The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

In general, the female and male adrenal responses are significantly different.  Men can “light switch”: turn it on for an immediate burst, and then turn it off.  The typical female response requires more of a gradual ramping up (I can fight my A game without much/any warmup; Letia has to fight for about 30 minutes to get hers going), and once there it lasts forever (Find Letia after the woods battle at Pennsic, she will want to do pickups).

I’ve been trying to think of some way, through training, to “masculinize” a fighter (male or female) with a ramp up response, and maybe to “femininize” a light-switch fighter to a more taper off response.

PubMed wasn’t all that useful in providing info.  I checked with a female friend who was in the Army for over a decade, thinking that if anybody would have a way to train that light-switch response it would be the Army, but no luck (basically, she had to develop the ability to function at 100% whatever her adrenal state).

So, to all of you: Any ideas?