Last weekend I was at the Prefontaine Classic at Hayward Field. When the men lined up for the 110 hurdles, the entire stadium went dead silent. Nobody talking, nobody moving. You could have heard someone drop a water bottle three sections over. Every detail of that stadium, the nods to the ducks, the history built into the walls, was intentional. If you ever get the chance to go, go. Watching that level of competition got me thinking about something closer to home: I coach boys and girls on the same team, running the same distance, and a new study gave me a frame shift on how I think about that.
ARTICLE BELOW:
The Research
Researchers wanted to know what actually explains the performance gap between men and women in the 10K, one of the biggest sex gaps in distance running. Instead of just comparing averages, they matched 12 women with a group of men who trained the same weekly volume, and separately matched those same women with a different group of men who ran the same race time. Then they tested everyone on a treadmill and took a muscle biopsy to check fiber type and oxidative enzyme activity.
What They Found
The research suggests these are the key takeaways
🟡 Moderate evidence. This was observational, not an intervention, and the sample was small (12 per group), so treat this as a pattern worth watching, not gospel.
When men and women trained identical weekly volume, the men still ran 10.5% faster
To match the men's race time, the women trained 67% more volume and spent more time at high heart rate (higher intensity)
Muscle fiber type and enzymatic activity showed no significant differences between the groups. No change in fiber type and no difference in oxidative capacity
Peak treadmill speed was the strongest single predictor of race time across everyone tested!!!
What This Means For You
I liked that they used both treadmill testing and muscle biopsies. My one gripe: they pulled the biopsy from the quad instead of the calf. We've talked before about how important the calf is in running, and even the authors admitted they probably should have gone there but used the quad because that's what prior studies did.
Here's the part that changed how I think about coaching. Thinking about coaching my cross country team that races 5K, and you have your boys and girls training together. If they do the same workouts, this study saw that the girls were going to be here ten percent slower than their boys that are matched, but they were able to achieve similar performance if they were training at a higher intensity and a higher volume. So it gives me just a frame shift of potentially what may be needed to achieve some increased performances for our girls. Instead of having everyone do the same and thinking of both boys and girls as physiologically the same, we need to be intentional (just like they were at Hayward field) when programming the boys and girls. First, we need to do what’s needed to keep each healthy, but we may be able to push the girls to a higher volume and intensity compared to their performance matched counterparts. This study is not something that will change my programming for the fall, but it is something that is going to make me pause, think, and be intentional.
🏆 How To Apply It
Don't assume a performance gap between male and female athletes means different muscle biology. This data found none
If you're coaching a mixed team, matched race-time standards may require more volume and more time near threshold heart rate for some athletes, not a different training model
Keep developing peak speed. It was the single best predictor of race time in this study, and it's something I've made non-negotiable in my own coaching the last few years. Hmm…maybe we will talk about this next week 🙂 and perfect timing with the FIFA World Cup getting to the ending stages…stay tuned.
Load and health management come first. Any volume increase needs to be individualized and closely monitored, not applied as a blanket rule
This isn't something I'm going to overhaul my program on. It's one small study with a small sample. But it's a good reminder to keep an eye on when you've got athletes of different sexes training side by side toward the same goal.
Hit reply and tell me, have you noticed this in your own training group?
-Keep running happy, healthy, and strong
Spencer
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