1. Why women can’t do pull-ups. Jezebel embraces these findings and argues that it doesn’t really matter anyway because pull-ups are a social construct invented to perpetuate the patriarchy. A better way to look at this, as one would look at exercise in general whether it be strength training or mile time, is to seek to improve your number of reps compared to where you started. A pull up is a good test of a whole host of muscles that are functionally important and also make you look good when they’re well exercised. If you can do 1 pull up at time A, then being able to perform 10 pull ups at time B indicates vast improvement. You’ll probably also be more fit overall. If you can’t do a hang pull without help, there is a machine that lets you offset weight. It assists your pull ups. Like any other exercise in the gym, increasing your reps at a given weight or decreasing the support overall is an indication that you’re improving a very key bodily component. So because women suck at pull-ups doesn’t mean that the entire exercise is worthless and not a good indicator of fitness. As for using fitness tests in school, kids quickly figure out who is the most physically gifted, strongest, and fastest of their peers. The Presidential fitness test is mostly redundant.
Update: Gawker’s pipsqueak fitness guru Hamilton Nolan comes through and obliterates his sister site’s anti pull up post by telling women that they too can do pull ups if they just try really, really hard. He makes a similar argument to the one laid out above except he sounds like he thinks he’s an expert about it which should be expected when you’re the in-house exercise guy at a website largely visited by cat ladies and fanbois of cat ladies.
2. Audacious Epigone compiles information on the economic success of immigrants in the U.S. He also discusses the bubble from within which pro-immigration academics ignore the full impact of immigration down at the bottom end of the economic/cultural ladder (h/t Heartiste):
Open borders apologists like Russ Roberts and Tyler Cowen don’t cross paths with a large swath the socioeconomic spectrum, though. They don’t experience poverty firsthand in any capacity, so discerning difference in poverty rates is an exclusively academic exercise for them. They do spend more time with those in the upper echelons than the average layperson does, however. And in these circles, immigrants are overrepresented.
3. UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma believes that lowering the rim would increase scoring in the sport and lead to increased attendance. A Slate writer disagrees and thinks that because the infrastructure favoring men’s rules already exist (10 foot rims are everywhere except the pee-wee leagues), this would crowd girls out of the game. Seems like she’s missing an opportunity for Title IX. A nine foot rim in every school. In reality though the only thing that could possibly lead to a marked improvement in attendance to women’s basketball would be a complete revamp of uniforms and an improvement in the overall attractiveness of the players.
I think in the full spirit of egalitarianism, though, that feminists should mandate that men’s hoops should be raised to 12 feet.
4. The NFL will use pink referee’s flags after an 11 year-old kid sent a handwritten letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. This world is empty.
5. Christina Hoff Sommers on the latest research from the American Association of University Women which addresses the gender pay gap.
6. Obama voters prefer Red Lobster.
7. A reminder that Warren Buffett is just like the rest.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Not sure what the point is on article number 1. Is it that the Pull-up is not a good indicator of strength or that it is not a good exercise?
I’m a Strength and Conditioning coach I can assure you many men if not most men can not do a good Pull-up. I may still use it as part of an assessment metric because it gives a good idea about the pull strength of someone. let’s face it humans do not have many movement patterns we pull and we push, we twist a bit and for upper body that is about it.
For men or women who can not do a Pull-up I may use a Flex arm hang or a Straight arm hang for time. My excuse to them is not only does it give us a goal to shoot for but you never know when you might fall off a cliff and have to hang around a while until help arrives.
Strength training(real not little pink 1 lbs dumbbells) requires mental toughness and ability to mentally push yourself. Gravity always wins in the end but it is about the trying. I agree different body types excel at different activites, notice not many 6’5′ Gymnists, but we can all benefit from the different fitness activities even if we are not optimally built for such activity.
I think Jezebel is just looking for a good excuse to be fat, ugly lesbians.
I recently attended a party with some high level professionals. There were several recent immigrants there, all of whom were very successful. One woman was a doctor from India. I don’t really object to these types of immigrants. I’m never going to be a doctor and I’m glad someone is willing to do it.
