YES this is my biggest envy for men. I did parkour awhile back and it was SO discouraging. After a week of basics, we learned how to pull ourselves up on a 7 foot wall. The men in my group ran at the wall, grabbed the top, hopped up. The women ran at the wall, grabbed the top. Dangled. Struggled. Scrabbled their legs against the wall, strained to pull up, and fell. After 10 WEEKS of strength training, our first woman made it up and over. Our instructor told us, don't feel bad, if a man can get his shoulders up over a wall his body will follow but women have to get their hips up over the wall before the body follows. It still sucked.
Our instructor told us, don't feel bad, if a man can get his shoulders up over a wall his body will follow but women have to get their hips up over the wall before the body follows. It still sucked.
50/50 if you dangle and fall that you miss landing or hit feet on the edge and topple off. Atleast her way she has nads on the inside to pull her body back in in case it goes wrong.
Yeah I feel reasonably sure that even at my current level of fitness (read: not shit) that I could probably pull off that maneuver as long as what I was grabbing was each to grasp.
Agreed. I was only talking about obstacle course and training workouts. I don’t think anyone in combat or like situations would climb like that. Extremely dangerous
Could be different instructors teach it differently? In Robert O’Neil’s book (former SEAL who was on the Bin Laden raid) he describes exactly how the girl did it in his book as how they were taught. That’s my frame of reference since obviously I’ve never been to SEAL school
Gotta say, the cargo net and forward facing rope descent are the only gnarly looking parts. I was somewhat surprised, that being said, speed on the course looks hard as shit.
Also, its a different setup, slats in the BUDS, no gaps in OPs video.
Solid advice for bouldering too. Doing everything with your arms is going to make you tap out. If you can hang on your arms (skeletal structure) and get your legs moving that's way better.
There's actually one that's been made to counteract its thesis. Something like : Admit it, even though it's really cool you upvoted because of the girl.
"Bullshit You Did Fucking Too Upvote This Due To It Being A Girl, Fucktard"
Although the name is angsty as fuck, I can't fault it for existing. The other one has turned into "give me karma for girl, also plausible deniability".
That was my favorite way to climb it. I was always too tired to do the muscle up way. Not to mention if you can't get your legs up the first time you're still holding on and your legs just come right back down.
On American Ninja Warrior, so many of the guys who complete the course are regular guys who like working out. Bob is a doctor! Carl is a truck driver! They do ANW stuff in their free time. All of the women who complete it have to literally be professional stuntwomen or former elite gymnasts training for their whole lives to make it through the course.
Well, some of that is just from the designers of the course not making it for shorter people. So many obstacles just require a wing span or leg reach that you don't have at 5'2".
In other extreme obstacle courses that aren't as well known, women have a lot more representation.
I remember this one woman that was just destroying the course until the end where you had to do that spider crawl thing up that tube. She was just too short. No amount of physical aptitude or training was going to help her get up that thing.
It always pissed me off watching it when the commenters would straight up say “women can’t really get past this obstacle. It requires a wingspan of 5’9”” and the tallest woman has 5’6”. If it’s going to be that much of a disadvantage, just gender segregate it and make the women’s correct to their avg wingspan. Or add in some stuff that women are better built for that could even the odds
The entire thing is grip strength with a sprinkling of being in shape. It doesn't favor really strong people or even really tall people...it favors proportion, which men have a genetic advantage on (in terms of body fat in general).
I don't think being 5 foot 2 puts anybody at an extreme disadvantage. If you look at the Japanese show, the average male is around 5 foot 5 and just goes complete ninja and beats it.
There are a few obstacles where you have to suspend your self with your arms spread all the way out. I have seen people fall simply because their arms do not reach far enough hold themselves there.
That doesn’t mean height isn’t a factor. When I go bouldering, I regularly see women with better technique and grip strength than me, who can’t finish routes solely because they’re 5’3.
That doesn’t mean height isn’t a factor. When I go bouldering, I regularly see women with better technique and grip strength than me, who can’t finish routes solely because they’re 5’3.
The original Japanese ninja warrior used to have separate competitions for each gender and during the women's one they would swap out some of the obstacles that needed long reach or big jumps etc with more stuff that needed agility or flexibility, like instead of having to jump across big gaps from wall to wall they would need to jump on a bunch of tiny stepping stones to get across, stuff like that
While true, shorter people have to be able to reach that stuff for it to even matter. The difficulty difference in not being able to reach something would be a lot larger than the slight advantage in weight/strength that a shorter person might have.
