Over the years, Ninja Warrior training has gained popularity. It’s a fantastic way to build up your upper body strength swinging, jumping, and parkouring from one obstacle to the next. Several athletes compete against other trainers to see who is the strongest. It’s an excellent community of people who started at the bottom and worked themselves up to the top; and with some of these exercises, that’s a literal statement. If you’re beginning your training, we wanted to set up a guide for the most common activities you’ll be doing to help you succeed.
- Lache: If there’s only one exercise you can master with your training, make it be the lache. This will be included in any competition you enter for Ninja Warrior. The activity involves hanging on and “jumping” from one obstacle to another, with a swinging motion.
- Grip Strength: The firmness of your grip is a crucial part of your training. You have to be able to hold up your body weight for several of these obstacles. Doing exercises like the pull-up bar, gymnastic rings, and even getting grip strength trainers two to three times a week makes a massive difference with the rest of your training.
- Explosive Upper Body Strength: Like grip strength, upper body strength can make or break your training. You will build upper body strength with some of the grip strength exercises, but one that can focus on your muscles is climbing a ladder at the gym. Once you’re comfortable with that, you can progress to “jumping” up the rungs where you’re skipping two to three at the time. That jumping creates an explosive result with your exercise.
- Core Strength: The core helps stabilize you as you’re exercising and swinging from obstacle to obstacle. You need a strong core to help push your body forward. Using the pull-up bars and gymnastics rings helps strengthen your core as you build up your grip and upper body. Also, following specific core exercises daily will help strengthen your inner muscles
- Balance & Precision: Ideally, your balance and foot placement needs to be perfect to avoid falling and injury. You can improve these with balance boards, slacklines, Bosu balls, and precision jumping.
Stamina: The obstacles you’re doing are done quickly, with very short breaks in between. You’re using a lot of adrenaline, and your stamina needs to match that usage. You don’t want to lose steam halfway through, affecting your overall time. The best training for this is to keep up with the obstacles. Do a few at a time and push yourself to get faster. - Brachiate: For this exercise, you’ll be taking inspiration from the monkeys swinging in trees. You’re using your own body weight to generate momentum, allowing you to swing higher and further than you usually would. You would use obstacles specifically designed for brachiate to help train.
