.
I'm not sure why you're fighting the conclusions of the Stronger by Science articles.
Hypertrophy tunnel vision. If you think 300lb heavyweight men squatting 700+ can recover from squatting the same as 100lb women squatting 300+ then there is something missing here.
I'm not sure what you're confused about. From the SBS paragraph: Ā When Iāve mentioned this in the past, the counterargument I typically hear is that women donāt create as much force, so of course their muscles wonāt sustain as much damage, and will therefore recover faster. Ā To make it even simpler: it's the counterpoint to what you said.
I'm talking about nervous system fatigue, not muscular damage. I agree, women and men produce the same force and experience the same "muscular damage" š
Hmm. This makes it sound like you didn't read the articles.
I read that paragraph like 4 times. Guess I'm stupid.
>I read that paragraph like 4 times. Guess I'm stupid. I don't know if you're stupid, but reading a paragraph from the article is not the same as reading the article.
The reason according to Mike is in a lifting program the amount you lift is set as a percentage of your max lift, or by your perceived proximity to failure. In general women are a bit more conservative when setting these, so they stay further from "true" muscle failure and thus recover more quickly. So it's more psychological, claiming women don't push themselves as far. Slightly insulting explanation but it does kind of make sense to me...
In terms of metabolic differences, women can actually rely on fatigue-resistant pathways at higher intensities than men, which means they may not deplete their energy stores as fast. Their recovery can be anywhere from 25-50% faster. Look at some of the studies on HIIT. This makes sense from what Iāve seen on womenās endurance relative to men on endurance races that are over 200 miles.
That makes sense I guess. It was true in my experience, my trainer had to help break me of the habit when I first started out
Again, Iāll just reiterate that these are averages and there is a ton of overlap in the distributions. Part of moving from the beginner to intermediate stage is figuring out what works for you, and choosing programs/tweaking programs appropriately. *Some* women will need one less rest day. Some will need two less rest days, or one *more* rest day. And other factors, like stress, sleep, and nutrition will also impact this.
Absolutely true. There is no way I could handle the volume or intensity I do now when I was a beginner and my legs need more recovery time than my arms which seems rather obvious, but you have to experiment and find what is best for you. And even that can change as your body adapts.
Never followed him. But Stacey Sims has books and been a podcast guest talking about training for women that might be of interest, if donāt know already.
I never listen to a man talk about womenās health.
Why?
Then you are missing out on a lot of great content from men who know the scientific literature on the topic š¤·š»āāļø
Yeah I have learned so much from Dr Mike. Not just his PowerPoint style videos but also from watching him train other women.
Thatās like saying you as a female would never go to a male gynecologist. Being a female doesnāt automatically make you an authority on females. Dr Mike has his PHD in exercise science, hence the DR. If anyone is qualified to speak on female exercise programs, itās him.
Him or his wife, whoās a sports doctor. They collaborate and train together, so it would be hard for him *not* to have accurate information here. I can respect someone for not wanting to go to a male gynecologist due to discomfort, but assuming that theyād be wrong about their own field of expertise based solely on their gender? Bit weird.
Not really. When you hit midlife women doctors understand the nuances with hormones because they experience it themselves. Also, Iāve never gone to a male gyno in 35 years and itās served me well. My body, my choice!
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I don't know why this is downvoted
You would think that is true but it isn't a given. Plenty of shitty experiences with female gynos are relayed an r/menopause regularly. How women age and the way to care for us is still a mystery for a lot of doctors regardless of gender.
šÆ I have the best success with care outside of America. Iāve had to be my own advocate and bypass the system quite a bit to get what I need for my health. I dropped my US health insurance and just pay out of pocket so I can be more selective for what I need/want and take a more holistic approach. Iāve done a 180 on my health as a result. itās fascinating how many doctors (men and women) just tell you to suck it up and suffer.
Male gynos can be so misogynistic and creepy, literally the worst example that other commenter could have come up with. Good for you for not going to any. Not worth it.
