Doing it Your Way, with Olivia Reeves | Episode 63

This week we have the impressive Olivia Reeves, a Team USA Olympic Weightlifter in the Paris 2024 Games, gold medal winner at the 2024 IWF Championships and 2023 Pan Am Championships, and US women’s record holder. Since Olympic Weightlifting is a new topic for us on the podcast, Olivia explains how the sport works and what a training routine and competition look like.
She also tells us about how growing up in her family’s CrossFit gym led her to a passion for weightlifting, and her journey to find a routine and mindset that work for her - regardless of what everyone else is doing. She also weighs in on the controversial practice of weight cutting, what it feels like to be going to her first Olympics, and her meticulous competition day rituals.
Plus: Kristi's just here for the BBQ.
🏅 You can follow Olivia’s Olympic Journey on her instagram ( / oliviareeves.71 )
Keep up with Kristi's Podcast - The Other 3 Years (www.theother3y...)
Get live updates on Kristi's Instagram ( / kristinumber1 ) !
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[@Damzified]

Hey, cool to hear a long form conversation with Olivia. I think you could improve the quality of your interviews by working on your active listening skills, as it mostly felt like you were going through your questions one by one instead of reflecting on her answers and digging deeper into her thoughts and experiences while engaging in a dialogue. Olivia is probably the greatest weightlifting talent North America has seen in the past 50 years and she managed to scare away the Chinese team from sending world champion Liao Guifang at the Olympics. She'd beaten Olivia by 20 kg then in September 2023 (an enormous margin) and was an obvious bet for the Olympics, but Olivia has improved so quickly in the past 9 months that she managed to beat her back at the most recent World Cup in Thailand, and as a result Guifang wasn't selected by her country. This is unheard of for an American. Needless to say she's the favorite for gold in Paris! By the way, the anomaly of her four two-hour sessions/week training schedule at her level was way understated. Also it would have been interesting to hear about what a day of eating looked like for her, her use of supplements and her thoughts on the epidemic of steroids in WL in the old eastern block countries. Hope this is constructive, cheers!