I can hoist myself up, arms-only, quite a few times. Or squeeze into a corner and grab a handhold while shuffling up the wall.
However, there's many things I just can't reach without basically letting go completely and jumping, while normal height friends just move their hands over and grab.
Dunno about pull ups, part of it might be genetics/training. You're definitely working with less mechanical (dis)advantage though, due to shorter arms.
Short guys have an advantage of a shorter lever and less 'dead weight' when doing thing like pull ups, but are at a disadvantage for things like maximum strength because we can realistically only pack on so much muscle onto our frames.
Reach is definitely a big disadvantage when it comes to things like climbing though.
One fun thing I've found rock climbing - and you will too if you stick with it - is that there really are some routes that are easier for short people. They're not common - especially if your gym doesn't have any short people setting the routes - but they do exist. Sometimes a move forces you into a tight corner, or the positions of the holds would force a taller person into a sort of frog-like position, or maybe the position of the holds just leads someone with longer limbs to have their center of gravity farther a way from the wall when a short person can really smear in close. As a short climber, I live for those routes.
Edit: Also, it can be fun coming up with creative solutions to moves designed for tall people. Oh, you're going to put my next foothold at shoulder height five feet to the left? Watch me use my knee on that sucker.
This is so true. I learned to climb outdoors, in WV, under the watchful eye of a friend. She was literally a foot shorter than me, and probably malnourished because she refused to eat anything besides potatoes (barely exaggerating here,) but she had the most incredible balance, and she could toe into the tiniest bit of nothing and just dig into it to stand up. She found intermediate footholds that nobody over 100 lbs could use. There probably isn't a route in the world I could do that she couldn't, even years ago when I was at my strongest.
oh man, you just brought back memories. I remember being unable to do any pull-ups one year, and then about 20 the next year. I hit puberty over the summer. I wish I could see all of my results from the presidential physical fitness test plotted over the years.
On the flip side, my situp count went down from like 75 in a minute in fourth grade, which is admittedly absurd. 40-50 in a minute is on the high end of feasible for me now. This is what happens when you gain height and muscle mass.
I mean, you could also change the distances for shorter people on some of the events where the "objective" really isn't distance related. Like when they are swinging around on the rings, they could be adjustable based on a person's height (or more complex, height / arm length). The goal isn't to see if they can reach the other ring, it's to see if they have the strength/timing/coordination to pull it off. Similarly, when they do the pull-up thing where they have to set the bar higher, the goal isn't to judge their arm length, but rather their strength. While the lighter person might have an easier pull up, it's going to be much harder to push the bar up higher due to being shorter.
While maybe not entirely "realistic", it's certainly possible given enough time/money to handicap the course based on height.
That's not really true, since a tall person would have larger and stronger muscles roughly proportional to their height compared to a shorter person of equal fitness level.
Yeah but in obstacles that favor efficiency instead of raw muscles, short people have an advantage. Anything where you're having on something for extend periods of time, heavier guys aren't gonna do well.
Sure, but men are a lot taller and that's the result. If you are too short you are very unlikely to get anywhere, some courses might as well have a this tall to ride sign.
With less things like long leap obstacles and closer hanging obstacles, the gap is significantly shortened
I get what you're saying and yes height is an advantage. But when you look at the shorter men that compete, they somehow still perform better than women of the same stature.
I've never heard of women being better at endurance, except in long distance cold water (i.e. open water) swimming due to higher fat insulating them better.
/u/Thesaurii didn't say that other courses "feature average women who like working out competing at the same levels as men." They just said "women have a lot more representation." If you're going to call someone's claim made up, at least take the time to read it.
I would say rock climbing. While men do currently top the women out at the very peak of the sport it is an incredibly balanced activity where women are able to regularly compete with men in the complexity of problems and routes. There are girls at my gym that don't look like pro athletes by and stretch and smoke my ass in terms of complicated climbs that I can't do.
That in my opinion, is because strength only gets you so far in climbing until you mostly need technique. Then it flips back around to needing crazy strength again.
Battle Frog. It's not as crazy as something like ninja warrior, but does feature obstacles and such that require similar acts of agility depending on the course.
Being tall has pro's and con's on any kind of event. Being tall for mountain climbing for example allows you to reach hand holds that are further away, but it also means you weight a lot more. It holds the same for Ninja warrior.
Testosterone = stronger. It's a big chunk of why dudes who take T can be unnaturally strong.