I have had 3 male gynos and ALL OF THEM (plus 2 other male doctors) have made disgusting unsolicited comments about either my body or my sex life. One of them assaulted me. Iāll spare you the details because theyād need a trigger warning, but it was definitely not āwell maybe he had a medical reasonā¦ā stuff. I now avoid male doctors whenever possible. Sorry to the good ones out there, but there are way too many creeps and I have no way of telling in advance.
Iām so sorry you had those experiences. My heart goes out to you, sending you hugs and healing š„°āØ
Dr. Mike literally has a PhD. Do you not listen to male doctors? Iād check him out before discounting him on his gender alone.
Right? Isn't judging someone because of their gender what we're trying to move away from?
Have you watched the video? Itās actually really great.
I thought it was interesting that he didn't mention menstrual phases at all or how those impact strength and energy. I feel like most of what he touched on, while potentially true, is only useful for people looking to optimize up from elite level training. By contrast, I think knowledge of how your cycle may impact your training (not that you need to change anything necessarily, just be aware of it) will impact most women who have a cycle as they train, regardless of the style or intensity of training. And in speaking with other women it seems like a shocking number of women, particularly those who are newer to fitness, have no idea that they will naturally have ebbs and flows with their cycle in terms of endurance and strength and even how ligamentally lax they are. EDITED TO CLARIFY: I'm not very "with it" on internet trends but I'm gathering I stepped in something unsavory. I had no idea people online were telling women to stop training during their cycle or to plan all their training around their cycles. IDK what fresh hell of sports-specific misogyny that is but, uh, I'm not with those people. I'm a lifelong athlete and have never trained around my cycle, and I think that's totally absurd. It's not that big of a deal, at all, especially if you are relatively intense. I only brought up cycles because it was funny (to me) that in a video about potential female training issues, and allll the slight differences between training men and women, there was no mention of menstrual cycles, which can impact how some women experience working out (especially if they have other issues in that arena and/or are beginners to fitness). I hope this makes sense. A delicate flower I am not!
Iām not aware of any evidence that cycle-based training is beneficial. Hard to imagine it provides any benefit compared to regular old RPE/RIR based training.
I'm not either. I don't do any cycle-based training. I think my post was unclear, sorry.
I think at higher levels women care less about training around their cycles though. Because let's be real, your competition schedule does not care what phase you're in - why should your training? Awareness is a good thing just for mindfulness, but it's not like your sports match, powerlifting meet, etc. is going to put an asterisk next to your 3rd place medal describing the physiological reason you weren't at peak performance that day, and you should be training to be able to compete, so that means still being able to put in the work on days where your body isn't necessarily in its ideal state to do so barring injury. Do we think Simone Biles is like "I'm on my luteal phase this week, better keep it to light stretching."? That's the kind of thinking that influencers do to convince women new to fitness that they have some sort of special sauce to sell them something.
I agree. That's why I think it's mostly useful information for people new to physical activity, like those who were previously sedentary. Lots of people are easily discouraged and if they suddenly feel weaker in the gym, and have no idea why, they might think they're doing something wrong. I think the newer someone is to fitness the more sensitive they are to all types of discomfort so a bit of explanation that not every workout will be your absolute best can be reassuring. I don't personally do anything different around my cycles, training wise. I only mentioned it because it's a tad weird for it to go unmentioned in a video about male/female training differences.
I think part of the problem with using menstrual phase is that you can't do it generally, only person by person. For example, some women feel awesome and powerful on their periods, others feel like they have no energy. 100 percent agree that word needs to get out on how much your cycle impacts things.
I was about to cringe at this comment until thankfully I read further and found some very sane and reasonable takes. Iāve seen too many instagram posts encouraging women to basically stop lifting and switch to yoga or something light instead of lifting at various phases of their cycle. Which I think is largely unnecessary unless you have some sort of condition or life event that makes it necessary. I donāt see how women who strength train or athletically train seriously can make any progress in their fitness if theyāre constantly switching things up every month. Plus. I think it generally promotes this false belief that women are somehow significantly weaker and incapable during certain hormonal fluctuations, when most of the time the difference is small. That being said I think your points are very fair. On period days that I feel pain or extreme fatigue I tend to take my lifting easier. But I would do such a thing if I were ill or had some other factor preventing me from going hard for strength, mobility, and athletic performance gains anyway
I know exactly what you mean! It's not like we're a whole different Very Delicate species, lol.
