CrossFit Games 2023 Champion Jeffrey Adler Discusses His Win

JEFFREY ADLER DIDN’T start the 2023 CrossFit Games in prime position to win the title of the Fittest Man on Earth. The 29-year-old Canadian was 100 points behind leader Roman Khrennikov after the earliest stages of the competition, and consoled himself with the thought of a second or third place finish. “I remember on Friday night talking to another of my competitors, and I was like “Oh, Roman won the Games,” Adler recalls.

Adler had finished just outside the podium twice at the sport’s premier event, placing fifth in 2020 and 2022, so capturing bronze or silver would be a career-best. Leading up to the 2023 Games, however, he had put himself even more into the conversation as one of the top athletes in the sport, winning the Open and the North American Semifinal. Aiming for the podium wasn’t out of the question—it was just a matter of how far the savvy strategy laid out by his coach, Caroline Lambray, and near-flawless execution could take him to make up the chasm between himself and the leader’s jersey.

Adler did just that and took the lead on the final day of competition. He never gave it up to take the top spot on the podium as the champion of the 2023 CrossFit Games. The win was the culmination of years of work—and the collaboration of Adler and Lambray, who are also co-owners of the CrossFit Wonderland gym in Montreal and romantic partners. The victory was historic: Adler was the first Canadian to take the title since 2009, and Lambray became the first female coach to guide an individual win at the CrossFit Games.

Adler and Lambray took some time to speak to Men’s Health about the Games win, their goals to grow CrossFit, and the types of workouts anyone can do who wants to try the sport.

Men’s Health: How did it feel to take the top of the podium after five years at the Games?

Jeffrey Adler: I want to say finally—but we’re always working towards towards getting better. The best result I had in the previous years was fifth place, so we had our eyes on on a podium finish this year. It was kind of a surprise in a way to have the overall win. It’s really the fruit of my work and it feels pretty awesome to have the first place finish.

Yeah—especially mentally, we’ve tried to put as little pressure on myself as possible. At every competition, I’m always very nervous. I’m also very nervous going into the competitions, like the week before—for any competition, whether it’s Semifinals, or the games, or offseason competitions. This year I just had no real expectations. I tried to stay very calm and composed, and take one workout at a time when we got to the competition and not take it as a whole. It was just like, do the first event and recover, do everything we can so that I can push as hard as possible on the next one.

It was more a focus of how we did the competition, then the full overall competition. We were going in for one workout at a time, and not for the seven [events] or for the 12 [events], and to do everything that we could possibly do in between events to make sure that I could be recovered as much as I could, that I had eaten as much as I could, and then get ready for the next one.

Outside of that, did you use any specific mental strategies? You’re talking about approaching each event as its own thing—was there anything a bit more specific that you did? Or was it just purely a mindset type of approach?

Yeah, overall it’s a mindset thing. For some of the workouts we do visualization, especially for the ones that I feel that are going to be harder for me. There are some events that I’m way more confident in because of the movements, the timeframe—for example the lifting events, I have away easier time getting ready for those, because I’m so much more confident in that type of event than let’s say, the box jump over rower and burpee get-over. That’s a workout that had that needed a little bit more concentration on my end.

So we do some visualization before we go through the event to try to make it easier on my mind, so I can let my body just take over and do the work. But overall, mindset-wise, it’s more like we’re going in for one workout at a time. And then every workout, I’m like, “This is what I’m doing, I’m not thinking of what’s coming next, or what’s happened before.” It’s just, “This is what we’re doing, and we’re trying to do it just like a workout at the gym that we do every day.”

You made a huge comeback at the Games from 100 points down to take the lead on the final day of competition. Can you talk us through that process?

