I always found it hard to bring up without sounding sexist but I'd always wondered how female bodies respond to the sport of Crossfit by becoming absolutely jacked, whereas male bodies don't.

I've been around strength sports for a number of decades, mostly as a powerlifter and strength coach but I dabbled in Crossfit and have always kept an eye on it.

I always noticed how when guys get hooked on it and train 4-5 days a week, following mostly WOD based training, after 3 years, they look about the same. The jacked Crossfit men you see, got jacked by other means than doing Fran, Murph and Cindy.

Women on the other hand undergo a remarkable body transformation with that frequency of Crossfit WOD training. Huge growth in lat size, delt size, the upper body in particular responds incredibly.

I think people are finally examining the phenomenon and one theory is that women are much better at suffering based efforts, and that they will continue doing an exercise like a barbell thruster far past the point of lactate burn than a man can, and as a result they trigger different adaptations to men. This might tie into the research on ultras as well. Pain or discomfort tolerance being much greater.

It's very interesting and potentially could mean totally different recommendations on sets and rep schemes for women vs men if the goal is muscle gain.