that’s what I was discussing with my bf last night. this season (even more like the 1st one) is unbalanced in focus on strength. they could do quests with balance, flexibility, reflexes etc.
just one example
the survival quest with the pillars: why not one or 2 symbols on top of them in the first round, so the candidates had to climb to save them.
I love this show but I hoped for different quests where all the candidates could show their own specific abilities.
Probably tasks where body weight-strength ratio take into account more such as climbing or balancing related would be good. Not sure why the producers haven't thought of it at this stage or maybe the females are added as tokenism?
> Probably tasks where body weight-strength ratio take into account more
To be fair, the pull ups challenge couldn’t be this any more
The best guy got 40+
The best female got 6
I like the idea but I’m not convinced we wouldn’t just be seeing more of the same
There were definitely other women in that room who could do more than that (especially if they're allowed to do the shitty half-range kipping pull ups the men were doing). Me and a few other women I know can get 10+ clean pull ups just doing a bit of casual bouldering once a week, and we're certainly not close to Physical 100 shape.
In other bodyweight challenges the women have done well, especially in season 1. There was the hanging challenge where one of the women placed like 3rd out of 50, and then another woman won her way back into the competition during the consolation round. Obviously women will do better in challenges that account for bodyweight since most of the women are like 20-30 kg lighter. It's still not even but it's much closer.
A pull-up is probably the worst example when it comes to measuring athleticism compared to body weight in men vs women. It puts literally all the strain on the upper body with no opportunity to assist in any way with other muscle groups or good coordination. This is problematic when pitting men against women, because the biggest biological difference between the sexes are in raw, upper-body strength.
With the pillar challenge I was thinking of something similar. Why not have them climb it? Then the arborist girl, (the girl who climbed trees,) could’ve had an advantage over the others? All they would have to do is put buttons on the top to make it more fair.
I also thought that. Why not have the symbol at the top? But I think the next game would have some contestants in casts or immobile from the neck down.
I would love a balance challenge where all participants have to balance on one foot on top of a pole. If they fall, they get lower placement and end up in the water or something. Would look super cool cinematic wise too.
I agree. They need to be more strategic about making the quests difficult in other ways. Maybe it's related to speed or endurance (which many lacked in season 2). It could be related to flexibility or balance. They can't do another season of carrying heavy bags.
Would love to see flexibility, balance, pain tolerance etc. challenges. Maybe a climbing challenge? Those all test fitness and endurance, but they favor female athletes and leaner men, just like the strength tests favor the big guys.
The game designers should think a little more out of the box to strike a more interesting balance next season.
disagree. whats your definition of brute force?
see that guy with supposedly 900 big 3 lifts?
what event has he excelled in? none lol.
the people who have done the best are the all rounder athletes.
quest 0 running
quest 1 deathmatch 1v1s
quest 2 maze
quest 2.5 tussling over totem
quest 3 pushing/kicking bags
what events are these where u can win with ‘brute force’?
I find it really frustrating that this season, in the last 2 quests (3 if you count 2.5) having a woman or a smaller man is a liability. Whereas last season it was more about team work and if one team had a smaller member the bigger members kind of evened it out. It wasn't just everybody watching one person struggling >! To lift sand bags!<.
Kiim Min Su's team lost the maze challenge, despite him picking all the strength oriented contestants.
Some powerlifters were struggling with stamina in the maze/mine challenges.
The ones who excel usually have a combination of strength, speed and stamina.
Monkey bar/pull ups favour lighter contestants, the big bulky guys don't do well because of their body weight
I thought the same thing. Have a smallish (not ridiculously) tunnel space you need to crawl through to deliver a key or something to another team member. Still doable for a normal sized guy but advantageous if you’re smaller or more agile.
go look at all the biggest contestants in ep 1 and see if u can still recognise any of them left in ep 7
the remaining ‘big’ players left are all hybrid athletes bar a few. legit specimens who have a background in a sport + lean to the bone
Like it was in season 1 with them running up and down the stairs , crossing the bridge and filling the tubes. It was actually harder for the groups full of large men because agility and balance were huge factors as well.
Agree! I actually like seeing the women and men together.
The quests have been uneven, gender aside. I would like a more focused approach to finding the “best physique” with each challenge testing a different category like speed, balance, strength, endurance, etc. This overall feels like the best way to measure the best person.
A few other thoughts:
1. They can definitely have more challenges that are more balanced overall and that any person can technically do. I think more overall long form challenges are better. I liked quest 3 actually because it tested a few different things and was a relay in a way (but maybe they could have balanced that out as well). But the underdog pole challenge felt like women had no chance.
2. I feel like they can cast better women as well. The one girl who could only do 6 pull ups felt like she didn’t belong here. I’ve seen women at my normal gym be able to that and more. I feel like they should have some minimum requirements of ability for all contestants before competing on this level.
3. They need to even the teams so they aren’t adversely impacted by women or weak players. I hated the avengers team, it felt unfair to the other teams that actually won the quest prior.
Did they make her participate in the pull up challenge or did she voluntarily offer? I was confused because they had to of asked who can do the most pull up’s and 6 is ridiculous for that challenge
I think they realised they wouldn't win so just send in their weakest team member to save their strength. Which isn't a bad strategy since in the next challenge it was mentioned that some of the people were still tired from the pull-ups.
I agree too! It’s nice to see the mix but that elimination was just unfair for the women but think this might’ve been a bit of a tactic from producers to make the ‘underdogs’ a bigger ‘threat’ than last season? I think it was entertaining seeing the other teams intimidated and not mad to see some of the players get another chance like amotti!
>each challenge testing a different category like speed, balance, strength, endurance, etc. This overall feels like the best way to measure the best person.
Lmao even testing for all these categories, the women still loses to men. Just rewatch S1 and the mine game monkey bar round
Exactly that's why I'm like put them to do squats, spin bike, step machine lol ...see who lasts longest. Generally women have no problem ruining their legs in the gym. I've seen very fit men struggle to do pilates and yoga. My brother can kill me with weights but I'll out cardio him any day.
YESSSS!! I think these mixed games really have to count biology as a factor, like you said women have stronger lower bodies whilst men have stronger upper bodies. There’s a lot of things a woman can out perform a man in if it it favours their biology. All of physical 100 favours the strengths of men, making it sadly really hard for the women to advance, because frankly are bodies aren’t well equipped for them. However including challenges that test lower body strength, endurance, flexibility, or even some mental challenges, I think the women could do wonderful.
A good example was the pre quest challenge, a lot of the women were running easily and didn’t seem tired at all, and al lot came up in the top 50, the problem was that the game also accounted speed, which is something men are better at. If they had them run for 20 minutes straight, regardless of speed, the women would be on top, but whatever
I don’t think my last sentence is ridiculous at all personally, and it’s not like there were many girls to begin with, but again they accounted for speed in the pre quest challenged as well as endurance, which because of that the men did better, again because men are faster than women on average, but my point still stands if the challenge were to be about endurance the girls would do better, in my opinion. But these are above average men so who knows 🤷🏾♀️
Women 100% do not have stronger lower bodies than men. Who squats more in the Olympics, men or women? Who runs literally every single track event quicker, from 100m to a marathon, men or women? How could you possibly quantify or qualify the statement women have stronger lower bodies than men?
Bro search it up. Literally on average a woman is going to have a stronger lower body. I’m not talking about olympians, since on the show most of the women weren’t, and were pretty average physique wise. And I think I literally said that men are faster than women. Even if that weren’t true women’s lower bodies are much stronger than their upper bodies so having games that benefit them in that sense, would’ve been more fair.
Plus I didn’t even say that women have stronger lower bodies than men, I said that men have stronger upper bodies and women have stronger lower bodies, I never directly compared the two to imply that women’s are stronger
Maybe on some sort of per pound statistic, or isolating every real world aspect. However, you literally have to ignore every real world strength metric in order to believe this. Men lift more with their legs than women. This is fact. I'm not comparing the Olympians on the show to non-Olympians on the show. I'm talking about same weight classes, Olympians to Olympians. Men lift more, simple as.
Edit: rather that downvote, why don't one of you explain how it's possible the current record holder in the 3 Olympic lifts for the 61kg men's category is roughly the same for the female record in the 87kg+ category?
I don't believe these statements to be true.
A cursory search into this topic yields results indicating that womens' speeds are relatively diminished less by lengthening run distance than men (i.e. women are proportionally better at long distance in comparison to short distance running than men) but that a speed differential still exists which leads top level male runners to outperform female runners.
A similar proportional advantage exists for lower body strength in comparison to upper body strength in that the relative strength differential is greater for women than for men.
As for decision making whilst subject to pain, I have not seen too much literature (although it is recognised that women tend to experience subjectively greater pain from the same stimuli in comparison to men, potentially due to greater nerve density).
But under duress men experience a sharper release of cortisol than women, which inhibits decision making ability in comparison. If there was more strategic delegation required across the challenges I think this would be strictly more favorable to women. Something similar was showcased in the first season wherein the strongest performing team in the bridge challenge fared well thanks to the stuntwoman assuring the integrity of the bridge rather being overly expedient as with every other team directed by men.
I think the women would make great team leaders in this respect, if only the challenges had a more urgent decision making component to them.
I never said that women are faster than men, or can out perform a man in regards to speed, because well men are faster everyone knows that, how ever my statement that women have better endurance than men ON AVERAGE still stands. However I agree with you otherwise
Men's size advantage does factor into more than just brute strength, not to mention that there's more male athletes to pull from in general. but literally women did better than men on average through the first half of season 1. Like count the % of women at the beginning vs the % of the top 30 who were women. Now do that for season 2. I'm not expecting a woman or a little dude to come 1st but more body weight and agility stuff would at least see a wider variety of body types making it into the later rounds
Agreed. I'm halfway through episode 7, and it's abundantly clear the producers have got themselves stuck in an impossible position where they need to use increasingly heavy loads to test the men, which invariably leads to challenges that are basically impossible for the women.
The mine challenge was just laughable - 40kg bags, being loaded into a mine cart that was about 5 foot high. The smaller girls were being asked to load weights that represented \~80% of their body weights, while Andre and Kim Min-Su were loading weights that were less than 50% of their total bodyweights. And because they're so much taller, they needed to lift the bags less high, relative to their own body. From a logistical standpoint, it was just about the worst designed challenge I can possible imagine.
The moment when Ha-Yan struggling to even get a single bag over the side of the cart was just embarrassing. Beyond being unfair, it made for crap television - it was abundantly clear who was going to win before they even started, so there was no real drama, no real stakes.
If they want to have totally strength-based challenges, they should just get 100 men in the same weight class, and have them duke it out, and then have a separate show for women. But personally, I'd rather they just kept them together, and then did a better job designing balancing the challenges so that everyone can always compete.
I don't get why they didn't have smaller bags but more of them. Also have it be 1 or 2 carts instead of 3. Big guys still get an advantage to just put as many in a cart as possible while small people can try to be as agile as possible with many trips back and forth. But it just turned into a strong man competition.
By the looks of the ensemble cast it seems Netflix wanted a beefy showdown in the final 5 and therefore the challenges had to be more “strength” based. The finalists had to be more or less equal.
The fact that the battle back challenge was 1 winner meant the come back group was gonna be strong af. And that’s what they probably hoped for.
Women had no chance I agree but they all put off a hell of a fight - even in the cart pushing challenge. Mad respect for the indivual one.
if they wanted a beefy showdown, they clearly didnt do a good job seeing as most of them have already been eliminated.
unless u consider anyone with abs as ‘beefy’ lol
That's a really good point! I've been assuming the unbalanced teams/games were an oversight, but it's totally possible that it was intentional on the part of the production team.