I’m guessing these immigrants make up a very sample number of the total, however.
pull-ups are a social construct invented to perpetuate the patriarchy Jezebel writers should study their feminist history. That was the exact same argument feminists used in the 1970′s and 80′s regarding the Olympics – the reason women do not do as well as men is that all the Olympic sports were invented by men; feminist scientists (there’s an oxymoron for you) would invent sports which favored the female body. Of course, no such female sports were found. The tactics then switched – the MSM trumpets that men and women are equal, while various sports give women handicaps which are not clearly revealed to the general public when results are compared. When a teenager (Jason Armstrong – there’s an apropos surname) can do over 3000 pullups in one day and supposedly fit, adult, go-grrrl women cannot do one, we can see how equal the sexes are.
Of course women can do pullups if they train for them; they will just not reach the level of men who train for them. If I read that study correctly, the women did not train doing assisted pullups, but did other exercises; only on the judgement day did they attempt actual pullups. Those researchers are idiots. Everyone who has stepped into a gym know that to excel at a specific movement you have to train that movement (in addition to other exercises).
The Jezebel article makes it sound like girls were expected to do pull ups to pass the Presidential Physical Fitness Test. That’s not true, we had to hang on the bar for a certain length of time to pass. The boys had to do pull ups. I remember passing the fitness test, and I’ve never done a pull up in my life.
#4 – I’m just waiting for a major Protestant denomination to announce it’s switching to pink crucifixes and vestaments.
Pull-ups are a tool of the patriarchy…
In fairness, the author didn’t say that, but why are so many of Jezzy’s writers fat?
I mean, I was a bit of a chubby kid there for a while, and I know I’d pack on pounds if I ate too much (or ate poorly), but I never thought to make a career out of encouraging people to give up on exercise.
I can’t recall ever seeing a man doing a pull up, but I do remember seeing boys do them.
I can’t believe this lady wrote this article without mentioning the Flexed Arm Hang, which was the “official” female equivalent of pull-ups that boys did back when I was in middle school in NC.
AFAIK, the military also still uses the Flexed Arm Hang during regular PT and to test fitness during recruiting for its incoming female enlistees.
In fact, the pull-up article is just dumb all around – absolutely zero discussion of the basic muscular physiological differences between men and women, especially in relation to upper body strength. Simply put, women are not built for the purposes of muscular explosion.
Women also lack the joint strength necessary to even build the type of muscle that it takes to exert the major force it take to move weight that are higher in ratio to body mass.
We did a lot of pullups in the military. When you are hanging by two cords attached to a canopy, it helps if you have enough upper body strength to pull them into your body, and you can steer the chute.
And yes Lara, we were men. Up to 40 years old. Actually my personal best in pull ups was when I was 32 years old.
@Lara, here’s a man who does a few pull ups with 100 pounds of weights strapped to his waist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAfxPmVPt-U&
And that is by no means a record.
#1: the day a single rotund jizzebeler who believes in gender equality can do one pull-up unassisted is the day gay cats lay with straight dogs and Pygmy females grace the covers of Playboy and Cosmo.
btw, pull-up difficulty gets significantly harder the wider your grip on the bar. i’ve moved to a wider grip, adding a few inches on each side, and my max reps got cut in half. but it hits the lats a lot harder. so if you want swole wings of the condor, go wide grip.
4: “The NFL will use pink referee’s flags after an 11 year-old kid sent a handwritten letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. This world is empty.”
it sure is. rule of thumb: the less informal, substantive commonality that unites people, the more they come to rely on slogans and symbols for their unity.
Speaking of immigrants, I know this makes me a terrible person, but I’m taking a kind of Karmic satisfaction in how some Dominican nanny just killed a couple of rich kids on the Upper West Side of NYC. However, no lessons will be learned.
We did pull-ups all the time in the Marine Corps. Most female Marines could pass the flexed arm hang. The time they needed was 70 seconds to get 100 pts. Males needed to do 20 pull-ups to get the 100 pts. No kipping was allowed but at the time (2004) you could change from over hand to under hand grips mid way through. By switching grips I was able to knock out about 14-16 pull-ups for the PT test. It seemed, to me, that the biggest descrepancy was in the run times. For males to max the points you have to run 3 miles in 18 minutes or less. Females max the run score by running it in 21 minutes or less. I’ve been out of the Marines for 8 years and the last time I was at the gym I tried pullups. I did 3. Granted I do not do them anymore and weigh about 40 pounds more than I did in the Corps, but the drop in production was sobering to say the least.
