In the gender battle, women will always win with (at least) one task: the chair challenge. This viral craze first blew up in 2019, and with good reason. Women make the chair challenge seem over, but even the strongest men does not seem to complete it. What is the statement?
The core of the chair challenge is simple: take two steps off a wall and bend in the middle so that your head touches it. Have someone put a chair under your torso, pick it up to your chest and try to stand. Most women benefit from this. To stand gives them no problems at all. It almost makes you wonder why it’s a challenge at all.
But then you see a man try it, and the challenge is immediately apparent. Most men freeze bent and cursed, can not stand.
Nor is it an act. Men have tried the challenge over and over, but they do not seem to be the best.
There are many explanations that float around why women excel at the chair challenge while men fail. The internet has attributed women’s success to everything from superior core strength to a smaller shoe size to a better awareness of the space their body occupies. Most of these theories are wrong.
“We think it has a lot more to do with the center of mass and, in essence, the size of someone’s foot,” Eric Shadrach, a physical therapist at MetroHealth Medical Center, told WKYC. “People with larger feet will place them further away from the wall and extend their center of mass from a position that their muscles cannot act as leverage and they can move over the anchor of their center of mass.”
YouTubers ‘Math Dad’ and ‘Science Mom’ put this theory to the test. When Math Dad followed the classic instructions and took two steps back from the wall to lift the chair, he failed like the rest of his brothers. But when he followed in his wife’s footsteps, just as far from the wall as she stood, he successfully stood up. Huzzah!
“This exercise has everything to do with your center of mass,” explains Science Mom. “Being a few inches away from the wall makes all the difference in the world or is possible.”