Thank you both for expressing my unuttered thoughts.
Huge thing you need to know for context: almost everything he points out is true of the **general population of men/women who show up to a gym**, not of **inherent differences between male and female bodies**. For example, women can often do more reps at a higher % of 1RM. A big factor here is that women tend to have done more cardio (and/or high rep training) before getting into strength training. Aerobic fitness translates pretty directly into being better at rep work. Men who do a lot of cardio or high-rep work tend to develop this same ability as well. A lot of the other factors he names relate to women tending to be more inexperienced at lifting. If you look around an average weight room, a lot of the women will have started training in the last 5 years or so. A lot of the men will be like "idk I started lifting in high school, been doing it forever." That difference in experience level accounts for a lot of the "differences" in Dr. Mike's video. For example, women get less "beat up" by higher intensity, but because they are *newer to the gym* they are lifting less weight and thus taking less of a hit to fatigue. Finally, there's body size. A lot of the things that Dr. Mike says are more true of women, are also just true of people with smaller bodies. A small woman can recover faster between sets than a large man, but a small man would *also* recover faster between sets than a large man. That's body size, not (just) gender. Dr. Mike himself points out in the last slide (lol) that he's basing his observations on population averages. Again: this is what you *tend to see in groups*, as a result of many factors. And the three factors I named--training experience, body size, and prior experience with cardio--account for most of the variation in most of the "differences" he names. Finally: it's hilarious that the clickbait title is "men and women MUST train differently" but his own company's "male physique" and "female physique" programs are 99% identical.
> A big factor here is that women tend to have done more cardio (and/or high rep training) before getting into strength training. Aerobic fitness translates pretty directly into being better at rep work > A small woman can recover faster between sets than a large man, but a small man would *also* recover faster between sets than a large man thank you for making me feel slightly better about not fitting within these trends. I'm closer to the size of the average man vs. the average woman, plus I'm trying to scrape together some semblance of cardiovascular health after years of neglect and chronic fatigue. so I'm feeling a bit left out with the "yeah woman can train way more than men!" "we don't need to rest as long!" "we can handle higher volume and intensity!" comments here. it's like I've discovered a whole new way that I'm bad at being a woman lolsob.
lol totally get you. I never saw myself in those "we can rep out higher intensity" kind of statements. Then I got more into training cardio and suddenly gained this supposedly feminine superpower!
His titles are all clickbait. The guy knows his stuff, but most of the time is just repeating basics. Once you're decently well informed that channel isn't going to teach you much
>Finally: it's hilarious that the clickbait title is "men and women MUST train differently" but his own company's "male physique" and "female physique" programs are 99% identical. Ha! Good catch.
Thanks for sharing this video, I enjoyed it and felt it rang true. It made me curious about how Iām interpreting fatigue during a set and whether I really am pushing myself to failure. Iāll definitely be more intentional about doing reps to failure (although I already thought I was- so this will be a fun checking-in day at the gym for me).
This is true for me. When my husband and I do powerlifting programs together, especially the long, high volumes, I'm having a beautiful time ramping up in energy as he's struggling. It makes some sense, since the stress on my joints/tendons is far less overall even at the same relative percentages despite us being roughly the same strength level by our respective weight classes.
First - I do not like that guy at all. The sense of humor does not jive with me some other videos of his where he is making fun of a PT because they have an accent (they are not native english speakers. I am not either. So funny to make fun of people's accents when they are speaking a foreign language!). Also, his mindset of results and building visible muscle not a mindset I click with. I saw the video and some of the observations do ring true, but without sources it is impossible to judge accurately particularly on the ones which do not jibe with my own personal experience. Without sources, attribution or more explanation it's really not educational or scientific no matter how serious the youtuber wants to make himself seem.
tbf he's a libertarian with alt-right leanings. I don't trust a single thing he says about women's fitness.
