14 DAY TRIAL // On average, women tend to find pull-ups significantly harder to do than men. This was even made public by the United States Marine Corps (USMC), which requires men to perform three pull-ups during their yearly fitness test. Many women in the Marine Corps cannot complete this task.
In fact, during a recent series of tests conducted at a camp site in South Carolina, nearly 55 percent of new female recruits were unable to complete the mandatory three pull-ups. This made the USMC delay the introduction of new requirements, which would have made it necessary for women to complete this exercise before passing the yearly review.
The director of research at the Department of Sports Medicine with the Wexner Medical Center at the Ohio State University, Tim Hewett, says that this inability to complete the challenge stems from the fact that women are significantly less muscle mass in their upper extremities, according to MRI scans.
The upper body of women is only 50 to 60 percent the strength normally found in men. The difference is not that pronounced when it comes to the lower extremities, where women consistently record performances similar to those of men, LiveScience reports.
“Women do have their [physical] advantages; it's just the one glaring difference in performance is muscle-strength measures, especially in the upper extremities,” Hewett explains.