Among the elements of fitness: speed, strength, flexibility, aerobic endurance, and balance, I believe endurance is the element that women can claim equivalency with men. When trained up, women can finish IronMan races and marathons. There was a South African study that compared 10K and marathon times by gender; given equal 10K times, the women finished marathons with better times. This calls to mind our paleolithic grandmothers laboring in breach childbirth for 3-4 days in pain and dehydration.
I
“I believe endurance is the element that women can claim equivalency with men. When trained up, women can finish IronMan races and marathons.”
not even there, though they come closer to men in endurance ability than in any other physical endeavor, save perhaps balance. (a woman’s naturally lower center of gravity helps her balance. this is one reason why female gymnasts do the balance beam and male gymnasts don’t.) your claimed study to the contrary, the best times in nearly all long distance races (and short and medium distances, as well) are compiled by men. the “best” that can be said is that women have significantly narrowed the sex gap in long distance running times from where it was thirty years ago. but i predict going forward men will continue to post the best times, because of marginal returns to pushing the limits of human endurance.
btw, there are legit scientific explanations why men are better endurance athletes than women. bigger lungs and lung capacity, for one. and men are more efficient at blood oxygenation. can’t be bothered to find the links right now, so you’ll have to DYODW.
The Manhattan kids slaughtered by their Dominican nanny and earlier the 12 year old New Jersey girl Autumn who was murdered by black teenagers were horrific news. In both cases there is real or alleged theme of white adults failing to warn small children of the danger of letting yourself be vulnerable with non-whites. In the NYC murder case, the mother downright celebrated Dominican Republic, having visited her nanny’s family and written on her blog about how wonderful it is.
The Stranger doesn’t love you. He hates and envies you, and as an apex-white, you cant begin to imagine their feelings. Hint: they are not a reciprocation of good faith among fraternal equals.
“Nous avons cessé de croire que Kader
pouvait être notre frère” -G.I.
@Heartiste, well cudos to you for responding without using the c*** word. you must be using your rational, rather than your bitchy emotional brain today. Let’s see if you can respond to more logic based thinking:
1) the South African study used a baseline of equivalency of 10K times, not absolute times. Do you understand the difference between absolute and relative outcomes.? Have you ever once in your career as a science reporter read a study methodology?
2) endurance performance is a function of –dissipation of heat, preservation of water, clearing lactate at the mitochondrial level, and mental stamina. You are confusing those with higher hemoglobins, and vital capacity of lungs.
“He hates and envies you”
Through experience, I have learned that the only women I can truly be friends with, are the ones who are comparable to me in beauty, intelligence and socio-economic status. They are the ones who seem to have the most goodwill towards me.
Poor Hamilton. Fellow’s suit is wearing him in that photo.
jz:
“well cudos to you for responding without using the c*** word.”
damn, i’m getting lazy. cunt.
“you must be using your rational, rather than your bitchy emotional brain today.”
worked on you.
“1) the South African study used a baseline of equivalency of 10K times, not absolute times.”
allow me to spell it out for you. the issue being discussed is whether women are “equivalent” (your word) to men in endurance ability, not whether women in the same time bracket as men scale up better than those men do from 10k to marathons. so you premised your comment with an implied absolutism. again, do you dispute that the best times in endurance races are predominantly held by men? since you seem to be a woman of restricted mind, i’ll spell it out even further — on average, men outperform women in endurance events, particularly at the elite level. i welcome you to find the one or two rare exceptions to this rule that will make your ego feel more comfy cozy.
now maybe women may or may not close the remaining endurance gap with men, as measured by long distance race times, but right now that is not the case. so get back to me in twenty years if you’re still alive.
