My 12 year old son is stronger than me

[LargeSquareRock]

I’m what is referred to as a strapping woman, 6 ft 1, 88kg. Reasonably fit.

My 12 year old son is 42kg, 5 ft 2, reasonably fit.

We play a game where we face each other, lock hands and push. He’s beaten me and pushed me back almost every time for the last 3 months, unless I use rat cunning.

Ive been currently reading about the men beating up women in the Olympic boxing. Current TRA line on X is

1. They are women
2. Even if they aren’t women, it’s the same weight class so it’s fair
3. Women and men are physically equal and it’s only because of socialisation that women can be beaten by men.

Well, I repeat, my 12 year old son, nearly half my weight, can beat me in a strength competition. That’s anecdotal, but anyone with half a brain knows that this is the case across the board.

It's even more than that - they have a greater range of types of muscle fibre, so they have greater endurance as well. Gah!

From the other end of the spectrum, my dad was taking estrogen to knock out his testosterone for the last 15 years of his life for prostate cancer.

All the side effects - diabetes, mood swings, he grew breasts. But when I needed help taking away my old washing machine he pretty much squatted, wrapped his arms around it, and walked it to the car by himself - concrete drum and all.

In his 70s, after a decade of hormones, still the strongest man I knew.

the chart below compares world record 100 metre running times for women (10.49 seconds, set by Flo-Jo in the 80s, widely assumed to be roided to the gills though we'll never know the truth of it given that she dropped dead aged 38) with the men's record together with the equivalent age group records for men and women. basically men are faster in their earlymid teens through forties. for strength I assume the gap would persist for more like mid teens through 50s or even 60s.

Same (well, except I'm 5' tall and he's 2 inches taller than me) - it happened over the last year. The only way I could win against him is with cunning (and he's dyspraxic, so his grip strength is kitten level, but even then, his general strength is already more than mine)

And the leverage which is determined by exactly where on the bone muscles attach.

Female orangutans weigh 30-40kg are are kinda weedy looking but they can rip the arms off a zookeeper. Which a friendly zookeeper (who still had all his limbs, thankfully) explained to me was because of the leverage afforded by the muscle insertion sites.

There’s abundant evidence that young boys beat women at sports. Didn’t the Williams sisters at the height of their careers get beaten by a couple of male teenagers? And the USA women’s football team beaten in a friendly with young boys? And those women were the best women in the entire world at their sport.

Male puberty results in a body radically different from a female one. Different shaped, thicker skeleton including head and neck (and longer arm reach), larger and stronger muscles, larger heart and lungs, higher blood volume. Average body size larger overall. They are faster, stronger, and jump higher. Sports scientists have the data. These changes are never reversed. You only have to look at members of the stunning’n’brave community to see this. The shape of a male is clear even from a distance.

The problem is, the activists say this isn’t relevant. Their (absolutely false) line is that (1) twaw, end of and (2) if a trans identifying male or a male with a DSD has a T level below a certain limit, they have no advantage. As long as sporting authorities accept that complete falsehood we’re stuffed.

Every day's a school day on Mumsnet FWR! Thanks.

I had a wake up call to the actual effects of male puberty recently., I go to a strength training class 3 times a week, and run on the days in between. I've been going about 18 months, and am pretty strong for a mid 50s woman.

My trainer started a teen class recently, which DS has started going to. DS's only other exercise is school PE, archery, walking home from school and a very occasional mtb ride - a handful of times a year. He'd beaten my hard won PBs on virtually every exercise within a month.

When my son was about 12 we had a play fight for the last apple. Both went to take it at the same time. He just squished my hand in one of his. No contest. Didn’t hurt or anything but he was definitely bigger and stronger than me by then.

It's so infuriating that some people argue there is no real difference when ALL the evidence proves the contrary.

My 10 year old, very tall for age, gave up judo as he was always being paired with much older girls who were the same weight as him. His reason for giving up was his fear of hurting them as he was stronger than they were. Even 10 year olds know.

My pilates instructor - admittedly very fit, but doesn't lift competitively, only for fun; and he's in his 60s with severe arthritis - can lift just shy of 350kg.

Yep. I tusssle/wrestle with my son.

He's just turned 13 and he easily overpowers me now.

I have said irl that nothing has peaked me more than seeing Lia Thomas win whilst watching my own physical attributes pale in comparison to my teenage boys as they go through puberty!

I'm a sturdy tallish size 12 and my 10 year old can overpower me
Partners always had to go easy on me during play fighting while I was using all my strength.
It's so important to recognise the differences

DS16 is 4 inches taller than me with a longer reach.

We weigh roughly the same so would be in the same classification in boxing.

I'm fitter and stronger than the average 40 odd year old woman because I do a sport at competitive level.

DS is still absolutely stronger than me and I have no doubt would hurt me in a boxing match.

I should add, my DS also does a competitive sport (DH mountain biking).

We went to watch the World Cup at Fort Bill. The junior boys (17-18) were faster than the professional elite adult women so tell me again how "boys" are a fair competitor to women.

I have had no experience of this. I used to beat bigger men at arm wrestling. Certainly not all of my opponents, but enough. Maybe I'm freakishly strong, or maybe it was more down to ruthless determination.
As women we are often afraid of hurting the other person or ourselves, so we don't really use all our strength even though we think we do. That would definitely come into play when the opponent is a son. I don't think most women are aware of doing this. We may tell ourselves we've tried our hardest, but we actually hold back instinctively.

That's not to say an athlete born male does not have a huge advantage though, especially in speed. One thing I was never able to do was to run as fast as a man with a similar fitness level. Most competitive sporting events require tremendous speed.

Me too with the girl power. My epiphany was going to a self-defence class paid for my work when I was in my 20s. The woman running it was a champion kickboxer built like a tank. She used to emphasise that our first line of defence was to run. If we couldn’t run, bite, jab eyes and run. But if he got hold of you close enough to grapple, the fight was over and our best bet was to not resist and anger him more. She said the same would apply to her. She used to rave about Jennifer Garner fighting men in Alias and how it was so far from reality it wasn’t funny.

My work colleagues and I were quite indignant but she was right.

I'm 140lbs and have regularly needed help from my average-sized young teen boy to do things I couldn't. Even with dysgraphia he opens things that I can't!

That's surely a powerlifting number (three lifts, smaller range of motion) rather than Olympic lifting (two lifts, dynamic)?

My son boxes I’ve not been able to hold the pads since he was 10! He’s 13 now and much stronger than me.

Mine is the nerdy non sporty skinny lad with hollow bones. It took him a year or two longer. At 12 I could still beat him but at 14 I don't stand a chance.

My guess is you have better technique than them. Arm wrestling has quite a lot of skill to it; it's very far from a pure strength test.

I remember starting in the '90s (IME) it was very much a thing to assume that women and men were basically the same—in the US we had right-wing figures like Newt Gingrich insisting that women shouldn't go into combat because we "got infections," and all that, and there were controversies over women firefighters, etc., so I think in an effort to distance ourselves (well, I was in high school and college) from right-wing men, we overcorrected ever since and have downplayed or denied physical differences, because they get used against us, but now it's to our detriment because liberal feminism denies reality. It's a mess really. I went to the YMCA regularly and there was a wiry man in his 70s who outlifted me easily, no contest.