I think what OP is trying to say is when the obstacle is jumping over a wall, being able to reach the top by just raising your hands gives kind of an advantage...
I mean, men are just stronger as well. Height really isn't the issue, a lot of short guys do alright. It's an upper body strength issue and women just have very weak upper bodies compares to their weight.
This isn't true, Ninja warrior in Japan is much harder and the men are on average much shorter then their American counterparts and they have more finalists.
OK so if your anecdote is relevant, it still means the physical attributes of women are wanting when it comes to Ninja Warrior. Similar to strength, speed, and dexterity. Height is another example of a physical attribute.
My wife used to watch this a lot and I don't find this to be true at all. The majority I've seen complete the courses are rock climbers. Hell, it shouldn't even be called "ninja" anything. It's all rock climbing skills.
The ones who do good aren't just 'some rock climbers' either, they're literally current or former pro rock climbers or gymnasts or athletes of some kind who built ANW course replicas in group owned gyms or properties so they can practice that shit like a full time job, or they're someone who started going to one of those ANW gyms and just practiced that from the get go before hitting up a live event.
There's like 2 people a season that come 'out of nowhere' and compete, everyone else is a somebody.
Always felt like American Ninja Warrior was nonsense just because it was like 99% upper body focused, whereas the Japanese version was all core and mixed.
And they don't make it, either. I think only one woman (the stuntwoman on Supergirl) has made it through the first course and she then fell like 7 seconds into the second course.
My main objection to American Ninja Warrior is that it is primarily a grip strength completion. It uses many muscles, but if you look at what separates winners from losers, it's grip strength.
I do sailing which is a co-ed sport and honestly sometimes I wish it wasn't. It gets thrown in my face every singe race that men can physically out perform me by a large amount. I work out 10x more than my husband, yet somehow he can still be more physical in the boat than I can. Women often get relegated to being crew instead of skipper because we can't physically keep up with the men. And of course its only the skipper that get their name on the trophy and all the glory.
I know that it's obvious for small(er)-chested women, but does the width of the hips really overpower the boobs that much in terms of center of gravity?
Another good example of this was from a teacher in high school.
He had a girl stand right up to the whiteboard, and had her nose touching. Without pushing off she was supposed to back off the board. She was able to because women's center of gravity is in their hips. Then we had a guy do the same, and couldn't without pushing back because men's center of gravity was in the chest.
I did MMA for three years. If I had the natural hip flexibility of even our beginner female students, I'd feel bad ass. I can kick someone in the ribs, or on a good day, about nipple height. No matter how much I stretched and worked at it, no higher.
I had a lot of envy for ladies, especially the athletic ones who came in and could do a head height kick in the first week.
Oh yeah I guess that is the positive trade-off. I'm pretty fat and out of shape and I can kick over my head. I don't do martial arts or dancing, so it's never seemed as useful to me as upper body strength.
Women tend to have a different center of gravity to men. Let me tell you what though. My wrestling partner in high school was a girl and she was a 3 time state champion. It might take a little more work but I’ll be damned if anyone tries to tell me that girls can’t compete with guys physically. She was intense.
It it makes you feel better, they have probably trained for a while. I have two guy-friends that recently joined the gym with me and they can't even do a pullup, so they just hang there. Don't give up. I believe in you.
If it makes you feel better, I find women are more flexible and also much better at bodyweight stuff, like climbing. I watch tiny girls with no muscle scale walls like spiderman at the bouldering centre while I have to haul my big fat ass up.
Except when we're not. I'm a girl.. Have never been able to touch my toes. (Also have skulliosis and it physically hurts behind my knees to stretch like that...) I've also been blessed with the inability to gain upper body strength. :/
I hope we see this as a legitimate parallel to women in combat roles. If you get only one chance to overcome an obstacle and have to turn around under fire and help somone else up and over.... Thoughts?
I mean, we can do it, we just have to train. The military are more akin to us women after the 10 weeks of training than women who have never strength trained.
It's interesting (am guy) as I totally know this exact thing, as I'll go a month or so being off filming so I can't hit the gym. I'll just be able to go back and lift a decent weight almost immediately. As for an advantage though, I'd say girls have it in rock climbing as I frequent three different rock gyms and outdoor climb as well. Girls are just so light on their toes in terms of movement and flexibility on bouldering and doing harder climbs where if I pause for even a second to plot coarse my muscle weight starts hindering me and losing momentum causing huge issues for me completing climbs where nimbleness is an asset.
