In schemes of strong electroweak symmetry breaking, independently of the details of the underlying fundamental theory, we develop a framework for the quantitative evaluation of the pseudo-Goldstone masses, including, beside the gauge contributions, also the contributions from those interactions which are responsible for the masses of the ordinary fermions. The effective low-energy Yukawa interactions among pseudo-Goldstone bosons and ordinary fermions appears to play an essential role. All those states which, neglecting such Yukawa terms, would remain massless, tend to acquire mass and we find that these masses, barring special cancellations, are close to those of the heaviest fermions of the theory, the top and the bottom quarks.