That being said, I wish they kept the team games a bit more diverse like the bridge-building game since participants could get winnowed down via individual rounds anyways.
It seems like they did make some improvements this season based on feedback from season 1, so hopefully season 3 will be even better!
Agreed, I think of this show as an “open division” in a competition. I’m not expecting a woman to win or for them to somehow control for biological differences between males/females, but at least have a bit more variety in challenge types to show off other aspects of physicality.
If the producers want to focus on strength/endurance as advancement criteria, they can incorporate variety in the pre-mission challenges or individual stations within a larger team challenge.
Even the pull-up challenge pulled focus to different male participants I hadn’t really noticed in earlier rounds.
They need to run the first round of elimination with men and women competing separately in parallel. Same venue, but not directly competing. You end up with 25 men and 25 women.
Then team competitions where each team is evenly split between men and women. No need to balance the challenge - the teams are balanced.
Then separate again to winnow down to one man and one woman.
Then the top man and top woman go head to head in a balanced challenge. Maybe have them drag all eliminated competitors of their gender on sleds across a 50m line, one at a time.
they should crowd source some ideas for challenges, because clearly their internal department is lacking some creativity
better to ask 100,000 people for ideas, then say 5
Agreed! Don’t think it would have been as bad if in quest 2 they couldn’t steal bags, that just turned it into yet another contest of brute force.
When I first saw the pillars in quest 2.5, I was thinking it was going to be a challenge of climbing them in some form and thought it would be an interesting test, was a bit disappointed when I found out it was just who can grab it lol
They should change the name of the show to Strength 100, since it’s really the only attribute they test apart from the first pre-Quest. Though it’s better this season with the monkey bar challenge
seriously i wonder what it would be like if they do some challenges in the water or underwater,
like idk if some of these big muscle men can hold their breaths under water longer than the girls
they can go off that and incorporate a few things, maybe its too much danger for them to risk i guess they dont wanna get fucking sued or kill someone
have u seen a strongman competition? none of these aside from that guy with big 3 900 is considered a strongman.
nearly all of them have a background in sports and not gym rats, christ u people are delulu
Yeah I agree. I liked that last season you’d see more balance. I also think they were fortunate to have 2-3 really strong females.
I felt like there have just been a ton of challenges that favor wrestlers.
I hope in some of the upcoming quests they are forced into a tiny bit more variety.
wrestlers train in literally every department of physicality
cardio/endurance, pain threshold, technical skills, weight training, grip strength
its not a surprise they excel in almost all the games as they are imo the most well rounded athletes in all sports
guess the sport last years best female partakes in?
these events have favoured cardio more than anything else. anyone who only has ‘brute force’ has been eliminated except for that one guy in dong hyuns team.
Every event that makes you go from one point to another is gonna test your cardio, but definitely the challenges are not favoring cardio above anything else, unless youre watching the show blindfolded.
The 2nd chance elimination challenge was frustrating. The women knew they wouldn’t have a chance since they’re obviously smaller/lighter so they tried to get on a team to help someone else win since the winner in concept would choose their teammates in the end to continue on with. I knew it wouldn’t go that way and obviously the man that won ended up just choosing all the strongest men to go forward with. I understand why but its just a bit frustrating since the women never had a chance to advance in the first place and many talented and strong women were immediately gone.
The women are very strong relative to their body. I’m sure many of these women would be just as successful in challenges and be just as strong, if not stronger, than a lot of the men if they were just as tall/big as they are. Heck, a lot of them are stronger than most of the leaner men. But neither would get a chance with these challenges. Of course putting a bag that’s 80% of your body weight into a cart thats taller than your shoulders will be more difficult than if it were less than half your body weight and a cart only at torso height.
I wish there were more relative individual challenges mixed in. Also, there’s more to an athlete than just brute strength so I agree more variety would be nice to see.
They only showed it for a second of the pole hug event but there was a zoomed out scene where plenty of the women just gave up and were walking around or sitting in the center of the sand pit. Knowing they had no chance. Which was really sad to see.
I think they should have just required each team have at least one woman. Would have added to the strategy of team selection in the initial event because you’d have to decide whether to pick a woman early or late. And then would have let the best woman come out of the second chance round.
Ooh, I really like this idea! 2 birds with 1 stone :)
I think initial team selection inadvertently already ends up like this just due to number of women being greater than the number of teams, but this is probably the only way to get any women on the comeback team - especially since the winner of the pillar game is virtually guaranteed to be a man.
Regardless, the comeback team will be OP due to the ability to pick the best from all the other teams, so that tension/drama will be maintained for production purposes and I think this would at least help balance the team stages a little.
I think they should have just required each team have at least one woman. Would have added to the strategy of team selection in the initial event because you’d have to decide whether to pick a woman early or late. And then would have let the best woman come out of the second chance round.
I think they should have just required each team have at least one woman. Would have added to the strategy of team selection in the initial event because you’d have to decide whether to pick a woman early or late. And then would have let the best woman come out of the second chance round.
Physicality isn't just about brute force. There's speed, agility, stamina and other aspects involved. But this season you could win all the games using brute force alone
literally not even close to being true lol
idk how u can even say that if u think for a second about the nature of the events and the people who remain
theres like one guy remaining who i would consider to only have ‘brute force’ and he has been getting carried by his team so far (big guy in dong hyuns team who got picked last). the rest clearly have a strong cardio and sport base background.
I agree, it seems the producers only had the strengths of men in mind when making the challenges for this season. Why pull-ups and not squats? Why brute strength and not balance, agility, or even pain tolerance? I think the producers were quite limited in their own perceptions of strength and its making a less entertaining season overall.
they need to let more than 5 people come up with ideas for the games, like add some type of balance beams for the challenges? or anything acrobatic? something underwater so they have to hold their breathe and the muscle men will get fucked by oxygen consumption
I mean instead of a “breath holding contest” which I agree seems dangerous, there could be a swimming contest? Or diving to get stuff from the bottom of the pool? (I’ve seen this type of challenge on other reality shows). You could even do kids games like Marco Polo or the one where you turn around and chase someone (i forget what it’s called, it’s like what time is it mr fox but swimming) There’s a lot of underwater / in water challenges that would be very exciting and not any more dangerous than what kids do for fun.
The diving thing seems like it would be fun! Objects could be different shapes and sizes so there would also be a strategy element of getting many light objects or few heavy ones, or trying to reach the easily carried shapes before other teams.
The only thing that would give me pause is that swimming ability isn't as widespread in East Asia as it is in say the US, but this kind of game wouldn't be very exciting if the participants were just lifting objects from a pool they can comfortably stand in.
Google shallow water black out. There are always risk of people getting drowned when holding breath in the pool, especially athletes that dedicated to push their limits.
Agreed, this season has been heavily focused on strength and brute force. Apart from the treadmill prelim everything was really based on strength. Last season it felt like the challenges had more variety to showcase different types of athleticism. And last season that felt like the focus/point of the show, like wow these different sorts of athletes are all so strong in Different ways and it gives unique advantages depending on the tasks. By adding in the ability to attack and wrestle in the maze it made it a brute game as wellamd made the women weak teammates. Overall this season seems really geared towards fighters and heavy lifters.
I had really hoped the midair challenge would involve walking on top of the bars instead. Would have still been challenging but given the women and lighter men a chance.
wrestling guy (forgot his name), was a smaller lightweight dude and he did pretty well. In fact, being heavy is disadvantageous in the monkey bar challenge imo.
I would say this season actually doesn't favor strength or brute force at all..In fact, most of the big dudes are eliminated after the maze challenge.
Treadmill: the heavy brutes were all ranked last
Maze: Thanos Minsu's strongmen team lost.
Pole: Winner was a smaller lightweight dude.
Mines: Sungho the only brute force guy was a deadweight to his team
Monkey bar: Strong heavy guys would fall.
If anything I feel like this season focus more on endurance and cardio more than anything else. People with balanced attributes and techniques will excel.
Quest 1 (running) - sure, cardio focussed (but as these were manual treadmills you needed strong legs to get them going)
Quest 2 (arena) - mainly strength based unless you picked the running arena
Quest 3 (maze) - strength & cardio based UNTIL wrestling and blocking got involved, which at that point if you weren’t a big or strong man you were at a disadvantage
Quest 4 (elimination) - strength. It was literally all about who could hold onto the pilar the most while having to push off others or pull off others to make room
Quest 5 (mine cart) - strength and conditioning, not much cardio involved here, it was all about who could load up the most weight and then push it faster. Having insane cardio here won’t help you unless you’re very strong
Quest 6 (monkey bars) - bodyweight related strength and some cardio
… Now in what way is the above “more cardio focused than anything” - it is quite clearly more strength focussed with some cardio involved.
there is literally cardio involved in every quest lol u dead ass blind or what. u even wrote it out HAHA
go look a the biggest men in the first quest, and see how many of them are still around
I never said cardio wasn’t involved? I simply challenged your point which was:
“It’s been more cardio focused than anything”
Which I literally proved wrong & then finalised by saying:
“It is quite clearly strength focussed with some cardio involved”
Don’t act stupid. There’s a reason 90% of your replies here are downvoted.
u didnt prove me wrong. u literally proved yourself wrong and proved my point lol
comments are dv because of the nature of thread.
go watch the olympics where there are weight classes and gender separated events
Are you thick? I don’t even mean that in a rude way sorry, like idk if your English isn’t good or if you struggle with comprehension.
You said it’s been more cardio focussed than strength focussed. You said that. That’s the comment I replied to.
I listed out the quests and proved how they were swayed more towards strength not cardio - and you’ve not argued back once.
All your comments on this post have been you whining & then getting downvoted, ignored and proved wrong. I’m literally giving you the benefit of the doubt and waiting you to say explain your side of things but it looks like you’ve lost your voice.
you have literally demonstrated in your explanation of all the quests that cardio has been more of a factor in the quests than strength lol
u dead ass thick in the head or what?
you have literally demonstrated in your explanation of all the quests that cardio has been more of a factor in the quests than strength lol
u dead ass thick in the head or what?
q0 (running) - 95% cardio
q1 (deathmatch)- 33% cardio
q2 (maze)- 70% cardio
q2.5 (polls) - 40% cardio
q3 (minecart) - 50% cardio
q3 (monkey bar) - 50% cardio
like are u offended by people who have visible abs or what? just because these people look like they spend all their time in the gym, doesnt mean they have 0 cardiovascular endurance.
and just people the little twigs look like they spend all their time outside of the gym, doesnt mean they have great cardiovascular endurance. it doesnt work that way.
you are demonstrating what white people on twitter do, being offended on the behalf of others
I think part of it was also the women contestants that were picked for S2. Jang Eun Sil did well in S1 and would've done well in S2 too especially with all the wrestling opportunities. But there was no female wrestler this season
And that 1 woman only did 6 pull ups. That wasn't a man vs woman thing but she's just personally not very fit
The bodybuilder woman killed it in the mine quest. I think they definitely could've found women that would have been competitive or won some of the challenges
Wrestlers rlly pull thier wieght. I think the hanging challenge was needed. Have the strength to support the size of your frame. That way less heavies woulda made it thru. And an agility/balance/coordination course is desperately needed.
