One other things that I don’t think is ever really considered- muscle memory-in the sense that once you’ve built muscle mass and strength it’s much easier to get it back later if if you lose it rather than building it in the first place
As a teenager I was strong and healthy but building the real extreme strength was a hard long term process but later in life I could slack off for years and then get right back to near peak in a couple months effort-and I doubt many young women try to achieve maximum strength and muscle mass as teenagers
It’s not exactly on topic but it seems relevant
Despite getting a desk job after a stint in the Navy in the early 1960s, he always easily maintained his formidable strength. Even when he was approaching 70, he could still drive a golf ball nearly 400 yards. Despite never having much of a work-out routine in his adult years, maintaining his youthful strength seemed effortless.
I believe that neglecting your physical conditioning in your formative years really sets you back for the rest of your life.
Here is why: It is true that a women can train hard and long to reach the apex of possible fitness for her. She may be at the peak for her sex, age, and weight, and be capable of defeating a male who is not in shape or is older.
But as soon as she stops vigorously exercising, her body will begin regressing immediately, and faster than a male's body would. In far less time, she will be back to ground zero (for her) of her fitness level, and to get back, she will need to train just as long and as hard, or harder, as she originally did.
That is biology at work. Her body is not naturally meant to be muscular and strong the way a man's body would be. She has estrogen flowing through her system, and it will actively work to undo what she has done in the past.
In a combat or military scenario, if a woman is trained to the top of her fitness level that is achievable, if she gets a lower extremity injury, she is not going to be training hard, and will begin regressing faster and more dramatically than a male would.
And this is no small issue.
This article, written back in 2015 by a female Marine (Jude Eden) is a frank discussion by a woman with experience in this: LINK: Women in Combat-A Question of Standards by Jude Eden, USMC)
Women cannot be held to the same standards of men who can simply bear greater weights of packs and equipment due to their greater muscle mass and heavier bone structure. In normal recruit training, with similar standards, females cannot consistently bear the same load as men.
From the article linked above: "...The women averaged eight visits to the medical clinic; the men averaged only 2.5 visits. On the average, women suffered nine times as many shin splints as men, five times as many stress fractures, and more than five times as many cases of tendinitis..."
So, any females who had worked hard to reach a level of fitness that would allow them to inhabit the mid-low regions of capability that men naturally inhabit, were nine times as likely on average to suffer shin splints (a common load-bearing malady) and those women, upon being removed from duty to recover, are going to take longer to regain their prior level of enhanced fitness. On a military base stateside, that is annoying. In a combat theater, that is debilitating to the mission.
This article was from 2015, and references studies done by the US Military in the 1990's. The author of this article knows of what she speaks.