Women Stats

I’m interested in looking at information from female lifters. I’ve been observing the difference between the Volume and Intensity Days in the Texas Method for a while. Recently I started thinking in terms of percent instead of absolute weight; reducing the Volume Day weight to a certain percent of the Intensity Day weight is more instructive than aiming for a discrepancy between the weight lifted.



This led me to start thinking about the differences between female and male lifters. The neuromuscular efficiency of a female lifter is lower than a male’s. In other words, her nervous system cannot utilize motor units as well as a males. The neuron will innervate fewer muscle fibers compared to a male; it’s a result of different sex hormones and characteristics. This means that a female is not capable of lifting her true absolute strength — what her muscle fibers are actually capable of — because it’s always limited by the nervous systems ability to innervate muscle fibers (AKA neuromuscular efficiency).

This means that a girl’s 1RM is relatively lower and as a result she can perform multi-rep sets at a higher percentage of her actual max than a guy. If I can press 240, then I might be able to double 228, or 95% of my max. A girl might be able to do as many as five reps with 95% of her max.

To get more data points, I’d like the females to answer a few questions. Please forward these questions to any friends you have that lift (even periodically in CrossFit).

1. List the 3 rep maxes (3RMs) of all the lifts you have data on. For example, if you don’t have data for bench, then omit it. If the weight is merely your best triple and not a true 3RM, please indicate this*.

2. List the 5RMs of all the lifts you have data on. If the weight is merely your best set of five and not a true 5RM, please indicate this*.

3. List the 1RMs of all the lifts you have data on. These 1RMs should be within three months of the above numbers.

4. List the set/rep scheme of your recent and/or current program. If you primarily perform fives or triples, point that out. If a girl has only done fives, then her lack of adaptation to singles would explain an artificially low 1RM.

*If you are able to perform this set more than once in the same training session, it is by default not a repetition max since repeating it means it wasn’t a representation of maximal ability.
Note: If you don’t have exact 3RMs or 5RMs (i.e. your best squat is 180×4), then list the closest number.