How fash should women gain strength?

[BodyByFinaplix]

How fast should women gain strength?

My wife started working out with me a month ago (granted she misses almost half our workouts), and I'm pretty surprised how fast she gains strength. I know she ran track and went state when she was in highschool, so probably has good genetics and carries a fair amount of muscle mass naturally, and probably has a high testerone level due to her sex drive. I've noticed that on her flat dumbell presses and incline dumbell presses she is already doing sets of 12 with #20's, so tonight we are going to move her up to 25's. Granted this is not exactally heavy weight, but considering most women I've known in the gyms who have worked out for years never seemed to go heavier. Furthermore a friend of mine who had been working out for a couple of months on his own and weights 185, could only handle #35's for 8 when he and I worked out.

I guess my question is, is this a normal amount of strength gain for a woman after one month of training? We're on a pretty serious routine, and I plan on having her lift a lot heavier if she can.

 

[blut wump]

Female muscle is just as strong as male muscle, pound for pound. Typically, women are small, carry more bodyfat and have little training and so are weak. If a woman is trained to develop some reasonable neural efficiency, such as a man takes for granted from his natural aggression during his formative years, then she can be every bit as strong as a man of the same size and will likely be stronger than untrained men.

If you check the Olympics you'll see that the women lift about the same as the men. They stagger the weight categories to hide the fact.

 

[BodyByFinaplix]

Female muscle is just as strong as male muscle, pound for pound. Typically, women carry more bodyfat and have little training and so are weak. If a woman is trained to develop some reasonable neural efficiency, such as a man takes for granted from his natural aggression during his formative years, then she can be every bit as strong as a man of the same size.

If you check the Olympics you'll see that the women lift about the same as the men. They stagger the weight categories to hide the fact.

Good point. She is not tiny either. I tested her bodyfat at 25% when we first statred training(she was not happy about this) but she weighs 158 @ 5'7", however she does not appear to be in bad shape. No love handles or gut.

 

[Sassy69]

Exactly what blut said -- I think women massively shortsheet themselves on their actual strength by spending all that damn time w/ the pink weights. Women have traditionally been the work horses of the species so its not like we're friggen weak - that's just a Victorian perception that has been shoved down our throats.

If you start doing something from nothing, its probably very easy to move up quickly. I'd say outside of very specifically dieting & training, most women, if they actually spend time lifting can hit 20-25 lb DB presses pretty quickly. Getting up past 35-40 lb presses takes more specific training & fueling.

 

[blut wump]

I guess the interesting aspect relates to recovery. How much does a man's testosterone give him an edge, if any, over a woman when it comes to training and recovery. What changes, if any, does a woman need to make to her training compared with a man's to achieve similar progress?

 

[Daisy_Girl]

Also - muscle memory is amazing. If she has been working out in the past, she will gain strength back quick.