Exclusive: We Figured Out How Olivia Reeves Squats So Much

Olivia Reeves doesn't need to be the best squatter in the United States, but she is. She doesn't need to train as often as the athletes she beats, so she doesn't. On the platform, where her colleagues rely on focus and fury, Olivia trots out with a big smile. Whimsy has worked pretty well so far.

• "I don't think anyone else comes close to Olivia," says Weightlifting House founder Seb Ostrowicz of Reeves' casual competence in the squat rack. "She cranks out 200-kilogram-plus squats after a heavy day of lifting no problem."

In February, Seb visited Olivia in Tennessee. During one of her workouts, on a whim, she squatted 220 kilograms. Flash forward to last week when Olivia posted a set of 182-kilo squats to Instagram for 10 reps. 

Enough was enough. We started making some calls — including to Olivia herself — to figure out how, and why, she squats so much when she doesn't need to.

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306 kilograms is the heaviest raw back squat in American women's powerlifting history. But to compare super-heavyweight Tamara Walcott to 71-kilogram Reeves isn't exactly fair play.

The Women's Junior (up to age 24 within USA Powerlifting; Reeves just turned 22) 70-kilogram squat record? 201. For Olivia, that's light work. To humor Seb during his visit, she cut a deal with her coach, Steve Fauer:

"Squat 205 for three and you can skip your back-off sets." So Olivia squatted 205 for three. Then, a few minutes later, 220.

"We never let her stagnate," Fauer said last year. "She's had no setbacks and no injuries. The day after she won the Pan-American Games, Olivia was back in the gym doing front squats."

• Good Company: Olivia may be the most impressive squatter in Women's weightlifting, but she isn't soaking up allthe limelight. "I've seen some pretty incredible squats from women in international training halls," Seb says, including:
  • Thanyathon Sukcharoen (49KG, THA) squatting triple bodyweight.
  • Liang Xiaomei (81KG, CHN) front squatting 180.
  • Kuo Hsing-Chun (59KG, TPE) hitting 190 in the back squat at 59.
  • Emily Campbell (+87KG, GBR) back squatting 220 for a triple.
• The heaviest Women's back squat in our recent memory belongs to Korea's Park Hye-Jeong, who's bulldozed 270 kilograms.

Improvisation accounts for many of Olivia's big lifts, at least in the gym. Where other weightlifters (like teammate and fellow Olympic history-maker Hampton Morris) are meticulous planners and curators of spreadsheets, Reeves and Fauer like to let the vibes lead.

• "[Steve] is always willing to take a chance on a good day," Olivia tells us. "He's pretty good at predicting [when I can go heavy]."

On a good day last April, before traveling to win the 2024 IWF World Cup in Phuket, Olivia, who does not squat jerk, squat jerked 142 kilograms. It would've been the fourth-heaviest jerk in her category in Thailand. She made 150 on stage.

Like any good weightlifter, Olivia has a program and mostly sticks to it. But her natural fluency with the barbell affords her more leeway than her peers.

Most international lifters fill their weeks with two or even three-a-days. Olivia has taken a more recreational approach while juggling her weightlifting and academic careers (she graduated college the day after winning Worlds in Bahrain last December).

Olivia's constrained schedule, as it happens, aligns pretty well with Fauer's coaching philosophy:

• "[Instead of high-volume, high-frequency training] I've found I can get more reps at 90%+ [from Olivia] if I take the frequency to three or four sessions per week," Fauer said last year. "This gives us more opportunities to identify technical errors that only show themselves at near-max attempts."

For Fauer, who has worked with Olivia since age 12, a lean-and-mean approach to programming also helps ward off the burnout which tends to plague weightlifters transitioning from their Junior to Senior careers.

Olivia trains four days per week for "two hours, max" — she says it looks something like this:

• Squats at the end of every session, alternating between back and front.
• About a month out from a competition, Olivia and Steve drop one of the front squat sessions to manage fatigue.
• The snatch, clean & jerk, or their basic variations, are done "almost" every workout as well.
• Exercise order plus volume prescriptions change regularly. Often, Olivia won't know what she's doing that day until she gets in the door.

"It's surreal trying to keep up with her," Olivia's close friend, teammate, and 2021 World Champion Meredith Alwine, tells us. "It's funny. When she's front squatting and I'm back squatting, we can still share a bar."

We wanted a powerlifter's perspective as well, so we rang up Greg Nuckols. "[Olivia's squatting] is extremely impressive," adds Nuckols, a world-record setting powerlifter, researcher, and the mastermind of Stronger by Science. 

"If someone has great genetics for squatting, they're going to have a huge squat, regardless of whether they gravitate to powerlifting or weightlifting," he says. Nuckols likens Reeves to Chen Wei-Ling of Taiwan, who won weightlifting gold in Beijing '08 before transitioning to powerlifting and setting squat world records there, too.

There's no silver bullet explaining Olivia's potency. Despite not having the body structure people typically attribute to squatting skill — short thighs and a tall torso — Olivia undeniably holds the right cards genetically. 

Pair that with a coach whose philosophy matches her lifestyle and preferences, and there you have it. Reeves' deck has been stacked in her favor the whole time.