ROAR

Informationen zum Autor Stacy T. Sims, PhD, with Selene Yeager Klappentext "Originally published in different form in the United States by Rodale Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2016"--Title page verso. Leseprobe 1 What It Means to Be Like a Girl All the Physiological Stuff That Makes Females Unique You throw like a girl. You run like a girl. The like a girl insult has been so ubiquitous, such a strong underlying current in our culture, that in 2015, Always, one of the biggest makers of feminine hygiene products, stole the show during the Super Bowl with a 60-second ad spot that challenged the culture to dismantle the phrase with its Like A Girl campaign, which turns the insult into an inspirational compliment. You saw what it can mean to compete like a girl in the introductionhow women can dominate their sport. Look, I'm not one to sugarcoat anything, so I'll give it to you straight. Yes, in head-to-head objective physical performance comparisons, females may have some disadvantages compared to males. We also have some distinct advantages, but you never hear about those. So let's set the stage here with a complete look at your female physiology in action. Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice: What We're Really Made Of No surprise: Women tend to be smaller and lighter and have a higher portion of body fat (hello breasts, hips, and all things childbearing!) than men. But dig a little deeper, and the comparisons become more interesting and revealing. First, let's talk about body mass and how it's distributed. Our mass is the stuff we're made of, which everyone commonly refers to as weightthe number you see on the scale. That's not exactly accurate. For one, technically, weight is determined by gravitational pull, so you'd weigh less on the moon and far more on Jupiter, but that's being picky. The more important factor is that the number you see on the scaleyour weightfluctuates widely depending on fluid intake, what you've eaten during the day, salt intake, and how much glycogen you're storing in your muscles. (For every 1 gram of glycogen, you store 3 grams of water; as you get fitter, you become better at glycogen storage. So before a big event, you can gain 5 or more pounds that you will blow through during your eventbut you haven't gained or lost any fat.) Body mass, by contrast, is the actual stuff you're made ofbone, muscle, fat, and organsthat requires tissue loss or gain and is harder to change. We'll cover bones in Chapter 9, because a strong skeleton is essential for vibrant living, and women's bones are vulnerable to getting brittle. For now, however, let's focus on muscle and fat. When researchers take core needles and pull out a column of muscle tissue from the designated muscle of interest (usually the shoulder, biceps, or quadriceps) of men and women, the findings might surprise you: There's not much difference. Men and women generally have the same muscle composition as far as the percentage of type I endurance (aerobic) fibers and type II power (anaerobic) fibers. What is different is that the largest fibers in women's bodies tend to be type I endurance fibers, while in men the type II power fibers take up the lion's share of real estate. That fiber type difference makes a difference when you're looking at pure strength between the sexes. In head-to-head strength comparisons, women fall a bit short. Studies show that, generally, the strength of women is typically reported in the range of 40 to 75 percent of that of men, with women about 52 percent as strong as men in their upper bodies and 66 percent as strong as men in their lower bodies. In well-muscled women, those strength differences evaporate a bit. When you look at sheer strength relative to lean body mass, a trained woman's strength shoots up to 70 and 80 percent as strong as men in...

Auteur

Stacy T. Sims, PhD, with Selene Yeager

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"The groundbreaking book that revolutionized exercise nutrition and performance for female athletes, now freshly updated"--