“2) endurance performance is a function of –”
it is also a function of lung capacity. See here:
http://jp.physoc.org/content/581/3/1309.long
“The results from this study indicate that the pulmonary system of endurance-trained females may be at a disadvantage compared to their male counterparts during intense exercise. We demonstrated that female athletes tend to develop expiratory flow limitation more frequently than male athletes. It was also observed that women have higher relative increases in end-expiratory lung volume and end-inspiratory lung volume at maximal exercise. Finally, women tend to have a higher work of breathing across a wide range of ventilations during exercise compared to men. Many of the differences observed in this study are due to the smaller lungs and presumably the smaller diameter airways in women.”
is that game set match? why, yes, yes i believe it is!
I maxed out at 17 (strict form, palms forward) pull-ups back at 26 years-old. Not bad for an ectomorph. I still pump out three sets of ten every other day. I saw a guy on TV the other day do five strict 1-arm pull-ups!
I was in a gym one day several years ago, and a former pro football player (a center), a year out of the NFL was only able to do two pull-ups. I jumped up after him and pumped out 17. Of course, he outweighed me by 100 pounds.
i cannot do pulll ups withouth kipping
most of the women at my gym can do lots of pullups
like squats and bench, the guys who will do great with pull-ups are going to be stouter, with shorter limbs. it’s leverage. easier to hold a rock close to your chest than it is to hold that same rock out at arm’s length. there’s just a lot less distance to travel, not to mention tall guys tend to have to pull up more weight per pound of arm and back muscle than do shorter guys.
ectomorphs will clean up with deadlifts though. longer arms must be an advantage in that exercise.
Your power is your Mind and rhetoric Anti-Racist. Your Soldiers have physical strength. They will see you soon.
@H.
thanks for your courteous response to my queries,
Q: are you capable of rational responses, rather than dependency upon your volatile emotions?
A: NO
Q: Is “lung capacity” included as an element of endurance?
A: Your referenced citation was interesting, studying expiratory flow rates and mechanical work of breathing by gender in the state of exhaustion. However, your authors conclude, “an understanding of female pulmonary responses to exercise remains incomplete. In order to address functions of sex-based differences, future studies must consider the importance of matching subjects for age, body, and lung size and aerobic capacity.” I’ll credit you with including “expiratory flow rates” as another element of endurance physiology. You cite pulmonary function; I’ll cite boots-on-the-ground outcomes. In subgroups of South African runners with equal 10K times (equal speed, strength) the women had faster marathon times.
Q: Has Mr. Science Reporter ever read a study methodology once in his career?
A: NO
jz:
“Q: are you capable of rational responses, rather than dependency upon your volatile emotions?
A: NO”
i would just like to point out to the studio audience that my original reply to your comment about male-female endurance differences was quite civil, with no mention of your possible emotional state, and that you then answered my civil reply with tacit ad hominem and femcunt invective, which i reproduce here:
“you must be using your rational, rather than your bitchy emotional brain today.”
now personally, this sort of femcuntery does not bother me. as hateration goes, it is fairly small potatoes. but it is instructive as an object lesson in how inborn femcunts, like our own jz here, implicitly demand the right to mouth off to men behaving civilly whom they find objectionable for whatever reasons bubbling in their twat-addled brains, while being granted immunity from any response in kind.
so here’s a newsflash for jz: if you’re gonna throw unprovoked shit in my direction, i’m gonna point both shit barrels back at you and make you choke on a hundred times the runny effluvium you feel so free to dish out. hthurts.
“In subgroups of South African runners with equal 10K times (equal speed, strength) the women had faster marathon times.”
i’ll ask the question again, since you seem to be so studiously avoiding it:
please find the data from long distance races that shows female winners, on average, clock in with faster times than male winners. i won’t be holding my breath…
“Q: Has Mr. Science Reporter ever read a study methodology once in his career?
A: NO”
translation: i was badly SPANKED by mr. H’s cogent response to my insistence that women are the equal of men in endurance athletics.
Over the past six months your default reflex to my comments has been to throw down the C*** word. WEAK. WEAK. WEAK. Vulgarity does not impress. It indicates a weak position. I have expressed opinions or observations (not even directed at you) and you impress us with the c*** word. Wow, Aren’t you awesome rhetorician.!!!
