My blog tends to revolve around the topics of dogs, yoga, mid-life career change, living with anxiety, and keeping a positive outlook on life. So why would I write about American Ninja Warrior you ask…. Just because it’s so darn cool!
This year’s finale of Ninja Warrior was last night. As I play it back it in my mind, I giggle to myself thinking that if anyone was watching me watching it, I would be quite embarrassed.
I find myself moving around in my seat – as if I am going through the course with them. When they need to jump a little higher, I am lifting upward. If they need to go a little faster, I’m moving forward. When the clock is ticking down and they are still climbing up that net to get to the buzzer, every muscle in my body is tense and my stomach is in knots. I think I may even stop breathing at moments. And I wonder if other people out there are doing the same.
For anyone not familiar with it, American Ninja Warrior is an obstacle course of sorts. That is, if each obstacle was created by a couple drunk guys sitting around saying “you know what would be crazy? We could have them….. (fill in the blank with the wackiest idea you can come up with).” And then they would laugh an eerie sinister chuckle together.
There are qualifying try-out courses in cities across the country – kind of like American Idol. They take the best of those participants, the ones who made it the furthest and the fastest, to move on to the coveted Las Vegas rounds.
Once in Vegas, those qualifiers run a longer timed course. Here on stage 1, not only do you have to finish the whole course to move on, but you also have to do it before the timer runs out. Not easy!
Each stage is a different set of obstacles focusing on different challenges and skill sets. If you fall on any of them, you land in a pool of water.
These aren’t your elementary school flashback obstacles. Some of the fan favorites are the jumping spider, the warped wall, and the salmon ladder.
On the jumping spider, you jump on a trampoline to hopefully get far enough to wedge yourself between two walls. You end up with arms and legs outstretched to become stable, and then have to jump, lodged between these walls, all the way through to the end before you can jump out. On the warped wall, without much of a running start, you have to run up an almost vertical wall, grab a hold of the top, and pull yourself over. On the salmon ladder, you are holding on to a horizontal bar that you then have to somehow hop upward to lock into the grooves of the next level above you, You repeat this until you hopefully make it to the top.
The small amount of folks who survive this first stage then move on to the finale night, consisting of stages 2, 3 and 4. The holy grail of stages is that final stage 4, named Mount Midoriyama.
This piece de resistance is a rope climb. After the prior three levels have completely drained every imaginable muscle in your body, you have to hoist yourself up a rope eight stories high to hit the buzzer at the top.
Although there is a million dollar prize to the winner, if there even is one, that doesn’t seem to be what drives these people the most. The title of THE American Ninja Warrior seems to be worth more than anything monetary.
So far in all its years on air, there has only been one winner, which happened last year. This year, 17 made it through to stage 2, and only 2 moved on to stage 3, where they both landed in the water.
The coolest thing about Ninja Warrior is that it could be you, me, or your neighbor out there trying this. Hopefuls send in tapes of themselves explaining why they would make a good ninja. Of the ones who get picked to try the televised course, the popular ones get asked back for the next season.
In addition to these pre-selected applicants, there is now a walk-on line. This is where anyone can fly stand-by, and possibly be chosen to fill empty spots. With the growing popularity of the show, some people have camped out for weeks in this line just to get a chance.
With most sports, if you didn’t start playing as a kid, you probably don’t have much of a chance to land on a professional team. It takes years of practicing specific skills and learning picky rules to be able to hang with the varsity squad.
But to be a ninja, all you need is the motivation to try something new and the determination to work on your weak areas after the first time you land in the pool.
As the years have progressed, the breadth of people trying the course has widened. When I started watching (this is my third year), they had their first female contestant, a cute bubbly girl named Kacy who looks like the girl next door. When she made it through a city qualifier and rang the buzzer, I’m sure I wasn’t alone to be watching with tears in my eyes, thinking what an amazing role model we just witnessed. Since then there have been many more women trying out, and this year is the first year a woman has successfully made it through stage 1 in Vegas. Take a bow Jessie.
But the inspiration doesn’t stop at gender. Older contestants who are retired and grandparents are showing the world that athletic ability and the fighting spirit to achieve new heights does not have an age expiration date.
Another inspiration the show has put front and center is the idea of positivity and the determination to never giving up. People fall all the time on the ninja course. Sometimes on the first obstacle, sometimes just shy of reaching the end. But when they lift themselves out of the water, everyone claps for their amazing effort. And on their exit interview, each vows to come back next year and try again. What a fantastic life lesson to demonstrate to the world.
Even the most popular and successful athletes have fallen in that pool. And just like everyone else, they all pick themselves up, talk about the fun they had trying, and come back to try again next year.
The comradery within the Ninja Warriors is something I have never witnessed before. Although every person there is competing against each other, there is no overt rivalry. It’s a spectacle of pure sportsmanship as every ninja cheers on the others. Whether each realizes their goal and hits the buzzer, or slips and lands in the pool, everyone there celebrates your accomplishment.
For them, Ninja Warrior is not only a sport, but also a lifestyle and a mindset. Each warrior sees the others as part of their own pack and revels in this sense of community. These are kindred spirits, who love and feed off of the same adrenaline goals they do.
It’s an inspiring show with a lot of life lessons to teach. If you open your mind, Ninja Warrior give us a playbook for this game we call life. You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to keep trying. We could all stand to have a little Ninja Warrior within us.