The Adaptive Athlete Podcast

Mat Hotho talks with Tori Clinch , a rookie competing in the Seated Two division heading to the 2026 CrossFit Games in San Jose. Tori's year has been anything but expected—she got back into CrossFit in January purely for her own sanity, never intending to compete, and ended up finishing first in the Open and first at Semifinals.  She opens up about her path to adaptive CrossFit: an above-knee...

Mat Hotho sits down with Noah Cook , a 25-year-old vision athlete gearing up for his first CrossFit Adaptive Games appearance after going completely blind by age 18.  Noah lost his sight to glaucoma-related injuries, never touched CrossFit until after he went blind, and now trains under his dad, who's also his handler on the competition floor.  They talk prosthetic eyes, producing hip-hop tra...

Mat Hotho sits down with McKenzie Kravetsky , a rookie Lower Minor athlete heading to her first CrossFit Games. In 2013, a head-on collision left McKenzie with injuries that reconstructed nearly everything — including a right ankle that's now fused and immobile.  She walked into a CrossFit gym mid-recovery with one request: make me strong and unkillable. Thirteen years later, she's a bla...

Mat Hotho sits down with Roman Cameron , a rookie heading into his first CrossFit Adaptive Games in one of the sport's toughest divisions, Seated with Hip Function.  Roman shares how a vitamin B12 deficiency at 17 led to spinal cord degeneration and life in a wheelchair, and how he turned that into a relentless drive to compete. He talks studying film like he did back in soccer and rugby, men...

Mat Hotho sits down with Kristee Irby , a Houston-based adaptive CrossFit athlete competing with a left limb difference. Kristee didn't even know adaptive CrossFit existed when she first walked into her gym, Bellhouse CrossFit . She stumbled into the Open, found herself on a leaderboard, and had to decide: was she actually going to do this? She did. What followed was double sessions, a self-b...

Mat Hotho sits down with Oscar Jessup , a 17-year-old adaptive CrossFit athlete from Australia who placed third at last year's Adaptive Games in Las Vegas, complete with his now-famous bow-and-arrow celebration.  Oscar's joined by his dad Rich and his coach Tom Woodham from CrossFit 2444, and together they get into what it actually takes to build a path for an athlete like Oscar: a gym t...

Mat Hotho sits down with Brian Knight . Brian was born with a brachial plexus injury. He won a silver medal at the 2025 CrossFit Games, and he's one of the  OGs of adaptive CrossFit content.  Brian grew up fully integrated into able-bodied sports, didn't discover CrossFit until a roommate with the heart of a coach handed him a dumbbell and a workout in a school gym in Chicago.  Brian and...

Mat Hotho sits down with Kieran Healey-Ryder , a Glasgow-based adaptive athlete navigating a rare, progressive skeletal disease that's slowly taking the use of his left leg.  Kieran shares the story of a camping trip discovery, a devastating second opinion delivered in a Scottish palatial estate, and the quiet grief that arrives in micro-moments. He talks about losing his career and his mobil...

Mat Hotho takes the mic solo for the first installment of a new format: personal episodes between the interviews, where Mat tackles the ideas and conversations he keeps having about adaptive fitness off the show. After a lap through two things on his mind—connecting adaptive athletes with local pediatric and rehab communities, and the case for a true para-sport classification system—Mat spends the...

Mat Hotho sits down with Bruce Williams , the photographer and videographer behind Dope Content and the person responsible for most of the imagery you've seen coming out of the CrossFit Adaptive Games.  Bruce has been documenting the adaptive community for years through WheelWOD and beyond — but this conversation goes deeper than the competition floor.  Bruce shares how growing up with a fath...

Mat Hotho sits down with Lauren Taylor , gold medalist in the Neuromuscular Moderate division at the 2025 CrossFit Adaptive Games.  Lauren walks through the long road — a broken collarbone in high school that snowballed into neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome, three years of insurance battles before surgery, and a near-fatal Valentine's Day procedure where she coded on the table after losing...

Mat Hotho sits down with Sam Fishman , the founder of AnyBody & EveryBody and a full-time adaptive CrossFit coach based out of CrossFit Palace in Ithaca, New York.  Sam's path here runs through speech pathology, special education, EMS, and a decade of advocacy—for students, patients, and athletes alike. She opened AnyBody & EveryBody in September 2024, coaching people with disabilitie...

