Women in Weightlifting Part 1: Programming A young female weightlifter once asked me whether she should be training differently from the guys at her gym. Women make up almost half of our weightlifting community, yet nearly all of the resources that are available are written for the default, male, weightlifter. This forces most women to rely on training plans that simply aren’t designed for their physiology. I asked one of the best female weightlifters in the world, multi-time World Champion Nadezhda (Nadia) Evstyukhina, about topics she thinks women in weightlifting (and their coaches) should know of in order to get the most out of their training.