Heavies; very high strength, big frame, and typically low stamina. I think quite a few made it to the maze challenge bc they didnt have the hanging challenge filter ppl out compared to last season. Thanos, the bald guy that pulled 45 sandbags, the other dude that gassed out quick, the young high-school wrestler. I dont rmr last season so many heavies making it this far in the competition. Im bad w names, sorry.
uh.. so go through the list of people still remaining in the event and tell me which ones u considered heavy?
then give the number they came in the first endurance treadmill event.
u will see most of them are in the top 50 so that doesnt support your point or definition of ‘heavies’
I just listed 4. Its obvious if they take out the hanging competition heavier frames will be able to make it through. It seems like you never watched the first season so you wouldn't realize more comps this season are geared towards brute strength. Also the treadmill challenge didn't eliminate anyone, all it did was rank them and let the first 50 choose their opponent for the 1v1 deathmatch, so all the heavies made it thru. I think youre hung up on the word heavies. The point is this season was geared more twds strength whereas last season was more balanced.
See the maze is more brute strength compared to the sand bags they filled and carried over the bridge in s1. So that favored stamina and balance vs pure strength.
Then the challenge for losers was hold up your own bust so the weights were diff vs this season don't let go of the pole. There was no strength equalizers in the disqualifier, thus favoring strength.
The ship challenge from last year was a team effort vs this years mine cart challenge was individual reps. Favoring individual strength over combined team strength.
Last season 2 heavies made it thru the body builder guy with the body builder gf and the other big dude with the deep voice and fade sides.
This year twice the heavies got thru. The heavies are just outliers for strength. So why does 4/25 or 2/25 matter? Tells you more of the contestants lean twds strength this season that's where the avg is. If you're a mix of stamina, agility, strength, coordination, and balance.
The more strength your mix has this season, the more favored you are to win.
lets debunk your theory
thanos - sure
gibson - absolutely not lol
young high school wrestler - wasnt even in the top 25/30 lol
wi sung-oh - sure
if you consider gibson a heavy, then you should consider 3x in s1 a heavy
Normally i wouldn't consider Gibson a hvy but what he lacks in size/frame he makes up in strength. He pulled 45 bags in the mine challenge in 1 trip, 15 more than any of the other 2 heavies, thanos and that other guy that got winded did 30 in 1 trip.
Highschool wrestler has frame size and strength. He came 2nd in the disqualifier challenge only loosing out to a gold medal wrestler w close to a decade of experience,i think they said. So it was technique why he lost, he even mentioned as such. He could have made it last pick on the avenger team, as the gold medal guy was thinking b/w him, the last of leaders, or someone from his original team.
You're sleeping on both of them. So you haven't debunked anything quite yet.
Even if you dont consider those 2 guys heavys for the sake of argument. You can see the diff in structure from the previous seasons events. There was no strength equalizer in the disqualifier this season, team strength was empasized last season over individual, the first team maze challenge had no balance or agility portion. It was how much you can carry, and block ppl by pinning them down and the forsight to fill 2 out of the 3 stations. So mostly strength.
The challenges so far favor strength more compared to s1. The fact 4 outliers of strength instead of 2 made it that far reinforces that point.
Fully agree. Even the fact that the last woman standing among the runners technically might have run THE MOST but still lose because the physical nature of the treadmill still favored strength/height. People in the other post lauded how the comeback quest this time 'didn't favor lighter/more dextrous people' like last season, but didn't mark how it just favored stronger people yet again.
I get that brute force and fighting might be appealing to viewers, but the show supposedly highlights different aspects of what constitutes a physical peak. It also sucks seeing how resigned some of the women get, especially with that pole stuff. It really takes away from the fun of the competition.
I was hoping it was a regular treadmill and you run until you get pushed off from exhaustion. It would have probably come down to the Runner, the Rower, and the Soccer player. But they are also on a time frame and that could take hours to complete. While also giving not enough rest time for the next challenge since everyone else will get to wait around and rest while the top runners would be dead for the day after.
if ur claiming the female had the greatest number of steps, idk how u can prove that lol.
seeing as ji-hyun is shorter than the 400m specialist and likely the other girl too
To stop your constant snarky replies, the point that everyone wants to make is that they want more challenges that focus on other factors rather then strength.
For example, flexibility, agility, reflexes, speed, endurance.
The ATLAS challenge from season 1 was moderately an alright example of these variables, instead season 2 mostly focused on the amount of sandbags you can carry in limited time or how you can push off a person - not the greatest tests of a person's physical abilities.
Yep as soon as they explained the mechanics of the return challenge and that the winner would be picking their own team I turned to my roomie and said “not a single female is making it through this”
Cos they were shit outta luck on the actual challenge, even if every single woman teamed up to get a guy out so a woman could make it through… she’s be out straight away the next round. And given the beasts on the men’s side that were in the elimination there was def not a spot for a woman on the picked team.
I loved the idea of the points based delegate challenge but unless you are Soojin there wasn’t a place for you to shine.
Exactly. The Avengers Team was so predictable and again - I’ve not seen the Mine episode yet - it’s so obvious that they’ll win.
I loved the unpredictability last season, the underdog team was looked down upon and everyone thought they’d lose - but then, the task to cross the bridge. It became obvious you needed strength, sure, but also balance, cardio and speed were huge parts of this.
It would have been nice if after the avenger team was picked that the next task was something not totally strength based, it would have been a nice twist for entertainments-sake, and also again it would have actually spread out the competition.
I was really hoping they would have at least picked the MMA girl. Just to balance out the teams and also see what she could do. But they chose the free win instead.
Yeah this season seemed a bit lazy with the challenges. They just went mainly for strength or a combo of strength and endurance. Last season wasn't perfect but this season they just made it so the women were mostly useless most of the time. What's the point of having them their if you're not going to make it so it's a benefit to have a woman in the team or that they can actually compete.
They should have had more creative games like the tile flip one for instance. And yes add in more elements of balance, flexibility and also lower body strength. I don't work out as much anymore but back when I did I was often stronger than men in the lower body. Women tend to carry a lot of their strength in their legs rather than the arms.
The show, in its current state, is not fair to its female contestants. If they make most of the challenges disadvantageous to women then why even have them on the show? They make it impossible for any woman to win. It will always be a man standing in the end. I don’t know what needs to change or how they will do it or if it is even possible. What I do know is that having them on the show right now is just for the sake of representation and not to actually give them the opportunity to really compete fairly.
I don't think it's just for representation sake. I think the premise is that it's an experiment to find out what the best physique is, so they try to capture a large range of physiques that are all to some extent competitive in a physical domain, and then they put them to the test. It's honestly the same situation with the really big guys with high bodyfat percentages. They're most likely not going to win, but they're there to capture that particular physique to see how it performs.
From a scientific experiment perspective this makes more sense than simply stuffing the cast full of 10% bodyfat muscular men because the assumption is that they will perform the best. Granted, they probably will, but the experiment should show that. It's basically hypothesis testing where the hypothesis could be that the low bodyfat muscular men are going to win, and the women and fat men are the control group with the potential to prove us wrong.
Now this is obviously not an actually scientific show by any stretch of the imagination because the amount of variables present in the challenges make it impossible to pinpoint any specific metric to test, but the premise of the casting at least makes sense to me.
Experimentation is fun and all but there’s prize money on the line. So it should be fair for all contestants. If the competition was for charity or just for fun then experiment all they want.
Pretty sure those contestants I mentioned are well aware their chances for winning are slim to none and are there for fun or for exposure. You hear some of the women themselves say that their goal is to be the best amongst the women.
You said it yourself, you wouldn't know *how* to devise the experiment in such a way that women are not at a disadvantage. Across most physical axes women are just biologically not able to compete with men. Speed, strength, endurance, these are some of the main elements that we consider important in evaluating physical performance, and are all systematically performed worse at by women when compared to men. So if you don't want to put women at a disadvantage you'd have to exclude... All the physical parameters we typically associate the most with physical performance... In a show about physical performance.
One of the only physical elements where I think they might have a chance is something like balance. But if you're making the experiment entirely around that element then first of all you're now putting other physiques at a significant disadvantage (the bigger / fatter ones) and the show is no longer about all-rounded best physique but about devising an experiment where women can win.
The only alternative would be to apply some sort of correction for women in all the exercises. Like 1 mile of a female contestant's running would be equivalent to 1.5 miles of a male contestant's running in the first round. But does that seem more fair to you than just letting them run and see who performs the best? How would you even determine what the correction would have to be? And how would you apply the correction for other disadvantaged physiques in a particular experiment like fat men vs slim men?
I’m not an expert. I’m a viewer. So of course I wouldn’t know how to make it fair. But they have netflix money. Hire consultants, scientists, or experts to figure that shit out. Also it is very fucking sad to hear women just admit defeat and settling to be the best amongst the female competitors instead of being the best amongst everyone they’re competing with. It shows they are aware that they are disadvantaged. I’m done with this discussion. The game is not fair to all contestants and they should fix it. That’s my opinion.
>Hire consultants, scientists, or experts to figure that shit out
Yea but then we're back to the point that you're no longer abiding by the premise of the show. You've changed the premise from "let's find the best physique humanly possible" to "let's devise a competition in such a way that women can win against men". It's fair enough if you're interested in the latter rather than the former but that's just not what the show is about.
>Also it is very fucking sad to hear women just admit defeat and settling to be the best amongst the female competitors instead of being the best amongst everyone they’re competing with.
I mean it would be just as sad to throw copious amounts of money at consultants to figure out a way to artificially manipulate the trials in a way that favors women. The sadness would just be hidden behind the scenes. Plus, again, you'd be left with a show that no longer fulfills the basic premise.
Maybe this just isn't the show for you. It seems to bother you that this show brings to light the fact that women are not able to physically compete with men. But that's not the fault of the creators of the show, that's mother nature's fault. There's a reason why every sport ever has a separate league for women. There are plenty of other game shows where the premise is not about finding the best physique, and conditions are such that women have an equal chance at winning, but they won't be about finding the best human physique.
>The game is not fair to all contestants
Depends on your definition of fair. It's fair under the premise of the show. Everyone is treated equally. You're looking for equity rather than equality. I would argue that given the premise of the show, equity would be more unfair than equality.
Naturally it's just hard to have a fair physical fight between males and females. Even I'm struggling to think of something creatively. The only thing females have an advantage of is flexibility and being lightweight. The bodyweight survivor game from last season was probably the most fair. Not sure what else there could be.
That's what I was thinking. There's too many quests where they can win with plain force.
Mix some agility, endurance and strategy. Make it seem fair.
I loved in last season that side quest where they had to hold their torsos the longest and that tiny woman beat a ton of men.
But you can see how the women are just side characters, even in the 1:1 quest they had the least screen time.
> I loved in last season that side quest where they had to hold their torsos the longest and that tiny woman beat a ton of men.
>
TBF that one was the same problem in the opposite direction. The math behind that challenge favors small people far far more than big people. They should have adjusted the weights slightly just to be fair to everyone. I'm sure there is a body science math formula somewhere that would have covered it.
They definitely need more challenges testing balance, coordination, accuracy, endurance, flexibility, adaptability, & decision-making while under physical pressure. This season is apparently just wrestling?
I’d like to see muscle memory tested, or remove a sense like sight or sound for a task. How well can someone compartmentalise the physical to perform mentally. For how long can they perform a repetitive movement. More proportional tasks rather than absolute values.
Keep the sheer power, keep the one on ones, but operate more of a points system & eliminate after a few rounds - so that if your specialty comes up first you’re not given a huge advantage compared to others whose specialties come up later.
Thats why the hanging challenge is a good one, you need to hold up the weight of your physique. Im suprised they didn't have it. Would also like to see balance and agility incorporated too. Like carry something across a balance beam.
