Tough Mudder Adapts So Everyone Can Get Dirty

Three wheelchair users tackle the wild and surprisingly inclusive world of obstacle course competition.


White female wheelchair user smiling in muddy field. Her wheels are covered in mud. She is smiling, wearing a race bib and helmet, and being pushed by a teammate.

Imagine crawling under barbed wire through chest-deep muddy water, plunging into a tub of ice, and pulling yourself over 8-foot walls. Or channeling your inner Tarzan, swinging on rope-mounted handholds and pushing past several other obstacles, only to face a pre-finish line challenge of electrical wires pulsing with 10,000 volts. Welcome to the world of Tough Mudder, a team obstacle event to test your will and challenge you to the core. 

On the surface, Tough Mudder might seem like the definition of inaccessible. Look at print media or YouTube, and you’ll see a field of young, muscular, nondisabled jocks falling, crawling, failing and trying again to overcome obstacles. But to a small number of wheelchair users, the events are a chance to have fun with teammates in a supportive, inclusive atmosphere, while challenging themselves in new and exciting ways. Plus, they get to spend plenty of time in the mud. 

A Competition, Not a Race 

Jesi Stracham, of Iron Station, North Carolina, is a paraplegic and a manual wheelchair user, a social media influencer and president of the Wheel With Me Foundation, which works to bridge the gap between in-patient rehabilitation and independent living for people with spinal cord injuries. Stracham was injured in a motorcycle accident in 2015 and has always lived an active, adventurous lifestyle. A wheelchair-using friend told her about an organization called More Heart Than Scars, which provides support for adaptive athletes at obstacle events. Stracham was immediately intrigued. 

White female wheelchair user, covered in mud, using off-road wheelchair, surrounded by smiling teammates.
Tough Mudder athletes like Jesi Stracham say that teamwork and a good attitude are keys to making it through the events.

Stracham is the first and only wheelchair user to earn two Tough Mudder “Holy Grails,” finishing all three of TM’s Endurance Series events in one year: Tough Mudder Infinity, where you complete as many laps as you can; Toughest Mudder, a 12-hour overnight event; and World’s Toughest Mudder, a 24-hour event. In addition to participating, Stracham has given back as part of a panel of disabled athletes helping create guidelines for the TM Adaptive Athlete Program. “I feel honored to play a small part in creating inclusivity in Tough Mudder while keeping safety as the No. 1 priority,” she says. 

Tough Mudder’s structure helps foster an inclusive environment. Events are completion-based rather than races. Athletes compete together to make it through a course, rather than race against other teams. Teamwork is paramount. Andrew Holley is a wheelchair user from England who competes at Tough Mudder with friends and workmates since 2017. He enjoys the difficult but non-timed nature of the events. “I find the greater the challenge, the greater the reward I get for taking it on,” he says. Confidence comes from telling himself, “I don’t have to be the best — just the best I can be.” 

Andrew Holley competes in an old rugby chair he modified for off-road wheeling.

Tough Mudder makes efforts to get more people with disabilities to attend their events and in 2021 created the Adaptive Athlete Program. The program offers exclusive awards and helps adaptive athletes connect with course guides who can serve as teammates or behind-the-scenes support. Chris Maltbie, senior director at TM, explains that formalizing an adaptive program grew naturally out of the fact that disabled athletes were already attending the event. He points to another feature of Tough Mudder competition that might help adaptive athletes who are interested but unsure of everything they might encounter along the way. “Excluding our Endurance Series events, obstacle completion is optional for all athletes at Tough Mudder events,” he says. “This allows athletes to challenge themselves in a wide range of ways without the pressure to complete something they’re not comfortable with. We saw this as one of many ways that Tough Mudder can be a great fit for adaptive athletes looking to push their boundaries.” 

Preparation 

David Tyson Perry and Jesi Stracham, both using off-road wheelchairs sit by by side smiling at camera. Event tents are in background.
David Tyson Perry and Jesi Stracham are still clean before starting an event. Perry has competed in Tough Mudder events for nine years, and wears a Superman shirt every time he competes.

Tough Mudder events can be as fun as you want to make them. David Tyson Perry, a California native and manual wheelchair user, dons a Superman shirt and cape when he competes. Perry competed in Tough Mudder events for nine years. He’s the most experienced of the three wheelchair-using competitors we talked with, completing at least one event every year, and was the first wheelchair user to finish a Toughest Mudder event. 

Perry was a high school athlete before his spinal cord injury, but post-SCI he spent a few years leading a mostly inactive life. He tried traditional wheelchair sports, but they never held his interest. He says competing in his first Tough Mudder helped him to “wake up.” 

For Perry, the team-based nature of the events gave him extra motivation to change his lifestyle. “Training keeps me in a routine. I eat healthier, I work out. Not only do I want to stay healthy for myself but for all these people that believe in me — and of course other members of Team Go Hard — who are working out right alongside me,” he says. 

