Jen Dieter: Defying Age, Gravity, and Expectations

April 07, 2026By Emma Skye

Jen Dieter is a ten-time CrossFit Games competitor with three podium finishes and holds multiple world records in Olympic weightlifting. She's also a mom of three and a licensed physical therapist building a career around one simple truth: your body is capable of more than you think.

At 38, Jen Dieter was struggling to find a reason to put her shoes on in the morning. She was a physical therapist, a former Division I diver, and a mother of three with all the knowledge about exercise and none of the motivation. Her sister, who'd been on the dive platform alongside her in college, suggested CrossFit. "I thought it was silly to pay someone money to tell me what to do," Jen admits. "I knew what to do. I just wasn't doing it." But she showed up anyway, and fell in love.

That was 14 years ago. Since then, Jen has made it to the CrossFit Games ten times, stood on the podium three times, set world records in Olympic weightlifting twice, and built a career helping other athletes push past what they thought their bodies were capable of.

In 2026, she's chasing her eleventh CrossFit Games appearance and eyeing the top of the podium.

Olympic Lifting and Setting World Records

The gym Jen first joined programmed a lot of Olympic lifting, and she started getting good at it—really good. After watching her lift one day, a friend said something that surprised her: "Did you know that you could set some world records with your current weights?"

She hadn't. A local meet was followed by a national meet, and then in 2018 Jen traveled to Barcelona for the world championships where she set all the world records in her age group. In 2023, she moved up an age bracket and set every record there, too.

Olympic lifting brought world records, but CrossFit brought community. At 41, Jen made it to the Games for the first time. Competing at the Legends Championship, a CrossFit masters event, Jen has found her people: athletes with similar ages, goals, and habits. "I love the feeling of being surrounded by like-minded individuals while also being able to inspire and push other people to do their best."

Built by Strong Role Models

“One of my biggest role models was my gymnastics coach, Doris Brause,” Jen says without hesitation. "She was strong, she was beautiful, she was tough, and she pushed me hard." An Olympian and Pan American gold medalist, Doris valued longevity in the sport. Jen still remembers spotting her doing a back handspring into a cast handstand on Doris’s 50th birthday and thinking, “that’s who I want to be.”

Her other biggest influence was her dad. He raised her like a tomboy—the only girl on the T-ball team at five years old, and a three-sport athlete all through high school. He was a baseball player himself and later got back into the game as an older man. "He was still playing softball all the way up until just a few months before he passed away from cancer at the age of 80," Jen says.

Wins and Setbacks of Competing at the Highest Level

Last year at the 2025 CrossFit Games, Jen was in the lead going into the final event. She only needed seventh place to secure first overall. She didn't get it. "I managed to do terribly in the event," she says. "Third place is still good, but I had first place in my hands. That's a moment I won't forget anytime soon."

In training, Jen aims to push herself while knowing there's still another gear she can kick into when it counts. "That gear doesn't need to be run hard all the time," she explains. "I just need to know that it's there."

Competition is where she uses everything she's built. Jen is a big believer in visualization—in college, her entire diving team worked with sports psychologist Bob Rotella, who taught her to see the lift or skill in her head before executing it. She's also learned to manage the nervous energy that comes with competition, refocusing it rather than letting it spin out. One phrase that stuck with her came from a conversation at a RockTape course: trust the process with ease. It became her mantra and helped her let go of the constant worry about whether she's doing enough, practicing enough, being enough.

Prioritizing Fueling and Recovery

Nutrition has always been a priority for Jen. She prioritizes whole foods and vegetables and has raised her kids on them too. She's also always been a supplement person—even as a kid, she recalls, “my mom was handing me vitamins as I was walking out the door to school.”

What drew her to Blonyx was the real food ingredients in products like Hydra+ and Egg White Protein Isolate, and the ability to talk directly with the founders about what was in the products, how they worked, and how to optimize them. Her sister, a pharmacist who loves to research everything, looked into creatine options when Jen first made it to the CrossFit Games.

"Great ingredients, great sources," Jen says. That's what landed her on Blonyx.

"The research behind creatine is insane!" Jen says. "I've been taking the Blonyx HMB+ Creatine for 11 or 12 years now and truly believe in the product. What it can do to help our bodies from a muscle, recovery, and even cognitive perspective is fantastic," she explains. "I feel like it helps me with my recovery. It helps me stay strong." She's experimented with going off it for a week or so, but she didn't feel as good.

The original Blonyx HMB+ Creatine and Beta Alanine on Holiday with Jen

The Athlete Becomes the Coach

After 23 years as a physical therapist, Jen started to get frustrated. Due to insurance or prescription limitations, she rarely saw patients for long enough to get them all the way back to what they wanted to be doing. So, she started REAL Movement—recover, educate, achieve, longevity—to take people from injury all the way to performance.

As a physical therapist working with athletes, Jen tells them that recovery is just as important as training. "I tell my patients we need to apologize to our bodies for letting it do the amazing things that it does for us," she says. She practices what she preaches: infrared sauna sessions, rest days, light active recovery. "I like rest days, and I believe in supplements to help me recover."

One key lesson she hopes athletes take from her coaching is to listen to their bodies and pay attention to their positions. "If they start to feel pain somewhere, that's a warning sign, and I want them to have enough tools in their tool bag to fix their position or fix their imbalance so they can proceed," she explains. "If they can't proceed without pain, then I want them to know to stop and not push through. We're all here for longevity."

At the same time, she wants athletes to push their limits, just not recklessly. "I want them to know that their bodies are capable of more than they thought."

Looking Forward

As Jen looks ahead to 2026, the goal is the same it's always been—show up at the CrossFit Games healthy, strong, and ready to compete for the top of the podium.

But success looks different now than it used to. "Success can be winning, of course," she laughs. "But success can also be having fun. Enjoying the moment. Appreciating where I am."

This past year at the Games, her sister Michelle—the one who got her into CrossFit all those years ago—made it to the Games for the first time. While Jen was laser-focused on winning, Michelle was soaking it all in, laughing, meeting people, having a great time. "I sort of had blinders on, I was focused," Jen says. "I've done a few competitions since the Games last year, and I've tried to mimic her excitement and joy of competing."

Now, she's finding joy in the familiar faces and the new ones, the shared effort and the community that's always been at the heart of it. "It's always been all about the people more so than the CrossFit and the placement," she says. "The people we meet, the like-minded individuals that are pushing themselves—those of us in our 50s and even older, trying to defy age and gravity."

The One Thing Jen Regrets

For anyone on the fence about starting CrossFit—or any sport—Jen cuts to the point: "Your body is capable of more than you think. Find a good coach, find someone that can help make sure that you're moving well, and then go for it. Lift the weights, push your body, challenge yourself."

"I've never regretted going to the gym and working out. I've only regretted not going!"

What keeps her passionate is watching someone's face light up when they've done something they've never done before, no matter their age. "We're used to seeing that in young athletes and adolescents, but somehow along the way we thought as adult athletes, we were no longer capable of building strength, learning new skills, or achieving big goals," she says.

"I love inspiring others to be more, to do more, and to show them that you can be busy and still make time. I have three kids, run a business, and still manage to make time. It can be done."

If Jen has proven anything over 14 years, it's that.

Loved Jen’s story? You can follow Jen Dieter on Instagram to learn more about her journey and REAL Movement.

That's all for this week! If you enjoyed reading Jen's story, head over to the Blonyx Blog for more stories of athletic ambition.

– Train hard!