Pull yourself up, challenging your core and lats and building the strength needed to hang from anything. Hang from a bar, your hands shoulder-width apart in an uneven grip (right palm facing you, left facing away). Land softly and immediately begin the next rep do 3 sets of 10. Stand back up explosively, jumping up as you do. ![]() Bend your knees, lowering your torso until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Aim for 12, which is the number Drechsel has his students do at the start of each session. Tighten your core and lift your knees as high as you can round your back until your knees touch your elbows. Start hanging from a bar, hands just slightly beyond shoulder-width, palms facing away. These moves will build the strength you need for body-weight mastery.Ĭompetitors taking on the American Ninja Warrior course. You'll get an inside look behind the scenes of the Men's Health feature and a chance to see him take on the course on TV! Follow the path of the ninja To watch Clint's run to American Ninja Warrior glory, tune in to NBC on June 13 at 8 p.m. With luck, I'll get another crack at this in 2019. On American Ninja Warrior, failure is its own gift, motivation to keep doing what Drechsel forever refuses to call "training." It's the reason that, by this time next year, my forearms will be stronger and my balance better. ![]() The winner stopped competing, citing a "lack of desire after already accomplishing my ultimate goal." In the history of American Ninja Warrior, only one person has actually reached the final finish line to earn the $1 million prize. I'm not the one after all.īut now I understand why people train year-round for this unforgiving, one-shot course. My foot falls heavy on the ball in front of me. Halfway across the bridge, my eyes lift to the next platform, where I think I'll be in two seconds. You know how this goes, of course: I get cocky. I'm unstoppable as I step to the third obstacle: the Spinning Bridge. They should be blazing right now, but the adrenaline cocktail in my bloodstream seems to have given me barbaric strength. The crowd is going bananas (at least that's how I remember it). I hear Drechsel shout, "Keep your arms long!" I manage to follow his advice, swinging on nunchuck-type handles toward a punching bag on a zip line. Now it's on to the second obstacle, Jumper Cables. The first guy, who had python arms, pointed at the sky and screamed, "warped wall, baby!" He fell on the second obstacle. I've already watched some two dozen people run the course, and not one survived to the end. I'm a special entry into the course I'm not allowed to make the second round. A Ninja Hits the Courseįast-forward a month, and I'm standing at the first of six obstacles at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. I can't feel my forearms, but I can feel myself improving. I want more time on the ropes and pegboards. This isn't the rote lifting of body weight it's teaching me how to move my body more efficiently, to redirect my momentum in midair. "What we do in here," the gym lifer says, "is just fun." In one of Drechsel's open classes, I meet Matt Zeoli, a 53-year-old regular. Despite the pain and doubt, I think I'm enjoying this swinging and hanging and trampolining around. That could explain why I don't dig gym sessions like this: I'm more of an endurance guy, not a ninja.īut Nesser has another concern: Can I stick with this? "You're going to be successful in what you enjoy," he says. My body may be different than Drechsel's I know from a genetic report a few years back that I don't produce the protein alpha-actinin-3, which is common in the fast-twitch fibers of power athletes. The swelling is probably just muscle tissue damage from trying something new, he says. ![]() Ninja life isn’t easy on the hands, either. Thomas Nesser, Ph.D., a professor of kinesiology at Indiana State University, kind of agrees. My arms are howling in pain, my forearms are swollen, and I can't straighten my elbows. "I come in here not with an idea of 'I need to do this.' You should never have to work hard to do something that looks easy."Įxcept two days in, it's not easy for me. The ninja philosophy is seductive: You have fun. This obstacle I can do.ĭrechsel tackles these challenges on a daily basis but insists he's not working out. After a half hour, I'm sprinting over the blocks. "Keep your body weight forward, stay light on your toes, and maintain a steady speed," Drechsel tells me. During one critical lesson, he shows me how to cross a gauntlet of foam blocks (called dominoes), a simulation of ANW's Spinning Bridge, those diabolical big red balls. Over the next two days, Drechsel teaches me to hang from a pegboard, hurl my body across pullup bars, and run up a 14 1/2-foot warped wall. The pegboard is unforgiving for those without strong grips.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |