A guy over on reddit named grasshoppermouse took the results of the 2011-2012 US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey by the CDC. This study tested the grip strength of over 700 people, a mixture of men and women across a variety of ages.
It probabally wasn’t one of these machines that they used…
He took the results and displayed them visually, each dot represents one person, their age, and how strong they are according to the grip strength test. Granted, grip strength isn’t the be-all-end-all, but it’s the measurement of upper-body strength that they used for this study.
Everyone’s strength was measured using a hand grip dynamometer. Some of the really grips were from people who have disabilities because this study included a nationally-representative group of people from all ages, backgrounds, and fitness levels. The strongest guys (the highest blue circles) are probabally people that are reading this article right now. Is it you? Also, everyone over 80 was grouped together to help keep their identities secret.
Notice the two red spots that are highlighted? The strongest and the weakest guy were both about 35 years old. The weakest guy has a lower grip strength than an 80 year old woman.
There’s some good crossover where the strongest ladies are stronger than the weakest guys, but generally the chart speaks for itself. So what’s this trying to prove? Nothing, it’s just interesting to look at the stats.
When controlling for weight, age, and height, the average female’s grip is 23.3 kg lower than the average males. When you don’t control for these things, the gap is a lot larger, with the average man being able to grip 33.8 kg stronger.
But don’t get it twisted, there’s plenty of really strong ladies out there…
Check em out:
