Because I’ve been involved in Olympic weightlifting for a very long time, people often ask me, “What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen in the sport over the years?”
 
Actually, that’s a lie. Nobody ever asks me that. I wish people would ask me that question, because I’ve got some really good answers. But most weightlifters don’t know anything about the history of the sport (and don’t care).
 
So, I’m going to ask the question myself…and you’re going to read the answer. I started this sport in the late 1980s, which currently puts me at around 30 years of experience. Without a doubt, there’s one specific thing that pops into my mind when I ask the question, “What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the sport over the years?” The biggest change I’ve seen in Olympic weightlifting during my career is the development of the women’s division.
 
That’s what this article is going to be about. I know most of you aren’t weightlifting historians, and that’s okay. You’re not reading this magazine to find out about our sport’s past. You’re reading because you want some information that will make your own career better. I get that. However, there’s something in this subject that will serve that purpose. If you hang with me to the end of this thing, I promise I’ll deliver something valuable for you.
 
Let me give you just a little overall background before I get into the meaty stuff. Olympic weightlifting has been a competitive sport for over 100 years, as many of you know. However, it was entirely a male sport for most of that time. Women started competing in the sport in the 1980s, and the first women’s world championship was held in 1987. The ladies didn’t get into the Olympics until 2000, and look at where they’re at now. I don’t think I’m exaggerating or being inaccurate when I say women’s weightlifting is rapidly approaching the same competitive level as the men. In terms of sheer numbers, there are still more males in this sport than females, but the gap is closing. Women are flocking to this sport and having an enormous impact on the overall dynamic of it.
 
So the interesting thing about my career is that I’ve seen almost the entire life story of women’s weightlifting up to this point. In this article, I’m going to give you some statistics and facts that you’ll appreciate simply because they’ll blow your mind and expand your understanding of this whole subject. However, the larger idea I want to examine is how the rise of women’s weightlifting has changed the mindset of our athletic culture about physical capability and human interaction. Trust me; this subject goes a lot deeper than the simple fact that women have gotten a lot stronger over the years. This isn’t just about the progress of numbers and records. It’s about the progress of how we’ve all learned to work together and respect each other.
 
Things are just so much different than they used to be. Has the change been positive or negative? All positive, in my opinion. Let’s take a look.
 
Participation and Weights
A few years ago, I was standing in the audience at the National Championship with John Coffee. John has been a weightlifting coach for over 40 years, and his Coffee’s Gym weightlifting team was one of the pioneer programs in women’s Olympic weightlifting. Coffee’s won the women’s national team title for something like 10 or 15 consecutive years back in the 80s and 90s, producing many of the best female lifters of that generation.
 
Anyway, John and I were watching the B session of the women’s 69 kg class. The main thing I remember is almost every woman in that session was clean and jerking around 100 kg. For just a second, my memory kicked, and I thought about something that put things into perspective. I looked at John and said, “Johnny, I remember when there were only a handful of women in this country who could clean and jerk 100 kilos. Now, every gal in the damn 69 B session can hit it.” John shook his head and said, “Hell, I remember when a 100 clean and jerk would get you a spot on the women’s world team guaranteed, whatever weight class you did it in.”
 
I remembered this conversation when I came home after that weekend, and I decided to do a little research. I went back to the old meet results and checked to see how many women could clean and jerk 100 kilos at the National Championship back around the time women’s weightlifting started. 1993 was my first Nationals, so I just picked that as a starting point. The first women’s National Championship in the US was in 1981, so obviously there had been a little development by ‘93. I counted the 100 kg C&Js at the 1993 Nationals, and then I compared it to 2017. I also counted the total number of competitors for both meets. Here’s what I got:
 
Total # of Lifters at the Women’s National Championship
1993- 57
2017- 225
 
Total # of 100 kg C&Js at the Women’s National Championship
1993- 5
2017- 103
 
My friends, women’s Olympic weightlifting has been the source of one of the most dramatic surges in modern sports history. The elevation of participation and performance over the last 20 years has been nothing short of staggering. From a statistical standpoint, I know two meets is a small sample for comparison. But I did more research than just the 1993/2017 meets. I’m not going to bog down this article with a ton of statistics because I’ve got other points I want to move to, but I can definitely tell you that back in the 1980s and 90s, the women’s National Championship was typically around 50 to 60 lifters, at the most. In 2017, we had 225 women at the Nationals, and that number has been a consistent ballpark range since around 2012.
 
And the difference in weights the women are lifting now, compared to then? You’ve gotta be kidding me. Once again, back in the 1980s and 90s, you were normally going to see a very small handful of women who could hit a 100 kg C&J. There were five of them at the ’93 Nationals, and my research showed there were 20 at the 1999 Nats. Now we’re in 2017…and there are over 100 women who can hit this magic number. Back in 1993, the silver medal total in the women’s 75+ weight class was 182.5 kg. In 2017, 182.5 would have been the 9^th place total in the 58 kg class.
Keep something in mind to make this difference even more awe-inspiring. We’re not talking about a change that’s taken 50 to 100 years to develop. This has all happened in a remarkably short time period, in terms of the normal development of a sport.
 
Speaking strictly from a personal anecdotal viewpoint, the change has been visible at every level. If you went to a local meet back in the 90s, there were probably going to be 30 to 40 guys there, and maybe 3 to 4 women. This was simply the way it was. Now, the male/female ratio at local meets is almost always 50/50.
 