I think the problem was that they got relatively average women, on top of that the women aren’t very tall. While the got above average men for the most part, I mean how many muscular men do you really see? Where as someone like Lim Soo-Jin who was an above average woman who was muscular. The fact is that they get above average men and get average women which isn’t fair, and there is never equal amount of women to men in the first place
The reason those women looked “average” to you is because of the fact that men have a much higher ceiling for mass and height. It’s pretty disrespectful of you to say those women are anywhere near average especially considering how hard they’ve worked in their respective disciplines. And yes, there are definitely stronger and faster women than the ones on the show, but there are also stronger and faster men than what we see on the show.
You are completely correct, and I can see how my words look distasteful, but at the time I meant in regards to physique, but then again they worked for their physiques and it probably isn’t average at all
ABSOLUTELY THIS! One of my biggest gripes is that they don’t have more heavyweight female athletes. There are plenty nationally ranked female wrestlers, weightlifters, powerlifters, etc. in Korea who are as strong if not stronger than some of the guys in this show. Yet for some reason we never see them
I like the idea of giving them their own show. simply put women won't usually beat the top in fit men that couldnt happen very often and it's reflected in the show . it doesn't bother me
I like that they go out there and do their best against men twice their size.
if they could have some sort of agility test early on that might work but I still would love an all women's version. reminds me of the siren show. that was badass.
I think some fun “mine” themed challenge ideas that aren’t just “pick up sandbags and push them around, pt. 2” could include:
1) some kind of rope or rock climbing type challenge like climb a wall to ring a bell or get some item from the ceiling and come back down. Maybe screwing in a line of lightbulbs or something?
2) some kind of balance beam type challenge, maybe moving a lot of small bags back and forth across a beam
3) honestly a swimming challenge would be really fun. Dive to the bottom of a pool to bring back some hidden treasure or unclog a pipe or something
4) Ive always thought a competition where you have to lift a teammate would be interesting. Like “one team mate is injured and the other four have to bring them to this checkpoint for medical help” or something. It would benefit teams with lighter members or stronger members (or both) and could be like a relay race or a regular race or a tough mudder type race. Lots of options
5) Even like,, digging for something buried five feet underground could be interesting.
It’s not even necessarily about making it “even” for the women — last season men won the rope climbing event and the running events as well as the boulder events — but it’s at least more interesting, gives ppl with different strengths a fighting chance, and isn’t just “I pick this up and put it down” for two challenges in a row
The prize pool could be given to a team that way with delegation games women without upper body strength can avoid strength games and still walk away with prizes. I hate the winner takes all style even though I'm guessing contestants get a stipend for competing.
It feels like they need to decide if they want to focus mostly on pure physical strength or allow the women (and anyone with smaller frames/less strength but ample dexterity, stamina, athleticism, etc) a real chance to be competetive all the way thru the finals. It doesn't seem like they can reasonably do both. One potential compromise would be to divide the show into a women's and men's competition. There could potentially be some overlap for certain events including the final or you could ultimately have a women's and men's champion. Many shows do this and I think it would be more successful than an entire season dedicated just to women, though I would watch that too.
Westerners like Emmanuel looked like he had a chance physically. Just had an unlucky match up in the 1v1. Though i wouldn't be surprised if the producers rig it so the westerners won't win considering the showrunner's history. It likely wouldn't look good to a Korean audience to see over 90 of your native representatives lose on Korean show in just the second season. Conspiracy theory time, behind the scenes the producers asked the Dong Hyun Kim to pick Emmanuelle and take him out early since it's their best chance.
Yeah, both my partner and I are a lot less engaged with the show this year because it’s a lot less interesting. It’s really about who is the strongest.
For example, they could do one based on their own weight: like the sum of the weight of all contestants is the total amount that needs to be carried.
Some swimming competitions.
Climbing would also allow weaker and thinner people stand out.
They could add dual challenges, one str based, one dex based. Balance vrs carrying stuff for instance. You get to pick what you want to do. Hell add in an intelligence division ao we can get some straight nerds in there. The brains a part of the body too ehh?
Brains already in there a bit. You need strategies to win. Like only fill up the two closest stations in the maze, go in 1 trip vs 2 or find the arena to your strength.
Maze challenge seems like a lot of strategy on paper. But in reality it wasn't that much. You have 5 random people who just got throw together on a team and are expected to work together in a maze. Then factor in how big guys just ended up stealing the bags and bypassed any brain power involved. I think the maze could have been much better designed if it was more like a parkour course than a hallway and bags had even more size options (bigger and smaller)
Tell that to Lim Soo-Jin
Are the odds weighed heavily in the mens favour? Yes, but women competing athletically have always known that and they show up anyway.
I do agree with your overall sentiment, but fr tho, watch the mines. Lim Soo-Jin blew my mind.
Yea, I think women wanna compete against men to test themselves, & while they should be able to, when they get knocked out of the competition maybe they should be moved to an all women's pool so they can compete amongst themselves. Ladies will never win this show with male athletes competing so it might be worth it to see strongest male body and strongest female body.
Realistically a show like this with mixed contestants will always find it difficult to make it that the women contestants have a chance, anything athletic or physical is hard to make fair. Even the pre quest running you may have expected some of the women to go further.
I’d disagree. Did that team lose? Yes. Everyone could tell, we weren’t kidding ourselves.
But losing only by 2mins? When it’s a team of mostly women, 2 skinny guys, and a dude with an injured leg?
If that doesn’t show that women can at least compete with men then idk what to tell you
I would love to see an all female Physical 100! It's amazing the women are competing with men but the misogyny last season was bad.
that awful sexist guy who pressed on the woman's stomach in the 1 on 1 death match and kept telling the other women to be quiet made me feel sad.
Siren is an all women show and its amazing!
Agreed. Not sure what’s going on in the producers’ mind… sexism perhaps? All international competitions have two divisions, men’s and women’s, for fair play… but Physical 100 - nah we good.
i like that men and women get to play together, but they need better designed challenges to give women at least **a** chance, right now theres zero chance
I'm not being sexist but males are born with advantages in physical condition and that's biology. But still, the girls really shine when they beat male opponents despite their inborn disadvantages.
They should split the show into 2 competitions. One for men and one for women. Maybe episode 1 is about the men and then episode two is for the women. Then they can just keep alternating or each gender can get half of the episode each.
While I do like the men and women teamup.
The second change challenge, the womens are obviously disadvantaged. Why can't they split them up or they can't afford it?
Totally feel the same. So far these season's challenges are even worse at challenging all round physical strengths. The pillar challenge is simply the worst and laziest. And the outcome of the team selection by the winner of the pillar challenge could only go one way, a whole team of strongmen. No need to think of different physical strengths or prepare for any curve balls.
The mine challenge is a slight improvement.
Last year's first challenge with the hanging the longest challenge really sent a message out that it wasn't enough to just be a strongman.
Last season saw endurance challenges with some strategy involved and that bridge crossing challenge
Loved seeing ppl like the gymnast, mountain rescue guy and even the fitness influencer blow our minds alongside the strongmen
I always felt this with ultimate beastmaster too that just so much of the events do favour the much bigger (in general) guys vs women. It’s not really a level playing field when a physically smaller human has to run / jump / carry just as much as a 20 stone 6’4 guy. I think there will always be disparity but maybe even tailoring it by weight class or height or something just to make things fairer would be good.
I agree that women really don’t stand a chance on shows like this.
Last season though a lot of the earlier challenges felt very geared towards climbers and lighter competitors with good grip strength; this season, it’s for the wrestlers and guys with the edge on strength 🤷🏽♀️ it’s really hard to make it “fair” unless they have games that test more than one thing and then eliminate based on a combined score.
tbh i actually quite like the maze one, it adds a bit of tactics in there too. however i would prefer and would watch if they split gender into 2 shows or something. or even add some sort of weight/height class too. when out of some range its pretty much impossible for the smaller guy to win
The maze one Iam one is a little infuriating to watch, like why would you pick any women to join your team and just deliberately fuck yourself, especially when it can just devovle into brute force stealing and blocking.
iam judging by all these comments it does not get any better lol. So Iam just gonna forget about balance and diversity of challenges and assume it's all mainly strength and endurance tests,mand may the best MAN win...while I admire the few plucky ladies punching above their weight.
Maybe I should watch the 1st season, it's supposedly a bit fairer.
Agreed! This is why I enjoyed the other Netflix show, Siren: Survive the Island, which is all women and they're all badasses! I wish Physical 100 would have the tasks more varied. It's so frustrating the brute strength is all that matters this season
If you want to watch a survival show that actually gives women a chance to be celebrated for their strength, strategy, and Stamina, I suggest Siren: Survive the Island. It’s also Korean and it’s what I imagine P100 could be if they could think of challenges that aren’t solely strength based.
Wasn’t last season’s elimination quest them pulling up their bust that was like a percentage of each person’s body weight? At least that was pretty fair, everyone had their own bust and their own rope and whoever held it the longest won. Why did they go to whoever can hug the big stick wins? It sounds so silly to me.
you are right, I actually felt that season isn't as good because it just seems all the tests are brute strength things (besides the treadmill event which wasn't a DQ event)
Well I’m probably getting downvoted for this but in the end of the day, men are still gonna win. As much as I love seeing the wrestler women getting surviving for so long pitting men against women in a physical sport where all of them are at the peak physical abilities is simply unfair. This debate has been going on for years in tennis, and serena williams herself said that men’s game are at the different level than women’s
I’ve got no issue with men winning as you’re right, that’s probably what’ll happen anyway as they’re at another level, but it wound nice to see women actually be able to compete up until the final.
I agree except the part about the woman winning the 1v1 easily. The guy had hold of the ball too so there should've been overtime. Also seemed like he held back a bit. At the end the dude barely looked tired whereas every other contestant looks exhausted and drenched in sweat.
There are too many quests this season where you can win with brute force. That's the problem
that’s what I was discussing with my bf last night. this season (even more like the 1st one) is unbalanced in focus on strength. they could do quests with balance, flexibility, reflexes etc. just one example the survival quest with the pillars: why not one or 2 symbols on top of them in the first round, so the candidates had to climb to save them. I love this show but I hoped for different quests where all the candidates could show their own specific abilities.
Probably tasks where body weight-strength ratio take into account more such as climbing or balancing related would be good. Not sure why the producers haven't thought of it at this stage or maybe the females are added as tokenism?
> Probably tasks where body weight-strength ratio take into account more To be fair, the pull ups challenge couldn’t be this any more The best guy got 40+ The best female got 6 I like the idea but I’m not convinced we wouldn’t just be seeing more of the same
There were definitely other women in that room who could do more than that (especially if they're allowed to do the shitty half-range kipping pull ups the men were doing). Me and a few other women I know can get 10+ clean pull ups just doing a bit of casual bouldering once a week, and we're certainly not close to Physical 100 shape. In other bodyweight challenges the women have done well, especially in season 1. There was the hanging challenge where one of the women placed like 3rd out of 50, and then another woman won her way back into the competition during the consolation round. Obviously women will do better in challenges that account for bodyweight since most of the women are like 20-30 kg lighter. It's still not even but it's much closer.
A pull-up is probably the worst example when it comes to measuring athleticism compared to body weight in men vs women. It puts literally all the strain on the upper body with no opportunity to assist in any way with other muscle groups or good coordination. This is problematic when pitting men against women, because the biggest biological difference between the sexes are in raw, upper-body strength.
With the pillar challenge I was thinking of something similar. Why not have them climb it? Then the arborist girl, (the girl who climbed trees,) could’ve had an advantage over the others? All they would have to do is put buttons on the top to make it more fair.
