Sex differences in climbing endurance emerge from combined physiological adaptation and neural strategies
Daniele Borzelli, Kamila Pstrag, Giuseppe Carollo, Beatriz Bachero Mena, Taian Martins Vieira · 2026
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Description
Borzelli and co-authors hang male and female climbers from a training board until their fingers give out. They record the electrical chatter of individual motor units in the forearm to learn why endurance differs by sex. Women often outlast men in such tasks, but whether the advantage sits in the muscle or in the nervous system's strategy was unclear. Their 2026 study used high-density surface electrodes on nine women and thirteen men, intermediate climbers, at two grip depths.
Time to failure did not differ between the sexes despite men's larger builds, which already says the outcome hides the story. Women's muscle signals fatigued more slowly on a standard frequency measure, direct evidence of tougher muscle fibres. Their motor units also fired more variably and intermittently, while men leaned harder on sustained early recruitment of their motor units, especially at the deeper, harder grip.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Daniele Borzelli, Kamila Pstrag, Giuseppe Carollo, Beatriz Bachero Mena, Taian Martins Vieira |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 58 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |