Strength.. different for men and women?

Here I add an article I was pretendig to add some time ago jeje I'll post it both in English and in Spanish


During all the time I’ve been training I’ve had the opportunity to train along with men, and after some time more women arrived to the team. These girls such as other that have started to train in other teams and in other states start with a constant: at the beginning, they tend to mark the anatomic differences and the one regarding the strength between genders. In multiple occasions they come to me or I read in the forums that they are asking things such as: “What can I do to increase my strength? Are thing easier for men because they have more strength? Can I reach the same strength level than men?” so the main purpose of this article is to give a general perspective of this topic, in men and women.
During pre-puberty and childhood the differences between strength and potency are very closed in genders, but during puberty, which is the better phase to develop strength, is when men tend to focus and women don’t because of the accelerated physical and hormonal changes.
The hormones play a very important role in strength development, that’s why the menstrual period has comsequences in the physical development, when a woman includes strength disciplines she present less problems of irregular cycles than those women that practise long lasting disciplines and the maximum values of strength are not affected or altered during the cycle in sedentary women, but they tend to in women that develop a physic activity.
As long as the training is similar in relative intensity, volume and frequency, women present similar adaptation to strength training to men’s adaptation, including a similar earning in hypertrophy, but in shorter periods and based on exercises which purpose is earning strength not volume they can lower the hypertrophy symptoms, this is important because most of the women want to be strong but without acquiring much muscle volume and/or a “man” body. However, as men present higher initial levels of maximum strength and muscle size, the earning with the different factors of strength development is bigger, in absolute values, in men than in women. A reason for this is that men have a very high percentage of testosterone in their blood. In general terms women require more sessions and approximately twice more time to earn the same relative value of strength than a man.
In terms of strength compared to body weight the difference between men and women becomes lower or is even nullified regarding lower muscles, but in the upper muscles the difference is still considerable. Regarding potency in anatomic and morphologic terms women have a lower range than men. The differences in strength are as we’ve seen to hormonal matters, the bigger size and bigger body weight as well as a bigger size of muscle fiber in men, even though the muscle fibers distribution are very similar in men and women.
Something very useful for Parkour is that women can use more elastic energy that is kept in the muscles in activities in which the muscle has to be stretched before (such as the contracting movement before jumping).

Advantages of strength training
Some of the advantages that strength training can provide us are:
 Better bones constitution: women need to obtain minimal essential tensions in order to develop an appropriate bone modeling and reduce osteoporosis risk. The total bone mass is gotten around the age of 30 and if the physical work is done before that age the prevention will be more efficient. On the other hand if physical work is done after this age or even immediately after menopause the speed with which bone is lost as a consequence of lack of estrogens can be reduced considerably. However if we excessively increase the intensity of the exercise some menstrual irregularities may appear that will lead to the opposite effect, this means osteoporosis.
 Stronger connective issues: cartilage, tendons and ligaments also need effort. Strength development requires intensities and repetitions that increase the tension step by step. Having strong tendons and ligaments is necessary for stability and prevention of joint injuries.
 Better capacity and functional strength: develop functional strength and improving physical performance. As years pass by, it is seen as a less diminishing of strength and muscles at bigger ages.
 Better lean body mass and metabolic rate: it is a consequence of increasing the muscular mass and diminishing in body fat.
 Better mental health and self-esteem: some researches indicate that women that follow strength training are benefited with a better self-esteem. The strength training seems to provide women with a feeling of personal potency. A research based on ansiolisis produced by exercise indicates that there is a decrease in anxiety after exercise because it offers some time off from daily worries.
Apart from practicing Parkour and just add a strength training in order to obtain better results and improve with safer steps, strength training provides both, men and women, with big benefits at a short, medium and long term.
I personally recommend a wide knowledge of your body, especially of somato types and having this as a base, we will be able to know and accept our body just as it is and even adapting exercises, intensity and even the way of training in order to obtain better results.
Finally I want to say that the training for men and women in Parkour is the same talking about technique. Even though in terms of strength some exercises can be adapted as I mentioned before and include some that could be, in a certain way, more useful regarding the anatomy and imply less attrition. Training must not only be functional but well composed, well designed and it must add exercises that strengthen every part of our body, and that in terms of gender (anatomically only) help and impulse each person, as there are some exercises that can work really well for men but for some women and some body types they produce a bigger attrition apart from strength improvement.