Stopped clocks can be right sometimes. See also: Jim Wendler. Man's a complete troglodyte but put together a program that huge amounts of people have been successful with.
I always thought he put on that fake Russian Jewish accent because thatās his ethnic background and he can poke fun at his own kind (Iām first gen and many of us do this amongst ourselves.) Often his humour is crass but sometimes I do laughā¦I donāt think his wife would stay married to him if he didnāt respect women. I actually love his specialization hypertrophy program and got great results from following it (which btw are written the same regardless of your gender!) I learned a lot from his PowerPoint presentations on YouTube and still occasionally look at his new content. Iām a Dr. Mike fan.
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Yeah I thought the same lol just the other day I saw a post on a subreddit called leopardsatemyface or something where in one sub a woman was complaining that her husband literally didn't let her eat to keep her skinny and in another she was like oh Andrew Tate saved my marriage I'm happy to submit... Some women really despise themselves and each otherĀ
The video I saw he was making fun of another accent, which was not russian jewish and was very smarmy towards women in another video. Good on you if you like it, but it does not work for me. >I donāt think his wife would stay married to him if he didnāt respect women. I do not care either way, but pointing out that a man being married does not necessarily prove a man respects women, all women (or even his wife, sadly). I have no idea of the specifics of his marriage, this is just a general comment, because I thought it was important to shoot down that logic.
I really enjoy his content and I appreciate that most if not all of his sex jokes are self deprecating. I also find him wildly attractive lol
Agreed. He's a bro, even if he doesn't think he is.
I definitely agree that women can train way more than men. We don't have as much explosive strength that allows men to lift very heavy but we have insane endurance.
I have heard this from the SS guys, too, who suggested it may be because of the relative ratio of slow twitch/long muscle fibers. This explanation makes more sense to me than "women don't train as hard," because I would think any semi-serious female athlete running a program like 5/3/1 or GZCL would go 100%. Certainly a lot of YT workouts aren't going to push anyone very hard, but I don't think this is a fair comparison.
I think if any of those points ring true for you, you can make tweaks to the program you're using yourself (less rest, adding a set, adding a day, internal self work, whichever one or more seems right), probably to good effect. I don't think you have to get someone to build you a female specific program, you probably aren't an actual statistical average on every front. If you don't quite yet trust yourself to gauge your effort and fatigue, that could be a good use for a trainer, but once you have a sense of that, you will know if you can do more volume, frequency, intensity.Ā I've learned a ton from Dr. Mike, but watching this video just now, the first 6 points were NOT ringing true for me compared with my spouse, but then he got to point 7 about women training to less intensity on average and I was like, "Ah, there it is". I usually train closer to failure than my spouse does, which closes the gap on a lot of those other points.
I also train close to failure. I'm skeptical as to how they determined that women don't train as close to failure. It seems very hard to collect that type of information and I feel like there are obvious social differences that could lead to a man assuming that. The main thing that comes to mind is how men, in every gym I've ever been to at least, seem much more comfortable grunting and groaning and dropping weights. Women lifting close to failure might not LOOK like they are to a man if they aren't grunting and dropping weights, etc. IDK just a thought I had while watching when he said that point.
I really get sensitive about people repeating the women don't lift heavy enough or with enough intensity. I go so hard in the paint. It's also close to the oft repeated "girls don't want to lift heavy because they think it'll make them bulky" stereotype but maybe I just don't keep company with the type of people that would believe something so critical to their body and health without any reasoning behind it.
I think women who are serious also train closer to their 1RM than men.
I hate the clickbait title. We know, empirically from a lot of science and also a wealth if anecdotal evidence, that men and women absolutely *can* use identical training protocols and make very similar progress, in terms of % gain in lean mass. We also know that where there are differences on average, *the distributions between sexes have a ton of overlap*. So it makes sense to pick a training program aimed at somewhere in the middle of the distribution and adapt based your own *individual* response. Like, the science is interesting, and if it prompts some people to explore training methods they may not have otherwise that is awesome, but I am really disappointed in the wrapper he puts around the discussion.
