Should Women Train Like Men? Science-Backed Answers for Every Lifter

Should women train like men? Research shows 90% of lifting rules are identical; only the last 10% depends on your goals, biology, and life-stage tweaks.

There is no doubt that women can get fantastic results from strength training.

A big review of studies published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that women who lift for anywhere from 5 weeks to 2 years saw:

• Muscle size go up by 2% to 26%
• Upper-body strength improve by 3% to 110%
• Lower-body strength boost by 4% to 140%

Basically, lifting weights works. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but always in the right direction.

The question is: should women train like men?

In this article, you’ll learn that there is no “should”. It’s much more about what you want.

This article is primarily written for women, but if you’re a man, you can still learn some very interesting and useful things.

Gender Gains: What the Research Actually Shows

If you ask a random person on the street, they likely say that men who lift weights gain more muscle than women.

However, that is not entirely true. But it depends on what you look at.

Adaptation after ≥5 weeks of lifting	Absolute outcome	Relative outcome (male vs. female)
Muscle size (hypertrophy)	Varies widely (2–26% gain in both sexes)	No meaningful sex differences
Upper-body strength	Men lift heavier loads at baseline	Women gain slightly more relative strength
Lower-body strength	Men lift heavier loads at baseline	Changes are statistically similar

Building Muscle

When you just look at the total amount of muscle mass (e.g., pounds or kilograms), men generally gain more absolute muscle mass than women.¹

That is mainly because men (not always, but in most cases) start with a larger baseline of muscle mass.

If you have a bigger bucket, a 5% increase is a larger volume than a 5% increase in a smaller bucket.

But when you consider muscle gain as a percentage of their starting muscle mass, men and women actually gain muscle at similar rates.

So, if a woman and a man both start a training program and each increase their muscle mass by 5% of body weight, they’ve made comparable relative gains. The man’s 5% simply means more total pounds because he began with more muscle.

But What About Hormones?

A common misconception is that because men have significantly higher testosterone levels, they automatically build muscle much faster.

Higher levels of testosterone are generally associated with greater muscle mass in men.²

After training, anabolic hormones like testosterone increase, much more so in men. However, these spikes do not drive muscle growth.³

Studies also show that muscle protein synthesis (the amount of new muscle you build after a workout) is similar in women and men, regardless of hormones.⁴

How old you are (older people get a slightly lower response) and how hard you train make a difference, but your sex does not.

Strength Gains

For strength gains, it’s much the same thing.

If you compare a man and a woman who’ve both been lifting for a year, the man will likely be lifting heavier weights in most exercises.

Men lift heavier loads but gains scale similarly between sexes.

At least lower-body strength. For example, if a man increases his squat by 15% over a few months, a woman training similarly can also expect to increase her squat by roughly 15%.

If anything, studies have shown women can sometimes experience larger relative increases in upper body strength than men.⁵

Researchers aren’t sure why, but it could be partly because women often start further from their potential ceiling, leading to more substantial gains when they begin lifting.

A 2024 meta-analysis analyzed data from 295 studies and found no real differences between men and women in terms of getting stronger, jumping higher, or sprinting faster through weight training.⁶

The potential difference is in plyometrics, where an earlier meta-analysis found that men improved slightly more.⁷

The researchers couldn’t explain why that might be, and they thought it might just have been that there were more men than women participants in the studies.

However, a 2024 study also found that males improved more, so there might be something to it, but we don’t know the exact why yet.⁸

One theory is that since men are generally stronger from the start, they may benefit more from plyometric training because stronger muscles can produce more force and power.

Want a plan that applies these findings? Download StrengthLog free:

Where Biology Can Shape the Details

Even if women and men should train basically the same for muscle and strength, some small sex-specific adjustments can make a difference.

