Research

Mixed

Females and males experience similar relative increases in muscle hypertrophy and lower-body strength when following the same resistance training protocol, but females exhibit a significantly larger relative increase in upper-body strength.

If you are a female starting resistance training, do not expect your absolute strength numbers to match males, but expect your relative improvements in upper-body strength to be greater than males. For muscle size and lower-body strength, your relative progress will be on par with males. Stick to the same training protocols used by males; you do not need a different program to see excellent results.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
We found that males and females adapted to resistance training with similar effect sizes for hypertrophy and lower-body strength, but females had a larger effect for relative upper-body strength.
Brandon M. Roberts et al. · The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research · 2020

Why this rating

Based on a systematic review and meta-analysis of 50 studies with robust variance modeling, though heterogeneity was high for strength outcomes.

Source

Sex Differences in Resistance Training: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Brandon M. Roberts et al. · The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research · 2020

DOI 10.1519/jsc.0000000000003521

Meta-analysis · 50 studiesCited 225×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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