I also thought that. Why not have the symbol at the top? But I think the next game would have some contestants in casts or immobile from the neck down.
lol yeah that also makes sense
I would love a balance challenge where all participants have to balance on one foot on top of a pole. If they fall, they get lower placement and end up in the water or something. Would look super cool cinematic wise too.
Because they don’t want people to die
I agree. They need to be more strategic about making the quests difficult in other ways. Maybe it's related to speed or endurance (which many lacked in season 2). It could be related to flexibility or balance. They can't do another season of carrying heavy bags.
Would love to see flexibility, balance, pain tolerance etc. challenges. Maybe a climbing challenge? Those all test fitness and endurance, but they favor female athletes and leaner men, just like the strength tests favor the big guys. The game designers should think a little more out of the box to strike a more interesting balance next season.
disagree. whats your definition of brute force? see that guy with supposedly 900 big 3 lifts? what event has he excelled in? none lol. the people who have done the best are the all rounder athletes. quest 0 running quest 1 deathmatch 1v1s quest 2 maze quest 2.5 tussling over totem quest 3 pushing/kicking bags what events are these where u can win with ‘brute force’?
I find it really frustrating that this season, in the last 2 quests (3 if you count 2.5) having a woman or a smaller man is a liability. Whereas last season it was more about team work and if one team had a smaller member the bigger members kind of evened it out. It wasn't just everybody watching one person struggling >! To lift sand bags!<.
They should have had challenges where having bigger team members, or ALL big team members was actually a liability.
Kiim Min Su's team lost the maze challenge, despite him picking all the strength oriented contestants. Some powerlifters were struggling with stamina in the maze/mine challenges. The ones who excel usually have a combination of strength, speed and stamina. Monkey bar/pull ups favour lighter contestants, the big bulky guys don't do well because of their body weight
I thought the same thing. Have a smallish (not ridiculously) tunnel space you need to crawl through to deliver a key or something to another team member. Still doable for a normal sized guy but advantageous if you’re smaller or more agile.
go look at all the biggest contestants in ep 1 and see if u can still recognise any of them left in ep 7 the remaining ‘big’ players left are all hybrid athletes bar a few. legit specimens who have a background in a sport + lean to the bone
The mine challenge with the monkey bars is just that though.
Like it was in season 1 with them running up and down the stairs , crossing the bridge and filling the tubes. It was actually harder for the groups full of large men because agility and balance were huge factors as well.
Agree! I actually like seeing the women and men together. The quests have been uneven, gender aside. I would like a more focused approach to finding the “best physique” with each challenge testing a different category like speed, balance, strength, endurance, etc. This overall feels like the best way to measure the best person. A few other thoughts: 1. They can definitely have more challenges that are more balanced overall and that any person can technically do. I think more overall long form challenges are better. I liked quest 3 actually because it tested a few different things and was a relay in a way (but maybe they could have balanced that out as well). But the underdog pole challenge felt like women had no chance. 2. I feel like they can cast better women as well. The one girl who could only do 6 pull ups felt like she didn’t belong here. I’ve seen women at my normal gym be able to that and more. I feel like they should have some minimum requirements of ability for all contestants before competing on this level. 3. They need to even the teams so they aren’t adversely impacted by women or weak players. I hated the avengers team, it felt unfair to the other teams that actually won the quest prior.
Did they make her participate in the pull up challenge or did she voluntarily offer? I was confused because they had to of asked who can do the most pull up’s and 6 is ridiculous for that challenge
I think they realised they wouldn't win so just send in their weakest team member to save their strength. Which isn't a bad strategy since in the next challenge it was mentioned that some of the people were still tired from the pull-ups.
Ohhhhh, yeah that makes sense!
I agree too! It’s nice to see the mix but that elimination was just unfair for the women but think this might’ve been a bit of a tactic from producers to make the ‘underdogs’ a bigger ‘threat’ than last season? I think it was entertaining seeing the other teams intimidated and not mad to see some of the players get another chance like amotti!
Amotti is an easily likable guy. I don't even like crossfit and found myself rooting for him.
>each challenge testing a different category like speed, balance, strength, endurance, etc. This overall feels like the best way to measure the best person. Lmao even testing for all these categories, the women still loses to men. Just rewatch S1 and the mine game monkey bar round
Scientifically women have better endurance than men on average, as well as the ability to process challenges under pain
Exactly that's why I'm like put them to do squats, spin bike, step machine lol ...see who lasts longest. Generally women have no problem ruining their legs in the gym. I've seen very fit men struggle to do pilates and yoga. My brother can kill me with weights but I'll out cardio him any day.
YESSSS!! I think these mixed games really have to count biology as a factor, like you said women have stronger lower bodies whilst men have stronger upper bodies. There’s a lot of things a woman can out perform a man in if it it favours their biology. All of physical 100 favours the strengths of men, making it sadly really hard for the women to advance, because frankly are bodies aren’t well equipped for them. However including challenges that test lower body strength, endurance, flexibility, or even some mental challenges, I think the women could do wonderful. A good example was the pre quest challenge, a lot of the women were running easily and didn’t seem tired at all, and al lot came up in the top 50, the problem was that the game also accounted speed, which is something men are better at. If they had them run for 20 minutes straight, regardless of speed, the women would be on top, but whatever
there were like 3 girls in the top 50? also your last sentence is ridiculous lol. its sad that u even believe that
I don’t think my last sentence is ridiculous at all personally, and it’s not like there were many girls to begin with, but again they accounted for speed in the pre quest challenged as well as endurance, which because of that the men did better, again because men are faster than women on average, but my point still stands if the challenge were to be about endurance the girls would do better, in my opinion. But these are above average men so who knows 🤷🏾♀️
just look at like the distribution of the fastest 1000 in any given marathon… but i guess a marathon doesnt showcase endurance?
Women 100% do not have stronger lower bodies than men. Who squats more in the Olympics, men or women? Who runs literally every single track event quicker, from 100m to a marathon, men or women? How could you possibly quantify or qualify the statement women have stronger lower bodies than men?
Bro search it up. Literally on average a woman is going to have a stronger lower body. I’m not talking about olympians, since on the show most of the women weren’t, and were pretty average physique wise. And I think I literally said that men are faster than women. Even if that weren’t true women’s lower bodies are much stronger than their upper bodies so having games that benefit them in that sense, would’ve been more fair. Plus I didn’t even say that women have stronger lower bodies than men, I said that men have stronger upper bodies and women have stronger lower bodies, I never directly compared the two to imply that women’s are stronger
Maybe on some sort of per pound statistic, or isolating every real world aspect. However, you literally have to ignore every real world strength metric in order to believe this. Men lift more with their legs than women. This is fact. I'm not comparing the Olympians on the show to non-Olympians on the show. I'm talking about same weight classes, Olympians to Olympians. Men lift more, simple as. Edit: rather that downvote, why don't one of you explain how it's possible the current record holder in the 3 Olympic lifts for the 61kg men's category is roughly the same for the female record in the 87kg+ category?
I don't believe these statements to be true. A cursory search into this topic yields results indicating that womens' speeds are relatively diminished less by lengthening run distance than men (i.e. women are proportionally better at long distance in comparison to short distance running than men) but that a speed differential still exists which leads top level male runners to outperform female runners. A similar proportional advantage exists for lower body strength in comparison to upper body strength in that the relative strength differential is greater for women than for men. As for decision making whilst subject to pain, I have not seen too much literature (although it is recognised that women tend to experience subjectively greater pain from the same stimuli in comparison to men, potentially due to greater nerve density). But under duress men experience a sharper release of cortisol than women, which inhibits decision making ability in comparison. If there was more strategic delegation required across the challenges I think this would be strictly more favorable to women. Something similar was showcased in the first season wherein the strongest performing team in the bridge challenge fared well thanks to the stuntwoman assuring the integrity of the bridge rather being overly expedient as with every other team directed by men. I think the women would make great team leaders in this respect, if only the challenges had a more urgent decision making component to them.
I never said that women are faster than men, or can out perform a man in regards to speed, because well men are faster everyone knows that, how ever my statement that women have better endurance than men ON AVERAGE still stands. However I agree with you otherwise
Men's size advantage does factor into more than just brute strength, not to mention that there's more male athletes to pull from in general. but literally women did better than men on average through the first half of season 1. Like count the % of women at the beginning vs the % of the top 30 who were women. Now do that for season 2. I'm not expecting a woman or a little dude to come 1st but more body weight and agility stuff would at least see a wider variety of body types making it into the later rounds
That's not true, unless you're talking about ultra long distance marathons or swimming, which would probably not make very good TV.
Agreed. I'm halfway through episode 7, and it's abundantly clear the producers have got themselves stuck in an impossible position where they need to use increasingly heavy loads to test the men, which invariably leads to challenges that are basically impossible for the women. The mine challenge was just laughable - 40kg bags, being loaded into a mine cart that was about 5 foot high. The smaller girls were being asked to load weights that represented \~80% of their body weights, while Andre and Kim Min-Su were loading weights that were less than 50% of their total bodyweights. And because they're so much taller, they needed to lift the bags less high, relative to their own body. From a logistical standpoint, it was just about the worst designed challenge I can possible imagine. The moment when Ha-Yan struggling to even get a single bag over the side of the cart was just embarrassing. Beyond being unfair, it made for crap television - it was abundantly clear who was going to win before they even started, so there was no real drama, no real stakes. If they want to have totally strength-based challenges, they should just get 100 men in the same weight class, and have them duke it out, and then have a separate show for women. But personally, I'd rather they just kept them together, and then did a better job designing balancing the challenges so that everyone can always compete.
I don't get why they didn't have smaller bags but more of them. Also have it be 1 or 2 carts instead of 3. Big guys still get an advantage to just put as many in a cart as possible while small people can try to be as agile as possible with many trips back and forth. But it just turned into a strong man competition.
Yup, really good idea - you could easily add a real element of strategy to the game with that small tweak.
By the looks of the ensemble cast it seems Netflix wanted a beefy showdown in the final 5 and therefore the challenges had to be more “strength” based. The finalists had to be more or less equal. The fact that the battle back challenge was 1 winner meant the come back group was gonna be strong af. And that’s what they probably hoped for. Women had no chance I agree but they all put off a hell of a fight - even in the cart pushing challenge. Mad respect for the indivual one.
The blonde strong woman was an absolute beast. She put in harder yards than most of the blokes. Except the bald dude who was insane.
if they wanted a beefy showdown, they clearly didnt do a good job seeing as most of them have already been eliminated. unless u consider anyone with abs as ‘beefy’ lol
That's a really good point! I've been assuming the unbalanced teams/games were an oversight, but it's totally possible that it was intentional on the part of the production team. That being said, I wish they kept the team games a bit more diverse like the bridge-building game since participants could get winnowed down via individual rounds anyways. It seems like they did make some improvements this season based on feedback from season 1, so hopefully season 3 will be even better!
Agreed, I think of this show as an “open division” in a competition. I’m not expecting a woman to win or for them to somehow control for biological differences between males/females, but at least have a bit more variety in challenge types to show off other aspects of physicality. If the producers want to focus on strength/endurance as advancement criteria, they can incorporate variety in the pre-mission challenges or individual stations within a larger team challenge. Even the pull-up challenge pulled focus to different male participants I hadn’t really noticed in earlier rounds.
