Relative Muscle Strengths - any ideas?

[Steve C]

Hi, everyone.

I remember an old karate instructor once talking about the different ways men and women could fight, and he talked about the relative strengths of arms and legs in both sexes.

I don't remember the numbers, but he said something like 'men average an arm/leg stregth ratio of about 1:3, and women have about 1:6'. That suggests to me that women would be better concentrating more on kicking and pressure point striking than power punching. Anyone know what the actual numbers are, or care to offer an educated guess?

I think it could be useful to know, when it comes to deciding which strategies and techniques to concentrate on - which will be the most useful, the most powerful, etc.

Anyone know any other useful measures such as muscle speed, resistance to pain and trauma, or reaction time? Or overall arm:arm or leg:leg ratios. Obviously, these vary considerably, but knowing where you are relative to an 'average attacker' must help you decide how best to train...

Thanks,

Steve

[gmanry]

Well, I know that if women are learning how to punch properly, rooted in the legs and body torque, then that means that they can learn to hit hard enough to down any reasonable attacker male or female. This is how I have trained my female students and they knock down men.

Also, I have seen that women seem to have a natural affinity for throwing due to their weight being centered lower.

Teaching women to have a little more crouch in their footwork teaches them to use the explosive power in their legs for any striking, kick or punch. The arm only applies power in a punch over the last few inches. So, even though men will typically be able to hit harder due to upper body strength, we can teach women to hit smarter to even the odds. If you hit right, then it doesn't take that much to bring someone down.

Just my experience and opinions in teaching women.

Glenn R. Manry

[Onikudaki]

Hello Gentlemen!

As a Physical Therapist and sports medicine expert (probably the only thing i'm good at -- you should see my budo), i can definately support the notion that women have more of their body mass centered in their hips and more relative muscle bulk there, on average.

This makes it easier for them to create torque about the hips and lower back (such as a seionage type throw or a sit up exercise).

However, i doubt any evidence exists for arm:leg or arm:arm measurements...there is just too much variability among us humans. I would look closely at any pat or "sound bite" type answer to these questions, there are too many variables.

I think gmanry's comment was really on the money, and good advice. We should also keep in mind that men have a greater proportion of lean mass (muscle) than women do, and they have more of it centered around their shoulders and chest. This is an obvious advantage in a physical confrontation, but i think no more so than skinny old me taking on a lineman-sized opponent.

I think the differences in physicality that are present in women vs. men are also present in large men vs. small men or men with powerful legs(or arms) vs. men with skinny legs (arms). So in that way, we could see the comparisons are just as valid between genders as within genders. The way i see it, 10% of the people create 90% of the problems, and they just don't turn out to be frail, on the contrary they are usually:

Strong and big
A manual laborer or someone who is used to taking lumps
Experienced with using violence to get their way
Not likely to drop or be impressed with many strikes that fell our training partners

And from what i have read, everyone in this thread seems to be considering these issues already, so your students are that much closer to successfully defending themselves!

Have a great day.

[gmanry]

Although I do not have the data handy at the moment, one source I read when preparing a self-defense regimen stated that the average rapist is about five foot-eight to five-ten and about 150-160 lbs.

This is really important to consider. Jason mentions something we constantly discuss in sociology research and gender. There is as much or more INTRA gender variation as INTER gender variation on a number of qualities.

Too many people put too much emphasis on strength differences between men and women, and frankly, I just haven't seen that this is necessarily an issue if women are properly trained.

Now before all you guys get your panties in a wad :-), men are on average stronger than women. However, we are not talking superman differences here. People always want to cast this issue as absolutes and not the shades of gray that are more close to reality.

In fact recent research has shown that women are in fact stronger than men on a number of important survival dimensions when looking at the evolutionary scheme of things. Males are more likely to die in infancy from disease. Males psychologically tend to suffer from more emotional difficulties than females when young, research is still pending on adults. Funny that we always cast women as emotional and flighty. I see a lot of guys who are lot more unstable on a daily basis, society is more forgiving of their emotional outbursts (just no crying).

So, before you start casting women as being made of wet paper, get the facts. You may be doing a greater service to your female students. If you expect them to rise to the occasion they will.

You will be better served assessing the strengths and weaknesses of ALL your students.

Thanks, sorry for the length, and thanks Jason for some of the clarification.

Glenn R. Manry

[Steve C]

So, before you start casting women as being made of wet paper, get the facts. You may be doing a greater service to your female students. If you expect them to rise to the occasion they will.

Hi Glenn, everyone.

I really hope I didn't give that impression to everyone. Just to state it explicitly - I wasn't trying to insinuate that women are weaker martial artists than men. I do not believe that. *

However, I can see how my post can be interpreted as leaning in that direction. I'd like to explain in a bit more depth about what I'm trying to find out, and I hope people will be satisfied that I'm not trying to use statistics to be divisive or derogatory.

The question I asked first was about the relative strengths of muscles in a person's body. The question wasn't about men vs women, but tricep vs quadricep.

I agree that there's a lot of variation in strength between people, but what I'm really interested in is the variety of strength ratios.

The difference is this - a 20-year-old male is going to be stronger in both arms and legs than an unfit 55-year-old man. But is the proportion of strength any different? How odd is it to find people with huge arms and puny legs? or vice versa?

I imagine (with my very limited medical knowledge) that the proportion is relatively constant for different types of bodies. I guess the two most important measures would be male - female and Endomorph - Mesomorph - Ectomorph**, for a total of six body types.

Thanks, guys - your questioning has made me think a bit harder about this. But thought can't substitute for knowledge - anyone else out there have more information?

---------------
* I found out recently that the inventor of Wing Chun Kung Fu was a woman. A short history can be found at http://www.yorkwingchun.co.uk/history.htm
** For more information on body types, see http://www.fitnesszone.com/features/archives/body-types.html

[gmanry]

Steve,

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't meaning to point any fingers at you. I was just bringing a wider scope of information to the table.

It is good that you are trying to figure things out, most people just go with COMMON SENSE on this issue, which is a bad move.

The only thing you can do is look at your available information and then go with a decision. Statistical evidence is valuable but dangerous. There is an endless list of questions regarding validity and reliability that must be asked in relation to such evidence (see the posts on accupunture and chiropractic to see some examples).

My own experience tells me that a 90lb. woman can and will crack my ribs through protective armor if she is taught properly. :-) Yet to view medical evidence, most doctors would claim that this is unlikely, it may be, but then I must have the run of all the unlikely women.

I am sorry that I cannot provide you with more information concerning your questions about ratios.

Glenn R. Manry