The Adaptive Athlete Podcast

At twelve, Lauren Farhat Googled "what can a 12-year-old do for work," picked caddying, and got pulled off the course on the 12th hole with blisters and blood inside her prosthetic. She called the caddy master, asked for another shot, and worked her way back to full 18-hole loops.

Lauren was born with PFFD (proximal femoral focal deficiency) and competes in the above-knee division of adaptive CrossFit. She taught herself CrossFit off YouTube in a 24 Hour Fitness before a local affiliate said yes. She won the 2023 WheelWOD Games in a tie-breaking final event, fueled by Taylor Swift's Reputation album, then won the Adaptive CrossFit Games in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

Now a DM she almost ignored has her in a sit ski. Lauren tells Mat about a para Nordic development camp in Oberhof, Germany: learning to shoot an air rifle on the exhale, eating it on downhills with no brakes, and getting classified LW12. She talks about spending her childhood trying to be "normal," why so many adaptive athletes don't find sport until their 30s, and what she wants to do after her final competitive CrossFit season: be the person she didn't have growing up.

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Nat Vorel is training for LA28 in swimming and rowing, and still competes in climbing — right now, it's a full-time job. 

But Nat didn't grow up in para sport. 

A college swimmer who fell for climbing on the very first route she tried, Nat graduated in 2020, turned 22 a week later, and a week after that took a 30-foot ground fall that fractured her spine. 

Mat Hotho and Nat talk about the long limbo of a spinal cord injury, why she traded PT for the climbing gym, and what classification feels like across three sports with three different systems. 

Nat also breaks down the mental framework she competes with—a whole cast of characters in her head, each with a job—and makes the case that the training isn't the hard part.

Check out Adaptive Climbers Fest.

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In 2019, Ben Fallon was diagnosed with an aggressive form of multiple sclerosis and told to prepare for the possibility of losing his independence within five years. 

His answer came one night in Hawaii. Overhaul the way he eats—cold turkey—and never look back. Seven years later, he's a two-time CrossFit Games champion.

Mat Hotho talks with Ben about living with MS every single day, the strict nutrition protocol he uses to manage it, and the TV segment on a fellow athlete with MS that pulled him into competitive CrossFit. 

Ben opens up about how the pressure to win drained the joy from his 2024 title, the balance he chased in 2026, and the strategy that kept his nervous system from crashing on the competition floor.

They close on gratitude, identity, and Ben's challenge to anyone with a diagnosis—turn disability into possibility.

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Mat Hotho talks with Alexa Serret, an adaptive CrossFit athlete and third grade teacher who found out she had cerebral palsy at 28 from a PT at her CrossFit gym.

Alexa grew up in Spain and in her first season she made the 2024 CrossFit Games in San Antonio in a division that wasn't really hers. That trip ended with a decision to move to Texas. 

Now she teaches in Odessa, runs a Harry Potter–themed classroom, and doesn't let her students say "I can't." She talks about returning to the Games in 2026, going from zero chest-to-bar to doing them on the competition floor, learning to talk to herself kindly, and what she'd tell her younger self.

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Mat Hotho and Jed Snelson pick up where they left off—on the thing Jed says separates first place from tenth. Mindset. 

Jed spent years as a strength coach for pro motocross racers, watching guys who were untouchable on a practice track finish seventh on race day, and he built training specifically to fix it. 

He walks through the pressure-cooker workouts he designed, the two words he repeated to athletes mid-suffering, and one  tip he'd give any CrossFitter that costs nothing and works immediately. 

Then the conversation turns to movement standards in adaptive competition—what Jed saw at the Games this year, why he doesn't blame the judges, and the solution.

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Mat Hotho talks with Jed Snelson—seventeen years racing motocross, a strength coach for pro racers and X Games athletes, paralyzed in a 2014 race crash, and now one of the few people coaching seated adaptive athletes full time. 

This is part one of two. Jed's rule is simple and harkens back to the CrossFit methodology: function first, everything else second.

He walks through what that means for a seated athlete—core to extremity, out-of-chair rowing, air deadlifts, balancing on the lip of his own hot tub. These functional movements have given Jed and his athletes more freedom in their day-to-day lives.

And that's what matters.

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Mat Hotho talks with Katie Weymouth, one of the OGs of adaptive CrossFit. 

She competed at the 2021 WheelWOD Games in a packed affiliate in North Carolina, where nobody left the floor until the last athlete finished. 

Five seasons later she took second at the 2026 Games in her own backyard, on a final workout that gave her twenty seconds to set up instead of two minutes. 

Katie is the only bilateral below-knee amputee in her division, the result of bacterial meningitis three weeks into her freshman year of college. She talks about relearning to walk, a body that can't sweat through its own skin grafts, why snowboarding gave her back a feeling she'd lost, and why the real reason she trains has nothing to do with a podium. 

The Adaptive Athlete podcast is proudly sponsored by Equip Products.

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In September 2023, Sam Constantin hit the ground at 100 kilometers an hour on a skydiving landing and was paralyzed from the waist down. Thirteen months later, he stood up. 

Mat Hotho talks with the Quebec athlete about the parts of the comeback that never make it to Instagram—banded leg curls from a wheelchair, an hour on the bike on bad days, and a deadlift that climbed from 75 pounds to 275 in under two years. 

Sam explains how how his mascot transitioned from the butterfly to phoenix, and what it's like to walk to the barbell during a competition while everyone else runs. 

He's back to skydiving solo, studying physiotherapy, and building a coaching philosophy around a simple idea: you have a disability, and there's still so much you can do.

The Adaptive Athlete Podcast is proudly sponsored by Equip Products, the leader in adaptive fitness equipment.

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Courtnei Lopez was in a car accident a week before the 2026 Adaptive CrossFit Open. Six months later, she stood on the Adaptive CrossFit Games podium in third  after securing the spot in the very last workout. 

Mat Hotho talks with Courtnei about the doubt she carried into the season, the moment she decided to make it you versus you, and why she says the whole thing was mental. 

Courtnei also opens up her sponsorship playbook, built on her mom's advice that no's are free, and traces how a conversation at the 2023 Games in Madison turned into her first deal.

The Adaptive Athlete podcast is made possible with support from Equip Products.

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Sue Jordaan qualified for her rookie season and then made the call not to go because a $4,000 flight from South Africa deserves the fittest version of herself. 

Mat Hotho talks with Sue about a 2013 car accident that broke her back in three places, cost her her job, and left her raising two daughters from a wheelchair. 

What came after is amazing. Wheelchair rugby, a community that pulled her out of isolation, a CrossFit gym in Pretoria that put five athletes in the semifinal top ten, and scuba diving—where she dives fully independent, and puts other adaptive athletes in the water through her nonprofit.

The Adaptive Athlete podcast is sponsored by Equip Products

Send us Fan Mail

Follow the podcast on Instagram: @TheAdaptiveAthletePod