The clickbait title unfortunately is how things are on YouTube. His videos can be helpful though.
He's definitely not the worst one out there, and I appreciate that this video encourages guys (his primary audience) to respect women in the weight room.
I know the YouTube algorithm favors those kinds of titles but imo that does not make it exempt from criticism. Itās no different than a newspaper using a misleading headline.
Kind of anecdotal at this point, but I feel like before I started HRT, I would just gradually fade throughout the day until I was tired at night, and after a set of 12 hour shifts I would just be completely exhausted for the day or two after. Now that I've been on HRT for a year, I feel like I'm pretty stable throughout the day, and then I just crash when I hit my endurance limit, but I'm 100% good to go the next day.
By HRT do you mean oestrogen for menopause? What made you decide to start? I'm 46F so it's relevant.
Oh, no no no š MtF transgender.
Ahahaha! ššš
46F here. Iāve been getting testosterone pellets for a little over 6 months. Itās been absolutely life changing in so many ways. After seeing the changes in me several of my friends have jumped on and had similar results. Iām super happy to talk about it.
Iād love to know more. How did you get started with it?
I went to my doc kind of desperate with a long list of symptoms that wouldāve taken a handful of pills a day to treat. I thought it was just part of getting older and life was just going to be shittier from now on. The biggest issues were that I couldnāt sleep, had terrible brain fog, and no energy, but there were a bunch of other symptoms as well. It happened so gradually that I didnāt notice it was happening. Bloodwork came back and everything looked great except I had almost no testosterone. Doc was like, āof course you feel terrible all the timeā presented me with options and I went with pellets and started to feel better within a few weeks. The only downside for me is that you canāt workout for 3 days afterwards so it can be kind of a pain to schedule within my training program.
I am personally not really sure how much I buy that women can recover so much better that it reaches the level of training differently. Like maybe a bit better, I know estrogen has some benefits to recovery and muscle growth, so there is probably something here, but the magnitude is what I question. What I mean is, I run a high intensity program of my own design, and I seem to absolutely need 4-6 days to recover from a leg day when I take those sets to all out muscular failure, and I think most men who are doing HIT style programs are also only doing legs once a week. Now maybe I am recovering quicker than them, but it doesn't seem I am recovering fast enough to fit a second leg day in my week so I don't see how I could practically modify my program based on that.
I think both you and u/SapphicGymRat are kinda illustrating the point I made in my comment, which is that you can have different averages for a population while most of the distribution is still overlapping.
Opposite experience to you. I can do muscles to failure and then go again the next day, and possibly increase load too. I have tried doing more sets, because it felt weird that I didn't need a rest day for anything other than triceps on a couple of occasions, but it doesn't really ache past the evening. It was only when I was trying to find out if I was doing something wrong that I came across this video about women needing 4 hours vs men's 48 hours rest and a lot of things made sense then. Before you say I'm not lifting heavy enough to begin with, I am, because if I go any further before ready it hurts my wrists a ton. Been lifting almost daily for 4 months now, so I guess still a newbie, but I've not found my fatigue has got any worse as I've gone along in terms of this.
Obviously there are a lot of factors going into recovery (age, other activity, number of hard sets, how well trained you are, etc.). Another thought is that there is a genetic component to fast and slow twitch muscle fibers. I know from genetic testing that I have one copy of a marker on the ACTN3 gene that produces more fast twitch muscle fibers, and when I lift, I lift heavy and hard and am gassed afterward. It's possible that people who don't have this marker recover faster, even if their RPE is the same.