I remember on Friday night talking to another of my competitors, and I was like “Oh Roman won the Games.” He had such an advanced [lead]—I think it was even more than 100 points. It’s hard to to gain some points on someone that doesn’t leave a lot of points on the table. I was like, “We’re battling for second or third.” The podium was still up for grabs; I think after Friday I was maybe just outside the top 10 or right inside the top 10, but the point spread was really thin so I knew I had a shot at top five or top four, at least. Then the workouts started to come out for Friday evening and Saturday and I was like, “These are good workouts for me.” So we’re going to try and get as many points that I possibly can on Khrennikov. But at that point, I not only needed to do better than him, but also needed other guys to do better better than him to be able to gain those points. I was firing on all cylinders on Saturday. I was excited for the workouts, and I think we managed the weekend in a way that I was able to perform at a high level on Saturday and Sunday.

After a few days of competition we’re all feeling tired and sore. I think it’s a game of who can maintain the pace for as long as possible, and I think I did a pretty good job on Saturday of doing that. We had the the first workout of Sunday morning was announced by the end of the day Saturday after the lifting event. When I saw the workout come out, I knew that I had a real shot at taking the lead. When I saw the muscle-up sandbag workout, I was like, this is my chance. If I wanted to make a move, this is the time to do it. And it panned out really well because I won the workout and then took the lead after that first Sunday event.

CrossFit has been a sport of long reigns at number one. How do you feel you’re positioned continue a legacy in the sport as you go forward?

I’m not sure—I guess time will tell. But it’s been a long time since an athlete won the CrossFit Games that is also an affiliate [gym] owner. So I’m gonna actually try and push this sport in a different way. I’m going to try and get some eyes on CrossFit, but not only for the sport, but also for the training methodology, trying to get people to get into gyms and improve their health by using CrossFit. Will I have a legacy? We’re gonna have to wait till next year. We’re going to try and repeat, that’s for sure. But we’re gonna have to win more than once to call it a legacy.

What might that look like for your gym? Is there anything that you’ve already kind of talked about how you can promote this modality and this style of living with with your title?

Hopefully it attracts more people to CrossFit, whether it’s in my gym or some other gym around the world. I just hope people will just try it. If people watch the Games, sometimes they think, “Oh, it’s impossible to do what they do.” And that’s maybe true in some way. But you can just scale it down. It’s a way of training but it’s also a sport, which makes it fun to do and gets you healthy at the same time.

What do you already do out of your affiliate, CrossFit Wonderland in Montreal, to make CrossFit more accessible for all kinds of people?

I think this comes from coaching—we have great staff at our gym, people that truly care about people’s health. It’s to make sure that everybody has not only a great workout, but also does the right things so that they don’t get injured. CrossFit has evolved in the past years. Maybe a few years ago, everybody would think CrossFit was all tear your hands and go hard and die at the end of the workout—which is sometimes true, you push yourself through these limits. But with the years it’s evolved a little bit, and it is now more calculated. There is stimulus that we want to respect in the workouts, and we try to hit them for everyone, and we scale the movements or the weights for people to achieve that goal and that’s what gets them more healthy.

That’s an interesting dynamic you’re talking about—somebody watching the Games, and then thinking those types of events are the only thing that happens inside of a box. What would you say to that type of person who is interested in trying CrossFit, but a little intimidated?

The first thing to do is to get into an affiliate and try it. That’s the way to do it—you can’t say you don’t like it and haven’t tried it. Just don’t push it too much on the first time. You can make it easy on yourself for the first few weeks, and then make it progressively harder. That’s a mistake that some people make. They start doing CrossFit and they give it everything they have—which is great, but there’s a learning curve. Take the time to learn the movements, take the time to learn the stimulus and once you get used to it, then you can put some more intensity into it.

Your win was historic in that you are the first athlete outside of the U.S. to win since 2009 and Caroline is the first female coach to take an athlete to the number one spot at the Games. What does that means for both of you?

Jeffrey: It feels quite good to be the first outside of the U.S. in a little bit. I’m also the second Canadian to win. I would have been very happy that Vellner would have won, but I’m very happy that I’m the one to do it. We’ve put in the work to get there—it wasn’t free to win the CrossFit Games, that’s for sure. I can’t talk for Caroline, but she’s been my coach for six or seven years now. That she’s a woman doesn’t change anything for me because that’s what I’m used to. I’ve been around female coaches for most of our CrossFit career—even at our gym, we’ve had more female coaches than men. If the girls want to try it out, they have to and don’t be scared of it. If you have issues with men, then you’ll just have to work a little bit harder. That problem doesn’t come from women, it comes from men.

