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Women manage to stretch the arm muscles for longer than men. It is one of the conclusions that sports scientist Sandra Hunter has drawn after many years of studies of men and women's different reaction to training.

On average, men have more muscle mass, more hemoglobin in the blood as well as bigger heart and lungs and thus higher oxygenation of the muscles. Therefore, they usually outperform women in terms of physical challenges, but there are exceptions, and Sandra Hunter, professor of sports science at Marquette University in Milwaukee, USA, is interested.

"When I discovered how much longer women can handle a static contraction, I was really surprised," she says. I didn't expect the difference to be that big. That's when I started to look more closely at how and when women and men respond differently to effort and exercise.

Static contraction, which was the moment Hunter studied, involves keeping a muscle tense in the same position for a shorter or longer period of time - such as when carrying heavy food bags, for example. In Hunter's study, the arm muscle would be stretched to 20 percent of its ability for as long as possible and the women managed an average of 30 minutes while the men quit after 14 minutes.

That's because men's and women's muscles look a little different. Both sexes have both slow muscle fibers that are durable and thicker more explosive fibers that provide power - but the explosives are coarser in men. In addition, men's muscles are larger and this causes the oxygen supply to decrease in them more quickly when the blood supply is cut and the muscle is stretched for a long time.

Sandra Hunter and her co-workers have published a number of research articles, in which they have examined in detail similar gender differences.

Read more about the research on SVT science.

You can see more about training in the SVT program Best training.