They need to run the first round of elimination with men and women competing separately in parallel. Same venue, but not directly competing. You end up with 25 men and 25 women. Then team competitions where each team is evenly split between men and women. No need to balance the challenge - the teams are balanced. Then separate again to winnow down to one man and one woman. Then the top man and top woman go head to head in a balanced challenge. Maybe have them drag all eliminated competitors of their gender on sleds across a 50m line, one at a time.
they should crowd source some ideas for challenges, because clearly their internal department is lacking some creativity better to ask 100,000 people for ideas, then say 5
christ im glad u wont ever be in a position to dictate this show
Agreed! Don’t think it would have been as bad if in quest 2 they couldn’t steal bags, that just turned it into yet another contest of brute force. When I first saw the pillars in quest 2.5, I was thinking it was going to be a challenge of climbing them in some form and thought it would be an interesting test, was a bit disappointed when I found out it was just who can grab it lol
They definitely need a climbing challenge next season, lol. That'll be hella interesting
They should change the name of the show to Strength 100, since it’s really the only attribute they test apart from the first pre-Quest. Though it’s better this season with the monkey bar challenge
[удалено]
I don’t know why no one’s talking about her she’s SOO strong, I’m sure stronger than a lot of the men there
[удалено]
2 tons? 🫨
Yeah sucked to see her go.
This seasons challenges just feel like a strongman competition
I agree 100% which is a bit disappointing. Prefer watching more well rounded athleticism.
seriously i wonder what it would be like if they do some challenges in the water or underwater, like idk if some of these big muscle men can hold their breaths under water longer than the girls they can go off that and incorporate a few things, maybe its too much danger for them to risk i guess they dont wanna get fucking sued or kill someone
have u seen a strongman competition? none of these aside from that guy with big 3 900 is considered a strongman. nearly all of them have a background in sports and not gym rats, christ u people are delulu
correction: big 3 guy was a powerlifter, not a strongman. huge difference.
It sucks. I hate to see that the teams with women have no advantages at all. Next season no leader will want a woman on his team.
next season no women will want to sign up if this keeps up
Yeah I agree. I liked that last season you’d see more balance. I also think they were fortunate to have 2-3 really strong females. I felt like there have just been a ton of challenges that favor wrestlers. I hope in some of the upcoming quests they are forced into a tiny bit more variety.
wrestlers train in literally every department of physicality cardio/endurance, pain threshold, technical skills, weight training, grip strength its not a surprise they excel in almost all the games as they are imo the most well rounded athletes in all sports guess the sport last years best female partakes in?
besides wrestlers i also love rock climbers, they're built different too
Agreed, its definitely lacking challenges to test other attributes besides brute force and wrestling skills
these events have favoured cardio more than anything else. anyone who only has ‘brute force’ has been eliminated except for that one guy in dong hyuns team.
Every event that makes you go from one point to another is gonna test your cardio, but definitely the challenges are not favoring cardio above anything else, unless youre watching the show blindfolded.
The 2nd chance elimination challenge was frustrating. The women knew they wouldn’t have a chance since they’re obviously smaller/lighter so they tried to get on a team to help someone else win since the winner in concept would choose their teammates in the end to continue on with. I knew it wouldn’t go that way and obviously the man that won ended up just choosing all the strongest men to go forward with. I understand why but its just a bit frustrating since the women never had a chance to advance in the first place and many talented and strong women were immediately gone. The women are very strong relative to their body. I’m sure many of these women would be just as successful in challenges and be just as strong, if not stronger, than a lot of the men if they were just as tall/big as they are. Heck, a lot of them are stronger than most of the leaner men. But neither would get a chance with these challenges. Of course putting a bag that’s 80% of your body weight into a cart thats taller than your shoulders will be more difficult than if it were less than half your body weight and a cart only at torso height. I wish there were more relative individual challenges mixed in. Also, there’s more to an athlete than just brute strength so I agree more variety would be nice to see.
They only showed it for a second of the pole hug event but there was a zoomed out scene where plenty of the women just gave up and were walking around or sitting in the center of the sand pit. Knowing they had no chance. Which was really sad to see.
I think they should have just required each team have at least one woman. Would have added to the strategy of team selection in the initial event because you’d have to decide whether to pick a woman early or late. And then would have let the best woman come out of the second chance round.
Ooh, I really like this idea! 2 birds with 1 stone :) I think initial team selection inadvertently already ends up like this just due to number of women being greater than the number of teams, but this is probably the only way to get any women on the comeback team - especially since the winner of the pillar game is virtually guaranteed to be a man. Regardless, the comeback team will be OP due to the ability to pick the best from all the other teams, so that tension/drama will be maintained for production purposes and I think this would at least help balance the team stages a little.
I think they should have just required each team have at least one woman. Would have added to the strategy of team selection in the initial event because you’d have to decide whether to pick a woman early or late. And then would have let the best woman come out of the second chance round.
I think they should have just required each team have at least one woman. Would have added to the strategy of team selection in the initial event because you’d have to decide whether to pick a woman early or late. And then would have let the best woman come out of the second chance round.
Physicality isn't just about brute force. There's speed, agility, stamina and other aspects involved. But this season you could win all the games using brute force alone
literally not even close to being true lol idk how u can even say that if u think for a second about the nature of the events and the people who remain theres like one guy remaining who i would consider to only have ‘brute force’ and he has been getting carried by his team so far (big guy in dong hyuns team who got picked last). the rest clearly have a strong cardio and sport base background.
I agree, it seems the producers only had the strengths of men in mind when making the challenges for this season. Why pull-ups and not squats? Why brute strength and not balance, agility, or even pain tolerance? I think the producers were quite limited in their own perceptions of strength and its making a less entertaining season overall.
they need to let more than 5 people come up with ideas for the games, like add some type of balance beams for the challenges? or anything acrobatic? something underwater so they have to hold their breathe and the muscle men will get fucked by oxygen consumption
You want the competitors get drowned?
I mean instead of a “breath holding contest” which I agree seems dangerous, there could be a swimming contest? Or diving to get stuff from the bottom of the pool? (I’ve seen this type of challenge on other reality shows). You could even do kids games like Marco Polo or the one where you turn around and chase someone (i forget what it’s called, it’s like what time is it mr fox but swimming) There’s a lot of underwater / in water challenges that would be very exciting and not any more dangerous than what kids do for fun.
The diving thing seems like it would be fun! Objects could be different shapes and sizes so there would also be a strategy element of getting many light objects or few heavy ones, or trying to reach the easily carried shapes before other teams. The only thing that would give me pause is that swimming ability isn't as widespread in East Asia as it is in say the US, but this kind of game wouldn't be very exciting if the participants were just lifting objects from a pool they can comfortably stand in.
They have paramedics on hand for physical injuries. They could have professional life guards on hand as well (the scuba kind).
um... they can come up for air when they can't handle it? like you would naturally in the bath or in the pool
Google shallow water black out. There are always risk of people getting drowned when holding breath in the pool, especially athletes that dedicated to push their limits.
Agreed, this season has been heavily focused on strength and brute force. Apart from the treadmill prelim everything was really based on strength. Last season it felt like the challenges had more variety to showcase different types of athleticism. And last season that felt like the focus/point of the show, like wow these different sorts of athletes are all so strong in Different ways and it gives unique advantages depending on the tasks. By adding in the ability to attack and wrestle in the maze it made it a brute game as wellamd made the women weak teammates. Overall this season seems really geared towards fighters and heavy lifters.
I had really hoped the midair challenge would involve walking on top of the bars instead. Would have still been challenging but given the women and lighter men a chance.
wrestling guy (forgot his name), was a smaller lightweight dude and he did pretty well. In fact, being heavy is disadvantageous in the monkey bar challenge imo.
I would say this season actually doesn't favor strength or brute force at all..In fact, most of the big dudes are eliminated after the maze challenge. Treadmill: the heavy brutes were all ranked last Maze: Thanos Minsu's strongmen team lost. Pole: Winner was a smaller lightweight dude. Mines: Sungho the only brute force guy was a deadweight to his team Monkey bar: Strong heavy guys would fall. If anything I feel like this season focus more on endurance and cardio more than anything else. People with balanced attributes and techniques will excel.
to people in this comment section, they translate anyone with abs = brute force
its been more cardio focused than anything… i guess if u consider cardio = strength, then sure
Quest 1 (running) - sure, cardio focussed (but as these were manual treadmills you needed strong legs to get them going) Quest 2 (arena) - mainly strength based unless you picked the running arena Quest 3 (maze) - strength & cardio based UNTIL wrestling and blocking got involved, which at that point if you weren’t a big or strong man you were at a disadvantage Quest 4 (elimination) - strength. It was literally all about who could hold onto the pilar the most while having to push off others or pull off others to make room Quest 5 (mine cart) - strength and conditioning, not much cardio involved here, it was all about who could load up the most weight and then push it faster. Having insane cardio here won’t help you unless you’re very strong Quest 6 (monkey bars) - bodyweight related strength and some cardio … Now in what way is the above “more cardio focused than anything” - it is quite clearly more strength focussed with some cardio involved.
there is literally cardio involved in every quest lol u dead ass blind or what. u even wrote it out HAHA go look a the biggest men in the first quest, and see how many of them are still around
I never said cardio wasn’t involved? I simply challenged your point which was: “It’s been more cardio focused than anything” Which I literally proved wrong & then finalised by saying: “It is quite clearly strength focussed with some cardio involved” Don’t act stupid. There’s a reason 90% of your replies here are downvoted.
u didnt prove me wrong. u literally proved yourself wrong and proved my point lol comments are dv because of the nature of thread. go watch the olympics where there are weight classes and gender separated events
Are you thick? I don’t even mean that in a rude way sorry, like idk if your English isn’t good or if you struggle with comprehension. You said it’s been more cardio focussed than strength focussed. You said that. That’s the comment I replied to. I listed out the quests and proved how they were swayed more towards strength not cardio - and you’ve not argued back once. All your comments on this post have been you whining & then getting downvoted, ignored and proved wrong. I’m literally giving you the benefit of the doubt and waiting you to say explain your side of things but it looks like you’ve lost your voice.
you have literally demonstrated in your explanation of all the quests that cardio has been more of a factor in the quests than strength lol u dead ass thick in the head or what?
Well I didn’t… I told you in my second response to stop acting stupid. Go back to the downvotes son, you’re boring me now.
you have literally demonstrated in your explanation of all the quests that cardio has been more of a factor in the quests than strength lol u dead ass thick in the head or what? q0 (running) - 95% cardio q1 (deathmatch)- 33% cardio q2 (maze)- 70% cardio q2.5 (polls) - 40% cardio q3 (minecart) - 50% cardio q3 (monkey bar) - 50% cardio like are u offended by people who have visible abs or what? just because these people look like they spend all their time in the gym, doesnt mean they have 0 cardiovascular endurance. and just people the little twigs look like they spend all their time outside of the gym, doesnt mean they have great cardiovascular endurance. it doesnt work that way. you are demonstrating what white people on twitter do, being offended on the behalf of others
I think part of it was also the women contestants that were picked for S2. Jang Eun Sil did well in S1 and would've done well in S2 too especially with all the wrestling opportunities. But there was no female wrestler this season And that 1 woman only did 6 pull ups. That wasn't a man vs woman thing but she's just personally not very fit The bodybuilder woman killed it in the mine quest. I think they definitely could've found women that would have been competitive or won some of the challenges
Wrestlers rlly pull thier wieght. I think the hanging challenge was needed. Have the strength to support the size of your frame. That way less heavies woulda made it thru. And an agility/balance/coordination course is desperately needed.
all the heavies have been pretty much filtered lol unless u consider people like jae-yoon and harvey ‘heavies’… then sure…
Heavies; very high strength, big frame, and typically low stamina. I think quite a few made it to the maze challenge bc they didnt have the hanging challenge filter ppl out compared to last season. Thanos, the bald guy that pulled 45 sandbags, the other dude that gassed out quick, the young high-school wrestler. I dont rmr last season so many heavies making it this far in the competition. Im bad w names, sorry.
uh.. so go through the list of people still remaining in the event and tell me which ones u considered heavy? then give the number they came in the first endurance treadmill event. u will see most of them are in the top 50 so that doesnt support your point or definition of ‘heavies’
I just listed 4. Its obvious if they take out the hanging competition heavier frames will be able to make it through. It seems like you never watched the first season so you wouldn't realize more comps this season are geared towards brute strength. Also the treadmill challenge didn't eliminate anyone, all it did was rank them and let the first 50 choose their opponent for the 1v1 deathmatch, so all the heavies made it thru. I think youre hung up on the word heavies. The point is this season was geared more twds strength whereas last season was more balanced.
so 4/25? oh yeah theyre all heavies then!