Load, Volume & Fatigue

Women usually tire less quickly in their muscles and have more slow-twitch muscle fibers. They can do more reps at a certain weight (compared to their max) and tend to recover faster between sets and workouts.^{9 10 11}

Practical tips:

• Go for higher rep targets than general 1RM recommendations. Women often manage 1–3 extra reps at the same relative intensity.
• Women can often handle shorter rest breaks between sets (1–2 minutes) without losing performance and can do a few more sets each week. You don’t have to take short rest intervals, but you can if you want to and still perform well in your next set.
• The amount of weight you can increase over time might be smaller in actual kilos or pounds, but your progress compared to your max strength (as a percentage) is about the same.

Upper- Vs. Lower-Body Strength Gap

On average, women start with 50–60% of men’s upper-body strength but up to >70% lower-body strength.¹²

If the difference between your upper body strength and your lower body strength is significant, it can be a good idea to focus a little extra on the former in the weight room.

Practical tips:

• Add a few extra accessory sets (rows, push-ups, shoulder presses) for your upper body.
• Focus more on your upper body by adding an extra press/pull workout each week.
• Women can train their upper body more than twice weekly, but the lower body often responds best to two workouts.¹³

Joint Structure & ACL Risk

Women are 2–8 times more likely to tear an ACL and have a much higher prevalence of pelvic floor disorders.^{14 15}

Both hormonal and biomechanical factors contribute, and in almost every instance, strength training can help.

Practical tips:

• Build hamstring and glute strength with dedicated exercises (Romanian deadlift, Nordic hamstring, hip thrust).
• Include pelvic floor muscle training year-round. Start with gentle pelvic floor contractions and relaxations lying on your back for one set of 6–10 reps and gradually increase the volume and intensity.

Iron Status & Energy Availability

Not eating enough calories and getting too little iron impacts female athletes more than men.

Iron deficiency negatively affects your strength and work capacity. It hits 15–35% of female athletes vs. 3–11% of males, meaning it’s a much bigger issue for women.¹⁶

Too few calories over time can lead to relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) according to the IOC consensus statemement. It can negatively affect everything from bone health to your menstrual cycle to how well you build muscle and strength.¹⁷

Practical tips:

• Get an annual ferritin screening if you’re training hard, and supplement at< 40 ng/mL (the lower end of the normal range).
• Make sure you eat at least 30–45 kcals per kilogram of fat-free mass (FFM, everything in your body that isn’t fat) daily.

You can calculate your FFM in the StrengthLog app:

Pregnancy & Postpartum

All professional bodies, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), recommend strength training during and after pregnancy. It’s beneficial for both the mother and the baby, with no known risks during healthy pregnancies.¹⁸

However, you want to adapt your workout routine to where you are in your pregnancy.

Practical tips:

• Modify intra-abdominal pressure (e.g., swap max deadlifts for trap bar deadlifts) as your pregnancy progresses.
• Add pelvic-floor-friendly core work (Kegel exercises, kneeling planks, bird dogs)
• Avoid heavy presses lying on your back after the first trimester.

Perimenopause & Menopause

When estrogen declines, bone loss accelerates. In addition to hormone therapy, high-intensity strength training is the best countermeasure.¹⁹

Practical tips:

• Include power moves (jumps, Olympic lifts) for fall protection.
• Eat a healthy diet with enough protein, vitamin D, and calcium (supplementing vitamin D and calcium can be helpful, as many people don’t get enough through diet alone).
• Keep lifting heavy (≥80% 1RM) 2–3 times a week to put good, bone-building stress on your bones.

Anthropometry & Technique Comfort

There aren’t any “best exercises for women,” but your limb-to-torso ratio can change the bar path and the most effective and comfortable stance during some exercises.

Practical tips:

• Women tend to have a slightly higher leg-to-torso ratio than men, and longer femurs may benefit from a wider stance, so experiment with sumo vs. conventional deadlift and a wider squat stance to find what works and feels best for you.

Combining Strength Training & Cardio

If you train a lot of cardio as well as with weights, your lower-body strength gains might suffer a bit. However, it happens more in men; women seem buffered.²⁰

Practical tips:

• You likely don’t have to worry about your cardio interfering with your strength and muscle gains.

What About the Menstrual Cycle?

Cycle syncing, or adjusting your strength training routine to your menstrual cycle, is popular in social media.

