Stage 3 & 4 + Goals

Breaking down the last two stages

Stage 3:

Bike Rotation with your arms: Crush Grip Closed Hand - Shoulder Girdle , Vertical Pull
Horizontal bar leap (3): Crush Grip Closed Hand, Explosive Pull Up/Kip Up, Vertical Pull
Finger wall from hell.... : Pinch Grip Open Hand,  Shoulder Abduction and Adduction, Vertical Pull.
leaping rings to chain ladder to individual chains to chain ladder to ropes: Crush Grip Closed Hand, Vertical Pull, Hip Swing.
(sit on perch and REST) Move bar across and up the line, swing to finish: Crush Grip Closed Hand, Vertical Pull, Explosive Pull Up/Kip Up, Hip Swing.

No time limit.

So even though this stage is CRAZY INSANE, you can begin to see some of the common themes that have been built upon in previous stages.

• Crush Grip Closed Hand.
• Pinch Grip Open Hand: This is where most people seem to fail, strengtthening the fingers like this is tough.
• Vertical Pull Strength.
• Have to focus on increasing the strength of the movement of the shoulder girdle.
• Abduction and Adduction of the shoulder joint movement.
• Hip and lower abdominal attachment: You really should be strengthening this no matter what but it seems more prominent now in the stage than previous ones.

Stage 4:
Climb up the 65 foot high rope in under 40 seconds. If you’ve got the strength to do the other stages, its just going to come down to speed and technique after that. IE lots of vertical pull.




Goals Setting:


After breaking down all the courses I've found the common strength themes. Now all I need to do is set my self some goals, now these goals are not my full exercise program (not even close). But these are going to show me how I'm progressing with my strength training towards Ninja Warrior. I think ever couple of weeks I'll take a shot at the goals to see how I'm progressing forward in my strength, the goals is as follows:



Tests Exercise Goal

Crush Grip Dead Lift 2x My Body Weight
Crush Grip Farmers Walk 3/4 My Body Weight 1 Min
Pinch Grip Hub Row/Farmers Walk 45 Pounds
Finger Grip Finger Hang 1 minute

Vertical Pull Endurance Pull Ups 23 reps < 40 seconds
Vertical Pull Strength Single Arm Pull Up 3 reps each arm
Vertical Pull Power Explosive Pull Up 10 reps
Shoulder Joint Endurance Lateral Vertical Pull Shuffle 1 minute

Vertical Leap Vertical Jump Touch rim of basketball


And there you have it. I've got a lot of work ahead of me.

Ninja Warrior Season 27 Stage 2 Course Breakdown

Continuing my breaking down of each one of the stages, we are on to stage 2!

1. Sliding pull up bar: Crush Grip Closed hand - general pull strength, core strength for stabilizing.
2. Double Salmon Ladder + Unstable Bridge:
1. There are 7 touches with the Double Salmon Ladder, this motion requires a excellent base of vertical pull strength, on top of that it will require explosive vertical pull strength, something that very few athletes actually train for. For pulls ups this will require whats called a "kip up" its that little hip jerk and knee up motion you see. The strength training component of strength would be call an explosive pull up, with when you "kip up" off a pull up bar, clap your hands together and then grab it on the way down. In the middle of all that you have to rotate yourself around, strong shoulder girdle strength.
2. With the Unstable Bridge, it looks like a lot of the same principles will help as with the double salmon ladder EXCEPT, the grip is different, this looks like a Pitch Grip Closed hand grip.
3. Oh and the endurance of your vertical pull needs to be well over 30seconds.

      3. Balance log + climb up the rope: Balance, vertical pull, crush grip closed hand (big surprise)
      4. Run, jump and grab chain. Vertical leap, crush grip closed hand, perhaps add chain pulling to a workout
      5. Wall Lift, 3 walls, 66 pounds, 88 pounds and 110 pounds. Lift with your legs not your back. Two exercises come to mind with this one, the dead lift and the olympic clean.

All done in 90 seconds.