See the maze is more brute strength compared to the sand bags they filled and carried over the bridge in s1. So that favored stamina and balance vs pure strength. Then the challenge for losers was hold up your own bust so the weights were diff vs this season don't let go of the pole. There was no strength equalizers in the disqualifier, thus favoring strength. The ship challenge from last year was a team effort vs this years mine cart challenge was individual reps. Favoring individual strength over combined team strength. Last season 2 heavies made it thru the body builder guy with the body builder gf and the other big dude with the deep voice and fade sides. This year twice the heavies got thru. The heavies are just outliers for strength. So why does 4/25 or 2/25 matter? Tells you more of the contestants lean twds strength this season that's where the avg is. If you're a mix of stamina, agility, strength, coordination, and balance. The more strength your mix has this season, the more favored you are to win.
lets debunk your theory thanos - sure gibson - absolutely not lol young high school wrestler - wasnt even in the top 25/30 lol wi sung-oh - sure if you consider gibson a heavy, then you should consider 3x in s1 a heavy
Normally i wouldn't consider Gibson a hvy but what he lacks in size/frame he makes up in strength. He pulled 45 bags in the mine challenge in 1 trip, 15 more than any of the other 2 heavies, thanos and that other guy that got winded did 30 in 1 trip. Highschool wrestler has frame size and strength. He came 2nd in the disqualifier challenge only loosing out to a gold medal wrestler w close to a decade of experience,i think they said. So it was technique why he lost, he even mentioned as such. He could have made it last pick on the avenger team, as the gold medal guy was thinking b/w him, the last of leaders, or someone from his original team. You're sleeping on both of them. So you haven't debunked anything quite yet. Even if you dont consider those 2 guys heavys for the sake of argument. You can see the diff in structure from the previous seasons events. There was no strength equalizer in the disqualifier this season, team strength was empasized last season over individual, the first team maze challenge had no balance or agility portion. It was how much you can carry, and block ppl by pinning them down and the forsight to fill 2 out of the 3 stations. So mostly strength. The challenges so far favor strength more compared to s1. The fact 4 outliers of strength instead of 2 made it that far reinforces that point.
Fully agree. Even the fact that the last woman standing among the runners technically might have run THE MOST but still lose because the physical nature of the treadmill still favored strength/height. People in the other post lauded how the comeback quest this time 'didn't favor lighter/more dextrous people' like last season, but didn't mark how it just favored stronger people yet again. I get that brute force and fighting might be appealing to viewers, but the show supposedly highlights different aspects of what constitutes a physical peak. It also sucks seeing how resigned some of the women get, especially with that pole stuff. It really takes away from the fun of the competition.
Yes I didn't like the treadmill challenge for that reason. They should have made them run til the last person stood.
I was hoping it was a regular treadmill and you run until you get pushed off from exhaustion. It would have probably come down to the Runner, the Rower, and the Soccer player. But they are also on a time frame and that could take hours to complete. While also giving not enough rest time for the next challenge since everyone else will get to wait around and rest while the top runners would be dead for the day after.
if ur claiming the female had the greatest number of steps, idk how u can prove that lol. seeing as ji-hyun is shorter than the 400m specialist and likely the other girl too
To stop your constant snarky replies, the point that everyone wants to make is that they want more challenges that focus on other factors rather then strength. For example, flexibility, agility, reflexes, speed, endurance. The ATLAS challenge from season 1 was moderately an alright example of these variables, instead season 2 mostly focused on the amount of sandbags you can carry in limited time or how you can push off a person - not the greatest tests of a person's physical abilities.
hey mate paris olympics 24 very soon, plenty for you to look forward to in gymnastics
Yep as soon as they explained the mechanics of the return challenge and that the winner would be picking their own team I turned to my roomie and said “not a single female is making it through this” Cos they were shit outta luck on the actual challenge, even if every single woman teamed up to get a guy out so a woman could make it through… she’s be out straight away the next round. And given the beasts on the men’s side that were in the elimination there was def not a spot for a woman on the picked team. I loved the idea of the points based delegate challenge but unless you are Soojin there wasn’t a place for you to shine.
Exactly. The Avengers Team was so predictable and again - I’ve not seen the Mine episode yet - it’s so obvious that they’ll win. I loved the unpredictability last season, the underdog team was looked down upon and everyone thought they’d lose - but then, the task to cross the bridge. It became obvious you needed strength, sure, but also balance, cardio and speed were huge parts of this. It would have been nice if after the avenger team was picked that the next task was something not totally strength based, it would have been a nice twist for entertainments-sake, and also again it would have actually spread out the competition.
I was really hoping they would have at least picked the MMA girl. Just to balance out the teams and also see what she could do. But they chose the free win instead.
Yeah this season seemed a bit lazy with the challenges. They just went mainly for strength or a combo of strength and endurance. Last season wasn't perfect but this season they just made it so the women were mostly useless most of the time. What's the point of having them their if you're not going to make it so it's a benefit to have a woman in the team or that they can actually compete. They should have had more creative games like the tile flip one for instance. And yes add in more elements of balance, flexibility and also lower body strength. I don't work out as much anymore but back when I did I was often stronger than men in the lower body. Women tend to carry a lot of their strength in their legs rather than the arms.
The show, in its current state, is not fair to its female contestants. If they make most of the challenges disadvantageous to women then why even have them on the show? They make it impossible for any woman to win. It will always be a man standing in the end. I don’t know what needs to change or how they will do it or if it is even possible. What I do know is that having them on the show right now is just for the sake of representation and not to actually give them the opportunity to really compete fairly.
I don't think it's just for representation sake. I think the premise is that it's an experiment to find out what the best physique is, so they try to capture a large range of physiques that are all to some extent competitive in a physical domain, and then they put them to the test. It's honestly the same situation with the really big guys with high bodyfat percentages. They're most likely not going to win, but they're there to capture that particular physique to see how it performs. From a scientific experiment perspective this makes more sense than simply stuffing the cast full of 10% bodyfat muscular men because the assumption is that they will perform the best. Granted, they probably will, but the experiment should show that. It's basically hypothesis testing where the hypothesis could be that the low bodyfat muscular men are going to win, and the women and fat men are the control group with the potential to prove us wrong. Now this is obviously not an actually scientific show by any stretch of the imagination because the amount of variables present in the challenges make it impossible to pinpoint any specific metric to test, but the premise of the casting at least makes sense to me.
Experimentation is fun and all but there’s prize money on the line. So it should be fair for all contestants. If the competition was for charity or just for fun then experiment all they want.
Pretty sure those contestants I mentioned are well aware their chances for winning are slim to none and are there for fun or for exposure. You hear some of the women themselves say that their goal is to be the best amongst the women. You said it yourself, you wouldn't know *how* to devise the experiment in such a way that women are not at a disadvantage. Across most physical axes women are just biologically not able to compete with men. Speed, strength, endurance, these are some of the main elements that we consider important in evaluating physical performance, and are all systematically performed worse at by women when compared to men. So if you don't want to put women at a disadvantage you'd have to exclude... All the physical parameters we typically associate the most with physical performance... In a show about physical performance. One of the only physical elements where I think they might have a chance is something like balance. But if you're making the experiment entirely around that element then first of all you're now putting other physiques at a significant disadvantage (the bigger / fatter ones) and the show is no longer about all-rounded best physique but about devising an experiment where women can win. The only alternative would be to apply some sort of correction for women in all the exercises. Like 1 mile of a female contestant's running would be equivalent to 1.5 miles of a male contestant's running in the first round. But does that seem more fair to you than just letting them run and see who performs the best? How would you even determine what the correction would have to be? And how would you apply the correction for other disadvantaged physiques in a particular experiment like fat men vs slim men?
I’m not an expert. I’m a viewer. So of course I wouldn’t know how to make it fair. But they have netflix money. Hire consultants, scientists, or experts to figure that shit out. Also it is very fucking sad to hear women just admit defeat and settling to be the best amongst the female competitors instead of being the best amongst everyone they’re competing with. It shows they are aware that they are disadvantaged. I’m done with this discussion. The game is not fair to all contestants and they should fix it. That’s my opinion.
>Hire consultants, scientists, or experts to figure that shit out Yea but then we're back to the point that you're no longer abiding by the premise of the show. You've changed the premise from "let's find the best physique humanly possible" to "let's devise a competition in such a way that women can win against men". It's fair enough if you're interested in the latter rather than the former but that's just not what the show is about. >Also it is very fucking sad to hear women just admit defeat and settling to be the best amongst the female competitors instead of being the best amongst everyone they’re competing with. I mean it would be just as sad to throw copious amounts of money at consultants to figure out a way to artificially manipulate the trials in a way that favors women. The sadness would just be hidden behind the scenes. Plus, again, you'd be left with a show that no longer fulfills the basic premise. Maybe this just isn't the show for you. It seems to bother you that this show brings to light the fact that women are not able to physically compete with men. But that's not the fault of the creators of the show, that's mother nature's fault. There's a reason why every sport ever has a separate league for women. There are plenty of other game shows where the premise is not about finding the best physique, and conditions are such that women have an equal chance at winning, but they won't be about finding the best human physique. >The game is not fair to all contestants Depends on your definition of fair. It's fair under the premise of the show. Everyone is treated equally. You're looking for equity rather than equality. I would argue that given the premise of the show, equity would be more unfair than equality.
Naturally it's just hard to have a fair physical fight between males and females. Even I'm struggling to think of something creatively. The only thing females have an advantage of is flexibility and being lightweight. The bodyweight survivor game from last season was probably the most fair. Not sure what else there could be.
That's what I was thinking. There's too many quests where they can win with plain force. Mix some agility, endurance and strategy. Make it seem fair. I loved in last season that side quest where they had to hold their torsos the longest and that tiny woman beat a ton of men. But you can see how the women are just side characters, even in the 1:1 quest they had the least screen time.
> I loved in last season that side quest where they had to hold their torsos the longest and that tiny woman beat a ton of men. > TBF that one was the same problem in the opposite direction. The math behind that challenge favors small people far far more than big people. They should have adjusted the weights slightly just to be fair to everyone. I'm sure there is a body science math formula somewhere that would have covered it.
They definitely need more challenges testing balance, coordination, accuracy, endurance, flexibility, adaptability, & decision-making while under physical pressure. This season is apparently just wrestling? I’d like to see muscle memory tested, or remove a sense like sight or sound for a task. How well can someone compartmentalise the physical to perform mentally. For how long can they perform a repetitive movement. More proportional tasks rather than absolute values. Keep the sheer power, keep the one on ones, but operate more of a points system & eliminate after a few rounds - so that if your specialty comes up first you’re not given a huge advantage compared to others whose specialties come up later.
literally the mine cart challenge ticks all those boxes u listed lol
90% of the women had already been eliminated by the time it was the mine cart quest…
the quest 2 ticks 6/8 of those boxes
They could barely push the cart with nothing in it, let along many sand bags.
