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Been watching avengers and thinking about black widow, and I hear a lot about how women can't beat men in a fight, how most women are weaker than most men, etc. Seems culture-war adjacent because of the whole trans in sports and such.
Setting aside superpowers, I don't dispute the truth of this fact, and I don't dispute the truth that elite men will be much stronger than elite women, and well-above-average men will be somewhat stronger than elite women, but it seems people take this too far and think even a trained woman can't beat an untrained man, and I don't see why THAT is true.
I've seen a study that said women of the same size as men, on average, will have 50% the upper body strength, 50% grip, 65% leg strength.
Surely these are just average joes and average janes? Do you mean to tell me if the woman trains for a couple years, and is healthy / responsive to training, she wouldn't be stronger than the majority of men that don't train, or are just fooling around in the gym / not really progressively overloading? (to what degree am I overestimating performance of average jane after several years of training? I'm guessing there was a large genetic component to why powerlifting women are so strong? What is the average ceiling for strength for a woman that trains powerlifting AS A HOBBY for a few years?)
Don't most women just avoid actual strength training / bulking out of temperament/desire for their body to look a certain way and not out of inability to do it and see results that would put them above-average for men?
I'm just not that familiar with female athletes, with exception of powerlifting and streetlifting spaces where there were strong women who could do shit like bench 200, squat 400-500, etc while being pretty lean. In retrospect those were probably very elite women, but are you seriously saying average joe is stronger than them?
And, if those women just decided to start learning some MMA for a few years. I could see a black widow-esque level of performance against men who are buff but not trained in MMA, or trained in MMA but not buff? Add in some genetic talent, special training, equipment etc. and it isn't so far fetched to have someone like black widow. Maybe she'd need to be a bit bulkier to be realistic but still.
Are dudes supposed to just walk into a gym, being sedentary, and start benching 200? Is that a normal thing for men? (genuinely asking, I'm a dude but have a very small frame. maybe some big frame people out there just naturally have strength? But again, those wouldn't be average joes.)
How much of this is a question of female temperament? Are they simply not encouraged to weightlift , bulk, or train for combat as frequently? And most MMA girls are mainly training skill and don't have a powerlifting base to build off from? If a 5'10 girl bulked to 180 or so, and does powerlifting as a hobby, how much weaker is she really than an average 5'10 joe who isn't trained? 5'10 criminal joe that comes up to mug her or something, are you really telling me 5'10 powerlifting mma chick doesn't clock him?
Note I am making sure to equate the sizes of the woman and man in question. I'm not making 5'4 hero chick go against 5'10 criminal with ease, but if the sizes are equal I just don't see how the hero chick loses. Although if you make 5'10 criminal (who likely has some training, but doesn't powerlift) into 5'10 average joe, then even against 5'4 powerlifting mma chick...just how much of a disadvantage is the size if strength is equal? It's gonna be a close fight at least, no?
There's actually a pretty easy way to check this, compare women's elite performance in weightlifting to the men's beginner weightlifting.
So let's check.
ChatGPT gives me for a 25 year old male.
So let's say 135 to be really fair to our untrained male, top of a beginner who has already done a few sessions. And that's the high end according to this comment
Wikipedia says
457.4>135
Obviously this is the record, but I think we can take from it that trained women elites can be stronger than the typical untrained man. IDK where the numbers come from but this strengthlogs site also shows that advanced/elite women would beat beginner men and its cutoff for "elite" is only 198, less than half the record. Also backed up by this other site with beginner men at 103 and intermediate women at 111. I checked three others as well, intermediate women > beginner men also applies to shoulder presses and deadlifts as well. And in dumbbell curls, even novice women beat beginner men there
Yeah, and from following weightlifting spaces this is why I couldn't wrap my head around the sentiment, that may be a minority sentiment nonetheless, that untrained men are as strong as trained women. I think it is a question of temperament too, probably an untrained man is stronger than your average fit woman, because that fit woman isn't trying to bulk up significantly and add muscle mass. That being said I've seen some strong girls doing weighted dips and pullups who aren't that bulky just a bit more bulky than a black widow body type. I mean, imagine black widow can bench 450. I think that makes it a lot more likely she can do what she does in the films. Although this Ashleigh Hoeta record-holder probably is taller than black widow I'd think, and doesn't have the time to train combat like black widow does. But still, say black widow benches 250 at least.
What other commenters have been arguing against this point is that, isolated muscle strength doesn't translate into combat prowess in a straightforward way. Black widow might bench 250 but her overall bone structure and weight/inertia make it hard to translate that into actual combat results, in the real world. I could see that, although I'm not totally convinced. Especially if she also deadlifts 400 or something. That's a lot of strength, seems like it should translate, but there are good arguments against it.
Mind you, no one has been able to actually show any empirical evidence for it, because professional fighting sports women are extremely rare to begin with and them fighting untrained typical couch potato men is even rarer than that. It's been entirely Just So narratives, something they've made up in their head that being able to do better weightlifting and exercise of various kinds can't possibly translate into victory, despite us knowing of the few examples such things have happened, where the trained woman won like this and this one where a pro MMA woman beat two men with knives.
There's a certain type of guy who just can't fathom that men and women while statistically different do actually have a lot of overlap still. The average WNBA player is four inches taller than the average man for instance! It's not "all women are tiny 4'9 and all men are big 6'7", there are tall women and short men. There are strong women and weak men. Men are faster than women on average but the fastest women can definitely outrun basically every single one of the nerds here. So many men out there who think walking a mile is a long distance essentially seem to think they'd beat a ultramarathon pro just because that pro is female. Yes the typical male pro player can beat Serena Williams, lazy and fat couch potato man ain't gonna do it when he's out of breath after a few minutes of running.
They overlap sometimes, especially when the women are peak training and the man is just a random piece of shit trying to mug people and probably doesn't work out at all, and the man gets his ass beat up cause actually she was a high elite fighter.
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