[Dragon]

Of the record, I have done also martial arts for 15 years and dated a European Champion of a certain punch & kick art. I'm pretty well aware of the differences in a human body at this point, and do remember the massive amount of training she had to do which barely allowed her to go head to head with an average men. Wrestling then, well, that's another thing... I actually never did any wrestling when trying this with a female judoka who had been training a lot (not a black belt though). Surprisingly, I was able to hold my own. Yes, by training, a woman can get stronger than average men. But had that average man been training with the same rate, the woman simply does not stand a chance, and that is the reason why the genders are separated in sports. You want to try this kind of "equality"? Call for genderless sports first and see how far that goes.

What martial art did you train in? Wrestling and some other martial arts depend heavily on physical strength. I've once sparred with a girl who was trained in Judo (I have very minimal "hand to hand" training) and I was able to hold her off until she locked me up "mechanically". I'd literally have to be a body builder to break out of that hold by brute force, and even then, it'd most likely hurt me. There are martial arts which depend entirely on such "mechanical" moves and require little strength. I was amazed when training some basic moves that worked like that form Ju-justu, how easily I could flip a very large, heavy and muscular man who was holding me by my shirt to the floor by applying force the right way.

Genderless sports do exist, though they're rare. The division is there for a similar reason weight classes are used. The point of sport is having a fair contest according to the rules. A featherweight boxer is not in any way an inferior fighter to a heavyweight boxer, but under the rules of box, the latter would have an unfair advantage. Same goes for male and female boxers, especially since the latter have an sensitive area which might be protected in a similar way the area "below the belt" is for everybody. In combat, on the other hand, the point is for the fight to be as unfair as possible and there are very few rules (and even they go out of window once the shooting starts). Also, not even Marines usually push themselves to such limits of their physical capabilities as sportsmen/women. Special forces may, but even then, it's quite different.

A trooper needs to be fit and sustain his/her performance for a long period of time. They only rarely need to push themselves to the limits. On the other hand, a sportsman/woman needs to give everything in a very short period of time. This causes physical limits, also those caused by gender, to be a much more significant factor. You can't really compare sports with combat and military life in general.

Oh, and don't forget that nobody stops women from participating in sports or sparring against men. The fact that they have different rules applied to them in official competitions is because of the aforementioned differences in physical limits and the fact that rules for such competitions are very carefully tailored to make the contest fair.

[Mika]

I meant that she did sparring with her students and equals, not street brawling. One of the biggest issues she said was that in order to get an effective punch against men, she had to put considerably more power behind it and even then that might not cut it - your average family father can produce a surprising amount of power. Additionally, men could routinely trust on just being built tougher and start to trade blows with her, i.e. sacrifice protection and take a hit on some area intentionally to open her guard. Yes, it is a valid tactic, if you can take the hit.

I mainly did traditional kicking and punching arts, mainly a style of kung-fu, but earlier I had three years in a karate derivative. None of this matters though, since I wrestled with judokas before any martial arts training. Wrestling against men was harder, since they really did have more power to move something when they wanted something to be moved. Mechanical locks sort of depend on the adversary not realizing what you are doing, be it due to pain, for the surprise or due to unstable position. If they do, the reversals tend to be a Bad Thing. If somebody really doesn't want to get locked or go in the control position, it is difficult as hell to do that alone assuming you don't want to hurt him much. Police often need two constables to pin an enraged person down to ground, and occasionally even that is not enough.

What it comes to sports giving meaningful comparison on combat, I think you are partially mistaken. The sort of strength you get in wrestling is actually somewhat related to army, since you need to crawl, occasionally quite a bit Also important is to be very very quick in short distances, meaning start from lying down and run about 7-10 metres and get back on the ground as soon as you possibly can - keeping in mind the combat gear weighs about 13 kgs extra, more if you happen to have the RPG. That dash shouldn't take more than 2 seconds. I do recall women having trouble with this since the start stresses upper body strength. Then again, I don't know what my classification would be in other militaries. I could be a specialist for all I know.

Two of the most tiring exercises that I recall had a lot to do with me carrying an RPG and running quite a bit with it. Since then in civil life, I haven't much sports that could be compared to it. Not even 30 km skiing comes close in exhaustion compared to that.

[Dragon]

What it comes to sports giving meaningful comparison on combat, I think you are partially mistaken. The sort of strength you get in wrestling is actually somewhat related to army, since you need to crawl, occasionally quite a bit Also important is to be very very quick in short distances, meaning start from lying down and run about 7-10 metres and get back on the ground as soon as you possibly can - keeping in mind the combat gear weighs about 13 kgs extra, more if you happen to have the RPG. That dash shouldn't take more than 2 seconds. I do recall women having trouble with this since the start stresses upper body strength. Then again, I don't know what my classification would be in other militaries. I could be a specialist for all I know.