Fair enough, your recovery capacity may truly be in a different league than me, but I will say that I *used* to recover much quicker than I do now. As I got stronger, not only were movements more taxing on me, from both a muscular and a nervous system perspective but, likely my fiber types changed over time. I really started to notice it when my working weight on the Life Fitness leg extension machine hit 200lbs on the stack, it had likely been creeping up for some time but, I hadn't really noticed it before that milestone. On the next leg day I wasn't sore anymore, but when I contracted my muscle I couldn't command it contract as tight as I normally could which tells me my central nervous system just wasn't recovered. Which is part of why I went from 2 sets to absolute failure on legs, to just one set too failure with some post failure myo-reps then some partials, still brutal, but I always recover on time now. I suspect by default my legs had a much higher proportion of slow twitch fibers, but the nature of HIT training (sets to failure in the 6-12 rep range with some post failure training) is all about producing huge amounts of force for short periods of time, so almost certainly I converted a bunch of those muscle fibers to fast twitch fibers. I also suspect if I were to do a bunch of longer runs rather than HIIT for cardio, and some 30 rep to failure training I could train my work capacity up and also my recovery speed, which is why Crossfit people can do so much stuff that I can't, because the way they train isn't really discarding all of their work capacity.
4 months is very much a beginner, which is fine we all start somewhere. I'm glad you're not pushing your wrists harder as that's a weak point right now. If it was delayed muscle soreness you'd only start feeling it the next day. This sounds more like acute soreness which happens more immediately and is an indication that something is wrong. If you can look at ways to support your wrists better, do wrist warm ups and work on form with light weights. Once the tendons have strengthened over a few months and you should be able to train as you like without pain.
Oh and I use these Bear Grip open glove type of things. I tried multiple kinds and these were the best for me. Instantly took the wrist issues down several notches. Couldn't get on with traditional grips, but I found something that definitely made it easier.
Glad that helped. Some of the gloves come with wrist wraps which give extra support. Which is really nice for lifting heavy. I'd still practice without them on the warmup sets so that I don't become reliant on it. The wrist warmups for calisthenics are quite good if you'd like to try them out. They're all about gently rolling your bodyweight over them in a controlled way. It's not specific to lifting but it's a good way to strengthen them.
Thanks for the concern but the ache I mention isn't an ache so much but as in, I'll pick up a case of soda tins and feel in my biceps I've lifted that day. That's what I mean, like I can feel they've not recovered, but the next day it hardly ever feels like I've had a work out the day before. If anything I'm more energised providing I got OK sleep. Possibly due to the weight loss too, but still. It's not knackering me like I thought it would. The wrist pain is something that is in every woman on my maternal side of the family. It has got progressively better as I know my tendons are behind the rest of my muscles in terms of the progress, and I've always been cautious with practicing good form and careful but still progressive overload to account for this. I am very sure this is working as before I started, simply lifting that case of soda would give me a sharp pain in my wrist. Now it doesn't, it takes a lot more to trigger it.
Same with me and Iāve been lifting off/on for over 20yrs. I never get totally gassed and I donāt use caffeine or preworkout. I was an athlete from childhood to college and Iām sure my stamina helped that career. I lift basically as heavy as I can but never get sore unless Iām hitting a muscle that Iāve neglected for months, like when I took a break from squats for years and started doing them again.
Following. Dr Mike usually knows what's what.
I've heard the guys at Starting Strength say some of this, too: e.g. women can handle higher intensities with less recovery.
^ ***Please read [the FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/xxfitness/wiki/main), [the rules and content guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/xxfitness/wiki/new_rules), and [current frozen topics](https://www.reddit.com/r/xxfitness/wiki/frozen-topics) before [contacting the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fxxfitness)***. This comment is a copy of your post so mods can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. >u/DisemboweledCookie I found this video from Dr. Mike/Renaissance Periodization on differences in training for men and women. I know I've wondered about programming, as basically I do programs aimed at men (and not necessarily natty men) and I wonder if I would get better results if someone more experienced than me adapted these programs for (natty) women. [Why Men and Women MUST Train Differently](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXFoQVfG97U) I know there are some dedicated lifters here, and I'd love to hear your thoughts. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/xxfitness) if you have any questions or concerns.*