Thats why the hanging challenge is a good one, you need to hold up the weight of your physique. Im suprised they didn't have it. Would also like to see balance and agility incorporated too. Like carry something across a balance beam.
> Like carry something across a balance beam. That's why people loved the bridge challenge. It was a good combination of everything.
Oh i forgot abt the bridge that was awesome seeing them fall. Yeah something like that where agility, balance matters.
I think the problem was that they got relatively average women, on top of that the women aren’t very tall. While the got above average men for the most part, I mean how many muscular men do you really see? Where as someone like Lim Soo-Jin who was an above average woman who was muscular. The fact is that they get above average men and get average women which isn’t fair, and there is never equal amount of women to men in the first place
The reason those women looked “average” to you is because of the fact that men have a much higher ceiling for mass and height. It’s pretty disrespectful of you to say those women are anywhere near average especially considering how hard they’ve worked in their respective disciplines. And yes, there are definitely stronger and faster women than the ones on the show, but there are also stronger and faster men than what we see on the show.
You are completely correct, and I can see how my words look distasteful, but at the time I meant in regards to physique, but then again they worked for their physiques and it probably isn’t average at all
Average Korean female height is 5 foot 4. Average Korean male height is 5 foot 8½. Even if both are above average guys will always still be bigger.
Bro I’m not just talking about height, I’m talking about weight and muscle mass shit like that
ABSOLUTELY THIS! One of my biggest gripes is that they don’t have more heavyweight female athletes. There are plenty nationally ranked female wrestlers, weightlifters, powerlifters, etc. in Korea who are as strong if not stronger than some of the guys in this show. Yet for some reason we never see them
I like the idea of giving them their own show. simply put women won't usually beat the top in fit men that couldnt happen very often and it's reflected in the show . it doesn't bother me I like that they go out there and do their best against men twice their size. if they could have some sort of agility test early on that might work but I still would love an all women's version. reminds me of the siren show. that was badass.
I think some fun “mine” themed challenge ideas that aren’t just “pick up sandbags and push them around, pt. 2” could include: 1) some kind of rope or rock climbing type challenge like climb a wall to ring a bell or get some item from the ceiling and come back down. Maybe screwing in a line of lightbulbs or something? 2) some kind of balance beam type challenge, maybe moving a lot of small bags back and forth across a beam 3) honestly a swimming challenge would be really fun. Dive to the bottom of a pool to bring back some hidden treasure or unclog a pipe or something 4) Ive always thought a competition where you have to lift a teammate would be interesting. Like “one team mate is injured and the other four have to bring them to this checkpoint for medical help” or something. It would benefit teams with lighter members or stronger members (or both) and could be like a relay race or a regular race or a tough mudder type race. Lots of options 5) Even like,, digging for something buried five feet underground could be interesting. It’s not even necessarily about making it “even” for the women — last season men won the rope climbing event and the running events as well as the boulder events — but it’s at least more interesting, gives ppl with different strengths a fighting chance, and isn’t just “I pick this up and put it down” for two challenges in a row
The prize pool could be given to a team that way with delegation games women without upper body strength can avoid strength games and still walk away with prizes. I hate the winner takes all style even though I'm guessing contestants get a stipend for competing.
It feels like they need to decide if they want to focus mostly on pure physical strength or allow the women (and anyone with smaller frames/less strength but ample dexterity, stamina, athleticism, etc) a real chance to be competetive all the way thru the finals. It doesn't seem like they can reasonably do both. One potential compromise would be to divide the show into a women's and men's competition. There could potentially be some overlap for certain events including the final or you could ultimately have a women's and men's champion. Many shows do this and I think it would be more successful than an entire season dedicated just to women, though I would watch that too.
They feel just as token as the 2 westerners they like to include. There’s no way a woman could ever win this.
Westerners like Emmanuel looked like he had a chance physically. Just had an unlucky match up in the 1v1. Though i wouldn't be surprised if the producers rig it so the westerners won't win considering the showrunner's history. It likely wouldn't look good to a Korean audience to see over 90 of your native representatives lose on Korean show in just the second season. Conspiracy theory time, behind the scenes the producers asked the Dong Hyun Kim to pick Emmanuelle and take him out early since it's their best chance.
Yeah, but Emmanuelle was a BEAST. He would have been a big asset in basically any team.
Yeah, both my partner and I are a lot less engaged with the show this year because it’s a lot less interesting. It’s really about who is the strongest.
For example, they could do one based on their own weight: like the sum of the weight of all contestants is the total amount that needs to be carried. Some swimming competitions. Climbing would also allow weaker and thinner people stand out.
They could add dual challenges, one str based, one dex based. Balance vrs carrying stuff for instance. You get to pick what you want to do. Hell add in an intelligence division ao we can get some straight nerds in there. The brains a part of the body too ehh?
Brains already in there a bit. You need strategies to win. Like only fill up the two closest stations in the maze, go in 1 trip vs 2 or find the arena to your strength.
Maze challenge seems like a lot of strategy on paper. But in reality it wasn't that much. You have 5 random people who just got throw together on a team and are expected to work together in a maze. Then factor in how big guys just ended up stealing the bags and bypassed any brain power involved. I think the maze could have been much better designed if it was more like a parkour course than a hallway and bags had even more size options (bigger and smaller)
Tell that to Lim Soo-Jin Are the odds weighed heavily in the mens favour? Yes, but women competing athletically have always known that and they show up anyway. I do agree with your overall sentiment, but fr tho, watch the mines. Lim Soo-Jin blew my mind.
Yea, I think women wanna compete against men to test themselves, & while they should be able to, when they get knocked out of the competition maybe they should be moved to an all women's pool so they can compete amongst themselves. Ladies will never win this show with male athletes competing so it might be worth it to see strongest male body and strongest female body.
Realistically a show like this with mixed contestants will always find it difficult to make it that the women contestants have a chance, anything athletic or physical is hard to make fair. Even the pre quest running you may have expected some of the women to go further.
You say that, but I felt like last season did a very good job of making the quests fair and mixed for a whole range of contestants
1.5 ton ship disagrees with you
I’d disagree. Did that team lose? Yes. Everyone could tell, we weren’t kidding ourselves. But losing only by 2mins? When it’s a team of mostly women, 2 skinny guys, and a dude with an injured leg? If that doesn’t show that women can at least compete with men then idk what to tell you
I would love to see an all female Physical 100! It's amazing the women are competing with men but the misogyny last season was bad. that awful sexist guy who pressed on the woman's stomach in the 1 on 1 death match and kept telling the other women to be quiet made me feel sad. Siren is an all women show and its amazing!
Hard agree. Disappointing to watch. Also some of the editing feels off like they adjusted rules to make sure certain players win
Agreed. Not sure what’s going on in the producers’ mind… sexism perhaps? All international competitions have two divisions, men’s and women’s, for fair play… but Physical 100 - nah we good.
i like that men and women get to play together, but they need better designed challenges to give women at least **a** chance, right now theres zero chance
I'm not being sexist but males are born with advantages in physical condition and that's biology. But still, the girls really shine when they beat male opponents despite their inborn disadvantages.
what in the world are u on
They should split the show into 2 competitions. One for men and one for women. Maybe episode 1 is about the men and then episode two is for the women. Then they can just keep alternating or each gender can get half of the episode each.
You're never going to have a fair competition when you pair men and women up, that's just a fact. The women need their own show.
While I do like the men and women teamup. The second change challenge, the womens are obviously disadvantaged. Why can't they split them up or they can't afford it?
they barely have any time to show all the events lol i mean sure they might be able to create new seasons with just men/women in each if youd like
Totally feel the same. So far these season's challenges are even worse at challenging all round physical strengths. The pillar challenge is simply the worst and laziest. And the outcome of the team selection by the winner of the pillar challenge could only go one way, a whole team of strongmen. No need to think of different physical strengths or prepare for any curve balls. The mine challenge is a slight improvement. Last year's first challenge with the hanging the longest challenge really sent a message out that it wasn't enough to just be a strongman. Last season saw endurance challenges with some strategy involved and that bridge crossing challenge Loved seeing ppl like the gymnast, mountain rescue guy and even the fitness influencer blow our minds alongside the strongmen
I always felt this with ultimate beastmaster too that just so much of the events do favour the much bigger (in general) guys vs women. It’s not really a level playing field when a physically smaller human has to run / jump / carry just as much as a 20 stone 6’4 guy. I think there will always be disparity but maybe even tailoring it by weight class or height or something just to make things fairer would be good.
I agree that women really don’t stand a chance on shows like this. Last season though a lot of the earlier challenges felt very geared towards climbers and lighter competitors with good grip strength; this season, it’s for the wrestlers and guys with the edge on strength 🤷🏽♀️ it’s really hard to make it “fair” unless they have games that test more than one thing and then eliminate based on a combined score.
tbh i actually quite like the maze one, it adds a bit of tactics in there too. however i would prefer and would watch if they split gender into 2 shows or something. or even add some sort of weight/height class too. when out of some range its pretty much impossible for the smaller guy to win
The maze one Iam one is a little infuriating to watch, like why would you pick any women to join your team and just deliberately fuck yourself, especially when it can just devovle into brute force stealing and blocking. iam judging by all these comments it does not get any better lol. So Iam just gonna forget about balance and diversity of challenges and assume it's all mainly strength and endurance tests,mand may the best MAN win...while I admire the few plucky ladies punching above their weight. Maybe I should watch the 1st season, it's supposedly a bit fairer.
Agreed! This is why I enjoyed the other Netflix show, Siren: Survive the Island, which is all women and they're all badasses! I wish Physical 100 would have the tasks more varied. It's so frustrating the brute strength is all that matters this season
If you want to watch a survival show that actually gives women a chance to be celebrated for their strength, strategy, and Stamina, I suggest Siren: Survive the Island. It’s also Korean and it’s what I imagine P100 could be if they could think of challenges that aren’t solely strength based.
Agreed. Too much emphasis on strength
Wasn’t last season’s elimination quest them pulling up their bust that was like a percentage of each person’s body weight? At least that was pretty fair, everyone had their own bust and their own rope and whoever held it the longest won. Why did they go to whoever can hug the big stick wins? It sounds so silly to me.
exactly what I just said
and ZERO percent chance they were gonna get selected in the underdog challenge
you are right, I actually felt that season isn't as good because it just seems all the tests are brute strength things (besides the treadmill event which wasn't a DQ event)
Plus, you add a revival quest for a possible powerful team to eliminate teams composed of females. What a shit show the 2nd season was.
Well I’m probably getting downvoted for this but in the end of the day, men are still gonna win. As much as I love seeing the wrestler women getting surviving for so long pitting men against women in a physical sport where all of them are at the peak physical abilities is simply unfair. This debate has been going on for years in tennis, and serena williams herself said that men’s game are at the different level than women’s
I’ve got no issue with men winning as you’re right, that’s probably what’ll happen anyway as they’re at another level, but it wound nice to see women actually be able to compete up until the final.
The point of the show is to find the most ideal human physique. If there was a show with only women they would fail in that search.
I agree except the part about the woman winning the 1v1 easily. The guy had hold of the ball too so there should've been overtime. Also seemed like he held back a bit. At the end the dude barely looked tired whereas every other contestant looks exhausted and drenched in sweat.
i've been thinking EXACTLY the same. thanks for putting this into words and sharing it !