So, I am addressing *highly provoked * vulgarity from you.
i suck at lifting any kind of weight
i am pretty fast (ran a 4.5 back when i was young) can do pretty well running middle distance (800m or so) ok at long distance and i can do well with box jumps and agility type stuff because i picked up alot of skills from my basketball playing days
my hooping days were the times when i developed my admirection for the Black Male and started to see the world through his eyes
@Mr. Science Reporter,
I’ll take that as a NO.
jz:
“Over the past six months your default reflex to my comments has been to throw down the C*** word.”
i have not spoken to you once in the past six months except for this exchange. at the least, i can’t remember having replied to any comment of yours except this one in the past six months (with due allowance that my memory may be incomplete). if there’s someone else with whom you have a bone to pick, take it up with that person. regardless, your point is irrelevant. the only context that matters is this one right here, in this thread, on this blog. you replied with unprovoked ad hominem to a civil response i made to you. that’s the crux of it. you chose poorly, and received my shiv in return.
“Vulgarity does not impress. It indicates a weak position.”
oh i dunno. expertly aimed vulgarity can be a very useful tool in belittling losers and amassing allies.
“I have expressed opinions or observations (not even directed at you) and you impress us with the c*** word.”
please point to the part of my initial reply to you where i called you a cunt. oh wait… i didn’t. follow-up replies that included the c word are not evidence for your case, as they were deployed in response to your initial aggressive posturing.
“Wow, Aren’t you awesome rhetorician.!!!”
thank you! ps you write like a masculinized woman.
“So, I am addressing *highly provoked * vulgarity from you.”
how convenient! do you think this line of argument would hold up in a court of law? “yer honor, i was replying to imagined vulgarity, and a history of vulgarity that extends to the paleolithic.”
“@Mr. Science Reporter,
I’ll take that as a NO.”
you can take it any way you like. the facts still don’t rescue your argument.
FACT: men hold most of, if not all, the long distance running records.
FACT: women are not the equivalent of men in endurance athletics.
now if you had just stated your premise as “of all the physical endeavors, the gap between women and men in endurance athletics is the smallest, and here are some studies which help explain why the sex gap is narrower in endurance trials than the sex gaps for other contests of physical prowess”, i would have agreed with you 100%. in fact, i DID agree with you on that specific point, which you would see with a slower re-reading of my original reply. my problem was with your assertion that there was sex *equivalency* when the facts clearly show there is not.
but you didn’t say that. so i corrected you. and then you spewed and steamed and sputtered and slandered and basically avoided grappling with the meat of my argument while tossing out irrelevant tidbits of factotum.
ya know…
just like a woman.
man it’s nice to have some free time and shoot it out like this. i feel invigorated!
@Mr. Science Reporter,
to jog your memory,
http://glpiggy.net/2012/08/07/next-tuesday-i-will-see-you/
your write like an aging sadist, with nothing but snark, vulgarity, and a thesaurus.
@Mr. Science Reporter,
I’ll credit you with an apt revise of the original sentence that you went apoplectic on. BUT, context matters. The full context of my paragraph fleshed it out as a *relative* finding. Given equal strength and speed, there is empirical evidence that women have equivalent endurance to men.
“Admirection for the Black Male.” Priceless.
if you can’t do pull-ups, i wouldn’t suggest the assisted pull-up machine. you’re better off with negative reps: start at the top and lower yourself down slowly. pendlay rows and deadlifts are also good for building up lat strength until you can perform a proper pull up.
First “afrimitive,” now “admirection.” anti-racist, you are a bottomless font of amusingly accurate malapropisms.
As others have mentioned elsewhere, the exercise program these women were put on wasn’t that effective. Pull-ups are(at least to me) a very specific exercise, doing other exercises in an attempt to improve them doesn’t work.
Every time the question of male vs. female performance in athletics comes up I have to wonder how much of the disparity between male & female records has been closed due to drugging. It strikes me as fairly likely that women get a lot more bang for the buck out of testosterone boosters, which would close the gap between M & F performances.
Pingback: LIGFY: The End Of October And UMan | Society of Amateur Gentlemen
she must not be a feminist…..