Is it true that women are more flexible than men?

Men have an advantage over women in sports because they're more aggressive and have higher self-esteem, according to Understanding Psychology. The textbook reports that males are more aggressive than females from age 2 through the end of life. On the other hand, women's muscles are more flexible than men's because of hormonal and anatomical differences.

The average range of joint movement and joint flexibility of women is ± 7% better than that of men. As a result, the co-ordination of women is much better than that of men, which make women a lesser injury risk in technical events such as the jumps, hurdles etc. Due to the bigger joint movement and flexibility, women execute advanced techniques such as the fosbury flop in high jump, hurdling and mobility exercises much easier than men.

Because men have broader shoulders than women, and women have broader hips than men, the angles of tendon attachment and muscle alignment are also different. The wider the hips, the more the muscles will lose the efficiency of the muscle pull, resulting in an increased injury risk.

Less obvious but very important skeletal changes are the smaller elbows and smaller carrying ankle in males which makes for greater strength in males.

After puberty, boys surpass girls in all characteristics of athletics performance except flexibility and neuromuscular co-ordination. As a result of the lesser vascular and respiratory capacity of women, men will generally do better in endurance events lasting up to 2 hours. In events lasting longer than 2 hours, women will do better because of their greater natural store of fuel in the form of fat in the body.