Mat Hotho sits down with Christina Mazzullo . Christina is a CrossFit Games adaptive champion, affiliate owner of CrossFit Tar Heel in North Carolina, and newly minted Registered Dietitian .  Tina is an upper extremity adaptive athlete who was born missing her left thumb and partial finger joints, and she's turned that into a masterclass in figuring out the how. From climbing a rope mid-class...

Mat Hotho sits down with Nigel Barber . Nigel is a UK-based adaptive CrossFit athlete and founder of Wodaptive . We have an honest conversation about building a life and a competition community after a spinal injury at 16. Nigel traces his path from a genuinely dark few years post-injury to discovering fitness through a Royal Marine PT who refused to accept excuses. That carried him into CrossFit,...

Mat Hotho sits down with Leo Merle for a conversation that covers the full arc of what it means to build a life around the things you love. Leo competed at the Paris 2024 Paralympics in the T38 class in the 1500 meters, and his journey to that stadium started not with a coach's invitation or a scout's eye, but with a YouTube rabbit hole at 19 years old that ended with him watching other...

Mat Hotho sits down with Adam Billany , a British adaptive athlete competing in both parasailing and CrossFit. Adam was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at around age two; it affects both legs while leaving his upper body completely unaffected, a combination that's made him formidable in the weight room (a 106-kilogram bench press, roughly 1.6x bodyweight) and on the water. Adam is a multiple in...

In this episode the Adaptive Athlete Podcast, Mat Hotho sits down with Natalie South-Law , a UK-based adaptive athlete with spastic diplegia cerebral palsy who has competed at a serious level across many parasports. The conversation moves from the lived reality of being an ambulatory wheelchair user — including the looks you get when you stand up in a shop — to the "furniture surfing" Na...

Mat Hotho sits down with Jacob Peterson , an adaptive powerlifter from Alabama living with mild cerebral palsy. Released during Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month, Jacob talks about the surgeries that helped him move more freely as a kid, the loneliness of being different without being able to fully explain why, and years of competing in Ultimate Frisbee while managing CP-related arm lockups mid-game....

Mat Hotho sits down with Aaron Trent , a former para cyclist who placed second and third at the UCI Para-Cycling World Championships in 2009 and spent two and a half years as a resident athlete at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Aaron has hemiplegic cerebral palsy affecting his left limbs which makes for a perfect conversation to kick off CP Awareness Month in March They dig into...

Mat Hotho sits down with Shana Coissard , a French adaptive athlete with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome who's carved out an impressive path through wheelchair basketball, CrossFit, and adaptive HYROX.  Shana shares how her disability began appearing at age nine, eventually leading her to a wheelchair—and how that transition actually gave her more freedom and independence than she expected. From earni...

Mat Hotho sits down with Lance King — three-time CrossFit Adaptive Games champion in the Intellectual Disability without Chromosomal Condition division — and his older brother Kyle King , who serves as Lance's coach, handler, and in-competition strategist.  In this conversation, Kyle breaks down what it actually looks like to coach your brother — the 80/20 split between serious training, how...

Mat Hotho sits down with Julia Halberstam , who competes in the Upper Two Point division and placed second at the 2025 CrossFit Adaptive Games. Their conversation starts with the hilarious story of how they met at the 2024 Sea Dog competition—when Mat walked up to Julia's tent holding Chick-fil-A and she thought he was going to talk to her about Jesus.  Julia was born with cupped hands, a con...

Mat Hotho sits down with Luke Reeson , a former British Army sniper who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was shot three times across two deployments—including twice in the legs during his final tour. What followed was a journey from a wheelchair through para swimming with the GB National Team to becoming the 2025 CrossFit Games champion in the Lower Below Knee division. Luke shares how mil...

In this episode, Mat Hotho sits down with Sarah Tucker , founder of Uncharted Adaptive Fitness Virginia, to explore the transformative power of Adaptive CrossFit.  Sarah shares her journey from childhood experiences helping a blind child at T-ball practice to opening her own gym dedicated to adaptive fitness. With a background in physical therapy and a deep understanding of motor development, Sara...

In this episode, Mat Hotho sits down with Brandon Mantz , a seated athlete who secured a third-place podium finish at the CrossFit Games for four consecutive years. Brandon shares the story of his "pivot point" in December 2018, when a skiing accident in Breckenridge resulted in a T6 spinal cord injury and three liters of internal bleeding. Following his recovery at Craig Hospital, Brand...