Caroline: Being the first at anything, it’s a huge honor. It was a goal that we had set aside a few years back. We were kind of in a race with Pat [Vellner] and Michele [Letendre], for me, in my head, they’re the only other two, and is it going to be them or us? If we put the work in, we got the reward.

There is certainly a stigma that certain types of men hold about who can be an authority on strength and sport. What would you say to that type of guy who would be hesitant to work with a coach just because they’re a woman?

Jeffrey: Some athletes have asked. You have to pick a coach that works well with you, whether it’s a man or woman. [The dynamic] has to work for the athlete, and the coach has to be able to work with the athlete. It’s a two way street. You just have to make sure that the person that coaches you is knowledgeable and wants to keep learning. That’s the most important thing, because trying to improve over years—for me and Caro, we both had to improve in our own capacities, me physically as an athlete and her knowledge as a coach. You always have to strive for more, that’s the most important thing. Being a man or woman doesn’t matter and it doesn’t change anything, as long as both athlete and coach are working hard towards the same goal.

Caroline: If you take out all the women coaches, then you only have 50 percent of the pool of the coaches that are out there. Why would you want to reduce your chances of making it to the next level or just improving? Coaching is coaching—you want to build a relationship, you need to build trust, and that can be done with any human being. So I think that would be to someone’s detriment to take out 50 percent of the population that could be helping you just because of gender.

Another component to this is that you are romantic partners. What does that dynamic bring to your relationship? What does that bring to your experience competing?

Jeffrey: I think it makes some of the communication better because we spend so much time together and we’re always together. If on a certain day I really don’t feel good, I’m tired for some reason and training doesn’t go well and I can’t hit my numbers, it’s easy because she’s right there and I can let her know this is not working today. Then we can adjust the programming on the spot. When things are going well, she knows, when I do a PR, she knows, and we can adjust on the spot. Then when we I feel like I need to improve in some area or another, we can have those conversations. But at a certain level, we also have to separate things. I think we’ve been pretty good at separating the CrossFit from regular life. When we’re in season, it’s a bit more difficult. But when it’s the offseason, like right now, for example, we’re going to try and take some time off from the gym and just do regular things. It’s important to do those things, because otherwise, there’s too much imbalance and it’s not healthy.

Caroline: Because we spend a lot of time together and all the roles we have, it’s just having a good support system, and I represent more of that support system. If I know that things aren’t going going well in the gym we can get home and I can try to do something to take some of the stress off or some of the pressure off. It’s just recognizing all the opportunities we have to work together as a team, whether it’s coach-athlete, whether it’s based on our relationship. I can’t remember where I read this, but a relationship isn’t 50-50, it’s going to be 70-30, depending on who’s high and who’s low. And we always work as a team, that’s the goal, and we try to find opportunities where we can help each other. If I help him in the gym, he’s gonna help me at home, if I help him at home, he’s gonna put more effort in the gym. So it’s worked for us, because we love spending all this time together and achieving our goals together.

Jeff Adler’s Bodyweight Home Workout

Lambray designed this bodyweight workout for home training. It’s exactlythe type of approachable routine she and Adler use at CrossFit Wonderland.

The Warmup

5-minute AMRAP—perform each exercise back-to-back as many times as possible within the time frame.

Burpees*

*if you have issues with burpees, Lambray recommends replacing with jumping jacks

5 reps

Lunges

10 reps

Situps

10 reps

The WOD

20 minute EMOM—Set a timer to go off at every minute on the minute for a 20-minute period. At the start of every minute, you’ll perform an exercise for reps, resting for the remainder of the period until the next minute. Since there are five total exercises, you’ll run through four rounds of each.

Squat

20 reps

Bicycle Crunch

20 reps

Mountain Climbers

20 reps

Jumping Jack

30 to 50 reps

Hand Release Pushup

15 reps

Cooldown

4 Rounds

Hip Bridge

20 seconds of continuous reps

Hip Bridge Hold

20 seconds (static hold)