The simplest way to say it is this…women’s weightlifting is a completely different ball game than it used to be. Armies of women have flocked to the sport, and the totals that would have won a women’s national title and made the World Team back in the 90s would be B session lifts now. And it didn’t take several generations for this escalation to happen. It happened in 20 years.
 
But it’s bigger than that…
 
Anybody with a database of old meet results and a calculator could deliver the statistical information I just shared with you. That’s why I want to supplement this with some additional thoughts…the kind you can’t get from looking at numbers on paper. I’m talking about the way women were treated in this sport back in the old days, compared to now. Believe it or not, this is the area where I’ve seen the biggest change over the last few decades, much more than numbers and big C&Js.
 
When I started in the late 80s, weightlifting was still an entirely masculine pursuit, both in the public eye and the culture inside the sport. I trained in a lot of gyms, knew a lot of lifters and coaches, and saw a hell of a lot of human behavior during those years. That’s why I can tell you as an in-the-trenches weightlifter from the old days, women often had it pretty rough back then. When they joined gyms and wanted to become weightlifters, they were walking into an environment of aggressive guys with Neanderthal attitudes. Respect was usually non-existent, and inappropriate sexual behavior was common.
 
Then, to make it all even harder, our society’s general perception of women lifting weights was overwhelmingly negative. I knew female lifters from that time period who got openly mocked and insulted by family members and co-workers in their regular lives, all because they liked Olympic lifting. This is one of the main reasons why the women’s division of the sport was so small in the early years. Many women just didn’t want to be weightlifters because they were afraid of how they’d be seen and treated for it.
 
So, is all this stuff different now? Yes, it absolutely is. I understand there may be women reading this article right now and getting irritated because they’re fighting some of the same battles I just described from the old days, saying, “Listen, jerk! It’s STILL hard for a woman to be a weightlifter!”
 
That’s totally true, and I understand. But you can trust me on this one; it’s a hell of a lot better than it used to be. I’m still in the trenches of this sport, coaching at the local and national level, interacting constantly with the weightlifting community, living my life in this world, etc. There’s absolutely no doubt about it, people. Women are drastically more accepted and respected in Olympic weightlifting now than they were back in the early years of the sport. Most of the male coaches I know would rather coach women than men, and not for inappropriate sexual reasons. Women are usually more fun to coach than men. They typically listen better and they work harder.
 
Men have basically been forced to get rid of (or conceal) their old caveman attitudes and show the ladies more respect. Again, I know this still isn’t universally true. But as I said, the improvement has happened by leaps and bounds. Most of the coaches I know in this sport will kick people out of their gyms if they disrespect other lifters, and there’s not a gender barrier to this. Guys don’t get a free pass to treat women like dirt, the way they used to when I was starting the sport.
 
I could go on and on about this. I could tell you stories that would rattle your brains about some of the things I’ve seen in this area. That’s why my perspective on this subject sounds the way it does. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Women still have battles to fight in terms of respect inside and outside the sport. This is true. But we’ve come a long way.
 
And this shows us something larger…
 
There are two closing ideas I want to add to this. First of all, I mentioned how much more competitive women’s weightlifting is now, compared to what it used to be. The top women’s lifts in the sport from 25 years ago wouldn’t be anywhere near the top in current years. You need to understand that’s there’s no disrespect meant to the ladies from the early years of the sport by saying this. They were the best of their time period, and they deserve respect for it. Hell, Tommy Kono was a multiple Olympic champion back in the 1950s and 60s, and his top career lifts would be nowhere near the top of the sport now. Does that diminish his greatness? Obviously not. The same perspective applies to the pioneer women of weightlifting.
 
The second point I want to make is, fortunately, a hugely positive one. Women are accepted and respected in the sport much more now than they used to be. When I think about this, it makes me understand that there’s something much larger going on. Human interaction and behavior is changing. People are learning to work with each other in a way that’s much fairer than it used to be. Whether they like it or not, men are learning to treat women as equals in weightlifting. The old chauvinistic culture just doesn’t fly anymore. If you’re a man and you coach a weightlifting program or run your own gym, you’d better make sure your place is supportive and respectful towards the ladies who walk through your door. Women make up almost 50 percent of the total membership of the sport these days. So if you treat them badly, you’ll wind up with an empty gym pretty quick. And if you’re a male lifter, you have to be good at training with women. You’ll get the boot if you’re not.
 
I like all of this. I like seeing people treat each other better. I’ve liked seeing women fight for their place in the sport throughout my career, elevating the whole game in every way. I know this discussion has been entirely about weightlifting in the United States, but you could make all the same points about the sport in almost any country it’s practiced in. This is all good stuff, people. It means we’re being better to each other.

I don’t want to get too hearts-and-flowers and make it sound like the development of women’s weightlifting has caused a global overhaul in human relationships. All you have to do is watch the news and you can see this world is still a scary place with a lot of bad people. But for those of us who make Olympic weightlifting a major part of our world, there’s plenty of cause for encouragement. Women getting involved in this sport has been good for everybody, absolutely no doubt. The only people who might not like it are dysfunctional male personalities who still want to treat women like garbage, but nobody cares about what those guys think anymore. I say congratulations to the ladies for what they’re doing, and the future is obviously going to continue to get better.