Men exhibit greater fatigue resistance than women in alternated bench press and leg press exercises.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of sex, exercise order, and rest interval on neuromuscular fatigue resistance for an alternated strength training sequence of bench press (BP) and leg press (LP) exercises. Twelve women and 16 men, both recreationally trained, performed four sessions in a random order: 1) BP followed by LP with three-minutes rest (BP+LP with rest); 2) LP followed by BP with three-minutes rest (LP+BP with rest); 3) BP followed by LP without rest interval (BP+LP no rest), and 4) LP followed by BP without rest interval (LP+BP no rest). Participants performed four sets with 100% of 10RM load to concentric failure with the goal of completing the maximum number of repetitions in both exercises. The FI was analyzed from the first and last sets of each exercise bout. A main effect for sex showed that women exhibited 25.5% (P=0.001) and 24.5% (P=0.001) greater BP and LP fatigue than men respectively when performing 10RM. Men exhibited greater BP (P<0.0001; 34.1%) and LP (P<0.0001; 30.5%) fatigue resistance when a rest period was provided. Men did not show an exercise order effect for BP fatigue and exhibited greater (P=0.0003; 14.5%) LP fatigue resistance when BP was performed first. The present study demonstrated the greater fatigue resistance of men when performing 10RM BP and LP exercises. Since men tend to experience less fatigue with the second exercise in the exercise pairing, women's training programs should be adjusted to ensure they do not parallel men's resistance training programs.