However, several large meta-analyses of all available research show no consistent difference in performance or results across phases.^{21 22 23}

Practical tips:

• Cycle-sync if it feels good for you, but it’s optional, not mandatory. Go hard when you feel great; take it easier when you don’t.
• Prioritize sleep, nutrition, and autoregulation (adjusting your workouts based on how you feel and perform).

The bottom line: Strength programming is 90% the same for women and men. The last 10% (training volume, injury prevention, nutrition, and life-stage considerations) lets you capitalize on your biology rather than fight it.

Should Women Train Like Men? Personal Preferences

This is the big one.

Women and men tend to like slightly different things in the gym and sometimes pick up the weights for different reasons.

However, the overlap is huge, and the differences are cultural, not biological.

• In a 2023 review of more than 500 studies, men were more likely to say they prefer heavy, competitive, upper-body training, while women leaned toward lower-body exercise and supervised training. But the researchers stressed that these are probability trends, not rules.²⁴
• A survey of 187 college students showed that 15–17% of men vs. <1% of women picked “intense strength training” as their top choice; most women preferred a cardio + moderate-strength mix.²⁵
• Observational studies in college gyms found a 27-to-1 male-female ratio in the free-weight area. The women stayed with the machines more because of comfort and social norms than because of interest in getting stronger.²⁶

The gap is almost entirely in who wants to do what and what they feel comfortable doing, not in anything to do with biological differences.

Practical Tips

Start With Your Own “Why”

Whether that means performance, health, looks, or stress relief, your motive and goals are more important than population averages.

Use the Equipment You Like

If you want to become a competitive powerlifter or Olympic lifter, you must train like one, but other than that, feel free to use machines, resistance bands, kettlebells, barbells, or classes: all can give you the results you want.

Women and Men Build Muscle the Same Way

Progressive overload, nutrition, and recovery are universal. The programming principles that grow muscle and build strength don’t care about gender.

Address Comfort Barriers

If you feel out of place in the free-weight area, consider:

• A beginner block in a women-only or small-group setting
• A training program that prescribes exact loads/reps so you walk in with a plan
• Training with a friend or off-peak hours until your confidence grows

That being said, in my almost 40 years of experience in the fitness business, the people in the free weight room are some of the friendliest you can find.

Every big guy in the gym remembers what it was like as a beginner and appreciates anyone just starting out.

Besides, most people are too busy training to look at others.

Don’t Fear “Bulky”

Building muscle is a super slow process, and you will never suddenly wake up with more muscle than you want one day.

Women can build muscle, but to get “bulky,” you have to want to do so and dedicate your entire lifestyle to it.

Bottom line: women and men can have different goals and wants in their training.

There are no rights or wrongs here. What others do doesn’t really matter unless you want it to matter.

• If you’re a woman who loves lifting heavy and building upper body strength, go for it.
• If you’re a man who enjoys lower-body workouts and prioritizing endurance, let’s go.

The best program for both women and men is the one you enjoy, can stick with, and helps you achieve your fitness goals. We all get the health, performance,and mental benefits.

Should Women Train Like Men: Frequently Asked Questions

Build Muscle With Our Best Training Programs for Women

Looking for a training program for women that builds muscle regardless of the time of the month?

A training program not for how women should train (there are no “best exercises” for women; male and female muscles work the same) but for how women want to train, according to 275,000 users of our workout log app, StrengthLog.

It’s called Thicc and specializes in lower-body hypertrophy without guess-work.

Check it out and download our free workout tracker to follow it directly in the app:

Should Women Train Like Men: Final Words

The human body builds muscle and strength the same way, regardless of who owns it.

The biggest factors in determining how you should train are your training age, injury history, goals, schedule, and personal preference—not sex.

If you cover those bases and eat, sleep, and lift heavier as you get stronger, the same barbell works just as well for everyone.

Last reviewed: 2025-06-13

References

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23. Strength and Conditioning Journal ():10.1519/SSC.0000000000000917, May 29, 2025 Evidence for Periodizing Strength and/or Endurance Training According to Menstrual Cycle Phases to Optimize Female Athlete Performance Is Lacking.
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