Women respond equally to strength
- A Guardian explainer on April 27 said women can build muscle as effectively as men with resistance training, despite men starting with more lean mass. - A 2025 meta-analysis of 29 studies found men gained slightly more muscle in absolute terms, but relative growth differed by just 0.69%. - Training variables such as load, sets, frequency and supervision shape outcomes in women as much as biology does. (bjsm.bmj.com)
Resistance training is exercise that makes muscles work against a load, like dumbbells, barbells, machines or body weight. Studies comparing men and women on the same programs find women add muscle and strength at similar relative rates. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov 1) (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov 2) The part that often gets confused is absolute versus relative change. Men usually begin with more total muscle, so they may add more muscle in raw size, while women can improve by a similar percentage from their own baseline. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) A 2025 Bayesian meta-analysis in PeerJ screened 2,720 studies and included 29 that put healthy men and women ages 18 to 45 through the same resistance-training interventions. It found absolute muscle gains slightly favored men, but relative muscle growth differed by only 0.69%, with a credible interval spanning negative to positive values. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) The same paper reported that upper-body absolute hypertrophy favored men, while relative hypertrophy was broadly similar between sexes. Its conclusion said females have a similar potential to induce muscle hypertrophy as males when baseline size is taken into account. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) A 2021 Scientific Reports trial reached a similar result after seven weeks of biceps-curl and squat training in 18 untrained students. Men tended to post larger absolute strength gains, but the researchers found no sex-specific differences in relative changes for the tested variables. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) Women also respond strongly to resistance training when studied on their own. A 2020 Sports Medicine review of 24 studies found large effects for upper-body and lower-body strength in women and a medium effect for muscular hypertrophy. (link.springer.com) That review also found program design changed results. Training frequency and volume affected lower-body strength, sets per exercise affected upper-body strength, and supervised training produced larger lower-body strength effects than unsupervised training. (link.springer.com) A broader 2023 network meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found all resistance-training prescriptions beat no exercise for both strength and hypertrophy. Higher loads ranked best for strength, while multiple-set programs were among the top approaches for hypertrophy. (bjsm.bmj.com) That helps explain why coaches increasingly focus less on “women’s workouts” and more on progressive overload, the practice of gradually increasing challenge over time. The evidence says women benefit from the same core levers as men: enough load, enough sets, regular weekly training and consistency. (bjsm.bmj.com) (link.springer.com) The practical takeaway is narrower than the myth and stronger than the slogan. Women may finish with less total muscle on average, but when they follow the same resistance program, the body’s training response is much closer to equal than gym folklore suggests. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