Strength Summary for stage 2:

• Crush Grip, Closed hand, this type of strength DOMINATED the first stage, not surprised to see it all over the second stage.
• Vertical Pull and Explosive Vertical Pull, now we have a monkey wrench. While your base strength needs to be a solid vertical pull, you need to have that explosive force to life you up to the next bar. Think of it as squatting and box jumping. Your squat can aid how high of a box jump you have, but you could be able to squat a lot of weight and not be able to jump very high, why? because your body is not balanced and you've never trained for explosive movements, its a whole another set of tricks your playing with now.
• Pitch Grip, Closed Hand, this is the first time we get to use our pitch grip, and even if you have a good crush grip, doesn't mean you have a good pitch grip.
• The other guys:
• Vertical Leap, pretty standard.
• Balance, check.
• Hip dominate leg strength, a balanced workout program that increases your vertical leap is also going to increase you hip strength, so you SHOULD be covered. Its pretty much a deadlift or a clean like I mentioned above though.
• Ropes and chains: There is a method of training, which uses whats called "battling ropes" or the other one which is called "chain reaction". You use these two items for a series of strength exercises, I find it does really good things for the endurance and makes a great alternative other than doing treadmill cardio when training for ninja warrior. The byproduct of using these tools is that it will get your hands familial with holding a rope or chain.

As far as the battling rope and kip up/explosive pull ups go, maybe I'll make a video on how to use those items with ninja warrior and post them online. Probably not until February though. In the mean time in addition to breaking down stage 3 and 4 I'll be setting some specific and measurable goals for myself. Training to get stronger is great and all but if your getting stronger in all the wrong areas and don't realize some simple weaknesses, well.....

Ninja Warrior Season 27 Stage 1 Course Breakdown

This marks the start of the 3rd week of my Ninja Warrior training and I feel stronger and am noticing some really exciting strength increases.

For example. late last week I dead lifted 335 pounds with the trap bar, which is the most I've ever lifted. My grip felt strong and secure, I tried to go for a little more weight and the bar wouldn't even budge.

This week I can feel my open hand pinch or finger grip as its commonly called, was much stronger.

I'm going to start re-breaking down the course again to make sure I really have all the training components needed to dominate this course.

Season 27, Stage 1 - Urushihara Yuuji - he is one of only 3 people to ever complete Ninja Warrior and he's done it TWICE. He's extremely thin..... there is that high strength to low body mass ratio at work, lets break down the that stage:

1. Slanted Steps + grab & swing across rope: Lateral leg strength and explosive leaps. + vertical pull strength and crushing grip closed hand strength.
2. Four point rolling log: Crushing grip close hand strength (again), vertical push strength and double leg knee dominate strength.
3. Run and jump off spring with swinging pull up bar: Anything that improves vertical leap would be helpful, similar to a basketball players program. Crushing grip close hand strength (makes 3) plus vertical pull strength.
4. Run and jump off spring with spider-man walk: vertical leap plus shoulder adduction.
5. Slanted run up half pipe leap and grab rope: Lateral leg strength again, explosive leap, crushing grip closed hand strength.
6. Run and jump up half pipe and pull yourself up: Big vertical leap, vertical pull.
7. Run across suspended boulders: Balance and speed.
8. Swing across rope and climb up roped latter: crushing grip close hand strength. A little bit of vertical pull and leg work.

Do this, all under 115 seconds! Fantastic lets try summarizing this.

Strength Summary for stage 1:

• Crushing Grip, Closed Hand is critical. Any kind of heavy lifting with your hands closed like farmers walks, deadlifts, as well as any drills that you can do where the grip is a rope.
• Vertical Pull, the muscles in this motion include your back and shoulders, pull ups and pull downs galore.
• Improving vertical leap, think about training this component like a basket ball player. That includes a strength base of squats and vertical leaps. As well as SAQ (speed agility quickness) drills focused on being coordinated with a running jump. An power snatch with an olympic bar would also be king of the hill in helping improving that vertical leap.
• Lateral Leg strength, Lateral Lunges, lateral SAQ drills, pretty straight forward, I think the drills will really help with the ankle strengthening, think anything that an ice skater or hockey player would do to improve their skating speed.
• the odd balls:
• Shoulder work is going to come when doing opposition exercise to the vertical pull in any well balanced workout program.
• Balance, there are a few ways to train balance, going bear foot with training will help, single leg work will help and balance boards or BOSUs will help.

And there you have it, stage 1. And this is the type of work I do to put together a fitness program! I look at ever aspect of the sport or whatever my client does in life to put something fantastic together. I'm going to go through these and make sure they all align up with the program I'm currently on. I'll break down stage 2, 3 and 4 this week.