Perry, Stracham and Holley all agree that physical conditioning, positive mindset, and diet are essential preparation tools not only to tackle Tough Mudders, but life in general. Stracham says, “When I speak about fitness, I’m speaking about what you physically do, eat and think. Diet, exercise and mental work all play a part in a wheelchair user’s success in life.” 

White male manual wheelchair user working out with a dumbbell at a fitness center.
Holley does regular strength training workouts to stay fit.

Holley and Perry incorporate regular handcycling for endurance, weights for strength, and stretching to get the blood flowing. Perry often rides his bike to the post office and other errands to add cardio. Stracham is a longtime fitness enthusiast and created her own Wheel With Me Fitness app for wheelchair users. Mostly, she trains with her own programs and adaptive crossfit.  

Holley brings his team of eight or nine people to local forests and quarries that offer difficult terrain and potential obstacles. He modified an old rugby chair to use at events, and his first goal was making sure the chair was up to the task. “You can’t have the chair breaking halfway through the event,” he says. The second goal was to be certain everyone felt comfortable with the skills they’d need, like transferring him safely up and down steps, banks, and through water. “There is no room for overprotective members to take on a Tough Mudder — it will just slow you down.” He also does a mini-demonstration of crawling on the ground so the team won’t freak out seeing him in precarious positions during the event.  

With the right team, and the right sense of humor, even the most torturous obstacles can be a whole lot of fun.

Stracham has taken to starting her mornings with a 5-minute cold shower to prepare her body and mind for some of Tough Mudder’s more unconventional obstacles. There’s the Arctic Enema obstacle where you plunge your entire body into ice water, or Stracham’s favorite, the Cage Crawl, where you pull yourself through a 60-foot mud and water trench under a steel fence with only a few inches to breathe. Of course, once you’re in the water you must come out the other side, which further tests your will to endure. For the mental work, Stracham and the others leverage each TM to improve their mindset. “My favorite thing about Tough Mudder is how it’s helped me develop my mental grit,” she says. 

Teamwork Gets It Done 

Muddy bank with dozens of athletes at top and bottom. In foreground a white man, Andrew Holley, is holding onto a rope as teammates pull him up the bank.
Holley gets some help from his teammates.

Completing the Tough Mudder course requires teamwork from all athletes. For wheelchair-using athletes there’s an additional layer of complexity, as their teammates support technical maneuvers. Moving safely through obstacles often requires a degree of submission — sometimes total — to other teammates. Nondisabled teammates must learn the functional abilities of their disabled teammates and how and when to assist versus when it’s more efficient to move independently.  

On one obstacle, you might be holding onto a rope while teammates pull you up a muddy bank. Then you may be able to pull yourself up handholds on a wall while teammates manage your legs; another athlete with less function or strength may need teammates simultaneously pulling them from above and pushing from below. That’s why Perry, Stracham and Holley take time before each event to work with their teams. Finding out what you can and can’t do, then figuring out ways to get past the obstacles anyway, is a big part of the fun.  

Stracham says she isn’t always the best at explaining her needs, and so has designated a team leader who can coordinate technique and roles with her other teammates. “Sarah has been with me since day one. We’ve had numerous people on and off the team, but she leads them all the same. She communicates what I need and the safest way to do it. She even keeps me on track,” Stracham says. 

Boards across posts make a tall fence. A white man sits on middle board, holding onto  top board. Teammates are holding onto his feet.
Perry has a blast working over a wall obstacle with his team.

Perry keeps a consistent team of six family members and friends but says, “We always pick up a few extra helpful people for the tougher obstacles.” For him, a side benefit of forming a committed team has been hanging out with his best friends and brothers. He’s watched his younger brother grow up on the course. “Each year as he grew older, I would encourage him to take the lead more on the obstacles. Tough Mudder has been a way for us both to have fun, be challenged and grow closer,” he says. 

With the right team, and the right sense of humor, even the most torturous obstacles can be a whole lot of fun. Holley used to dread the thought of the Electroshock Therapy obstacle, until he had a hilarious experience at one Tough Mudder event. 

”Electroshock Therapy was the last obstacle of the day. We decided ‘one in, all in’ and charged through, dangling shocks zapping us. When the guys carrying me started getting shocked, their natural reaction was to let go to protect themselves. Bam, down I went — lying in mud sideways in my chair, getting zapped yet crying with laughter watching (my team) trying to pick me up and simultaneously escape the torture,” Holley says. “I went down three times before the end of the 20-meter dash, all of us laughing uncontrollably the whole way.” 

The crowd of supporters and other competitors cheered Holley and teammates along as they stopped, dropped and laughed their way to the finish line. Despite all the mud and voltage, or maybe because of it, Holley offers three words that sum up the experience: Best day ever.  


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Mitchell Stayton
Mitchell Stayton
11 months ago

This is one of the best articles I’ve read in awhile! I’m sitting here alone cheesing from ear to ear, lol. Thanx!

Caroline Feig
11 months ago

Nice article, Teamwork gets it done!

James
James
11 months ago

Totally broke my neck in one of those events – probably won’t be checking it out again