The point still stands though. A 2-second "combat dash" with a 13-15kg load is nothing compared to what sportsmen/women have to do. It isn't easy, of course, but well within physical capabilities of an average woman. Maybe she would have to train harder in order to achieve this, but a women willing to do so will be just capable as a man in such a situation. Of course, it's not like sports are completely unrelated to the military (fitness and plain physical strength, if nothing else), but they can't be directly compared. In a hypothetical sports competition involving a sprint in combat gear, women would indeed be at a disadvantage if pitted against men. Of course, this is assuming a professional approach (in which you need to train for years to even rate), not a "boot camp contest" in which the prize is doing a few push-ups less and all the preparation you have is your training so far. In such situation, as well as in actual combat, troopers don't even go near their physical limits. It certainly feels like that sometimes, but it's really little compared to professional sports.

Two of the most tiring exercises that I recall had a lot to do with me carrying an RPG and running quite a bit with it. Since then in civil life, I haven't much sports that could be compared to it. Not even 30 km skiing comes close in exhaustion compared to that.

Try sprinting or running with weights (all Strong Man championships I've seen had this one, and the one Strong Woman I've seen had it, too). In military, you're pretty much forced to do these exercises, which is not the case in amateur sports. You're hardly pushing yourself to the limits on a holiday skiing trip, because you're doing this for fun. Military often forces you to go further than you'd like, but within a reasonable limit. Professional sports are where boundaries of human physical capability are assaulted and that's where you really start seeing any differences between genders that are could not be attributed to different approach to physical strength.

[Mika]

The said combat dash may go on for 300 metres (so you may have to do it 30 times if the strategy happens to suck big time). And still with the equipment. We actually did that in a swamp when the instructor ordered us to (yeah, that's non-commissioned officer school for you). Yes, I do recall seeing women dropping quite far behind on these cases. Ditto during the time of snow. The infantry sort of strength requires both, be very quick short term while you should be able to sustain slower speed with heavier load for longer periods. What it comes to combat, physical limits are certainly reached - not intentionally exceeded during training (since that would be bad and stupid for Defence Forces to maim people in peace time), but they do get close. Yes, I know a soldier should consider the sustainability of operations, but that's not always possible when certain factors start to work against you.

Some of my squaddies started to hallucinate little green men waving at them from the forest during a certain lengthier marching exercise. Needless to say, nobody even suggested giving certain heavier stuff for women participating in the exercise, nor did they offer for help. Performance enhancing drugs were used in last war here, and if I recall, also in the beginning of the current Iraqi operations. My question is, have you ever gone three days with 45 minutes of sleep during the whole exercise while participating in a combat exercise all the time? The tiredness adds in to the exhaustion, and I don't remember much about women participating in that exercise - actually, the whole exercise is sort of sketchy dream world like occurrence, like the aforementioned march as well. I sort of recall having been in an APC that crashed into forest when we were returning. Yes, endurance is halfway psychological, but the lack of sleep, heavy stuff and the soft ground tends to get you quicker, all of them dangerous for a well-trained sportsman/women.

Oh, and that 30 km skiing, that's without water to drink or stopping to catch the breath. Intentionally so, since I sort of wanted a challenge.

[Dragon]

All the above applies to men just as well as to women. I'm not saying women should be expected to reach top scores in such exercises (or perform incredibly badass feats in combat on a daily basis), but I'm pretty sure they can keep up and in general, not rate too much below the average. Unless some crazy feminist politician starts lowering standards (US not being Poland, this is unlikely to happen) to get more women into military, I don't think it'll do any harm to combat units. Since the standards are the same for both men and women, I wouldn't expect an overall performance drop. In fact, as I said, I think that little will actually change, because there are few women both willing and capable of getting into grunts. I don't expect seeing a lot of female machine gunners or grenadiers (though in a country that big, I'd expect that there will be a few), but "lighter" artillery MOSes should get a couple of female recruits.

And of course, that you shouldn't expect women in general to perform incredible feats of strength, it doesn't mean there won't be women doing them. You wouldn't expect a woman to lift an 80kg iron ball either, yet there are some who do that sort of thing for a living, and with a time limit (the aforementioned professional weightlifters). With enough training, a woman can be capable of pulling a TIR, so I think a 300 meter dash isn't exactly outside absolute physical limits of a female body. While you can't compare weightlifters to grunts (as I previously stated), it shows that such capabilities are possible to achieve. Certainly, women will have to get extra training to keep up with men, but knowing DIs, they'd quickly get that training if they fall behind the men. No self respecting DI would let a recruit of any gender lag behind and get out of this without a lot of extra PT or some exhausting, pointless chore.