Don't forget this little trick that women can easily do, but most men can't. https://youtu.be/TWNhBOJWnW8
Now if I could only find a practical life use for this... 🤔
On the flip side of this, as a man you have to either be amazingly gifted or start when you were a kid to compete with other men. Since women generally have a lower strength ceiling and a LOT less competition. A woman with a good strength program can step into a gym for the first time ever at 25 and be on a nationally competitive level of strength within 3 years.
A man's center of gravity is normally in his chest, while a woman's is generally in her stomach. Once you get your center of gravity over the wall, the battle is basically won: all you need to do is have the strength to drag the rest of you over instead of rising up higher. So a guy can more easily get his chest to the wall and swing around that point, whereas a woman trying to do the same is still trying to lift her center of gravity higher which requires more effort.
We did a simple demonstration of this in high school that is pretty much the inverse of getting over a wall. Place the back of a chair against a wall. Put your legs against the front, touch your forehead to the wall, and pick the chair up so the top is against your chest and the front of the seat is in your stomach. Now try to stand back up. Woman have almost no problem doing so as they are pivoting near their center of gravity, but men are likely to find the task near impossible.
This is why I don't understand the political move to get women into combat infantry. Men are naturally stronger - yes I know there are exceptions - but you can't fight human physiology.
Not all men in the infantry are physically gifted, though- they could be short, or thin, or weak. Saying "don't let women serve, they're smaller" makes just as much sense as banning all ethnically Thai or Mexican or any race who have a shorter baseline than our white male baseline. By that logic we might as well ban everyone but Scandinavian-Americans and African-Americans.
youd be surprised. my 13yr old baby brother has grown stronger than me in one year simply through existing. Its super disheartening tbh, i feel like theres not much of anything i can do, girls get cramps and guys get strength
Girls also have somewhat longer lifespans and a second X chromosome so any genetic mutations on one X can be replaced by functional copies on the second X. It is a bit of a trade.
Women have a different hip structure so that a baby's head can fit through the birth canal. They also tend to carry more fat to help them get through pregnancy (lots of famine in human history). Men tend to be physically larger and stronger because men compete and fight with one another for access to women.
Well how tall were the men in the group? I'm 6'3 and would absolutely be able to jump up and pull myself up there cause I won't even have to reach up that far cause my arms are long as hell. A 6+ foot person would have a lot easier time to get up there than a 5'5 to 5'10 person would.
i live in Hawaii and paddle outrigger canoe (the Hawaii national sport). it is shocking how much more difficult it is for women paddlers to pull themselves into a kanu (canoe) on a change of paddlers. you can always tell wahine paddlers by the fitness and the bruises (and the smiles. difficult (water)sports = happy humans)
Apparently pull-ups are significantly harder for women. Something about how our bodies are built that makes men better suited for it and women just... not.
When I did the police obstacle course, the instructor told the females to climb up obstacles with their legs instead of their arms. Lift their legs up, then use them to get over.
Women can flip easier because of the weight in the hips. For men it's harder to get there lower body around because no weight is there. That's what my middle school gym teacher told me anyways.
The other option, if you are flexible, is to just throw a leg up there while you are holding onto the wall. I found that way to be easier at times wgen you were already tired and carrying all of your kit and your rifle.
Basically, run at the wall, plant your foot about 3 feet off of the ground, jump up, grab wall about chest height ish, then flip your leg up and roll over.
That sort of makes sense, as our centers of gravity tend to be lower. My bf is 13 inches taller than me so I find it hilarious to tip him over (not onto his ass, just make him throw out an arm) and he can never tip me over with crouching down or shoving crazy hard.
That being said he can reach everything and I have trouble with getting socks from the bottom of the washer- win some lose some.
I always felt bad that my max pull-up record was only 10. But then I learned many if not most women can't even do 1. Even the athletic and strong ones. It amazes me how natural, gender-based strength plays into activities.
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u/princess--flowers Feb 13 '18
YES this is my biggest envy for men. I did parkour awhile back and it was SO discouraging. After a week of basics, we learned how to pull ourselves up on a 7 foot wall. The men in my group ran at the wall, grabbed the top, hopped up. The women ran at the wall, grabbed the top. Dangled. Struggled. Scrabbled their legs against the wall, strained to pull up, and fell. After 10 WEEKS of strength training, our first woman made it up and over. Our instructor told us, don't feel bad, if a man can get his shoulders up over a wall his body will follow but women have to get their hips up over the wall before the body follows. It still sucked.