I just got the call to be on American Ninja Warrior. Now I have some decisions to make. At this point in time, I was in school for game design and was working over twenty hours a week. In order to get ready for the show, I knew I needed to give up something. At first, I tried to just give up school. I was new to the program, it was my first semester, and I wasn’t completely sure that I wanted to be in the career field. That worked well for the first week or so however, I was always too exhausted after work to go train after. I worked at the gym that I trained at, so staying after closing wasn’t a big deal. After about a week of just working and training afterwards I wanted to take things to the next level. In order to do that I needed to quit my job. I put in my two weeks’ notice and went to work on my plan. The plan was simple. I would flip my sleep schedule to match the filming schedule out in L.A. Now I have been on sidelines for ANW before and they usually start filming at as soon as the sun sets, and they go until the sun rises. That’s roughly 8pm-5:30am PST. When I say I took things to the next level I mean that was my prime functioning hours. Since I’m from North Carolina, that means my “mid-day” needed to be from 11pm-8:30am EST. Typically, I would fall asleep around 6am-7am, wake up sometime near 2pm. Here’s what my typical day consisted of; 2am wake up, eat breakfast, go to the gym, train for a few hours, eat lunch after I finished working out (most of the time it was a protein parm sandwich from Sheetz), drive around for a while, maybe play a round of disc golf, by the time I would get home everyone would be getting ready for bed so I ate dinner by myself at around midnight, then I’d play a variety of games until the sun comes up.
My workout itself wasn’t too insane in my opinion. I was only training three to four times a week, but I was in the gym nearly every day. Monday was a goofball day. It was a light day where I just treat the gym like a playground. Tuesday was course day. The gym would set up two courses and I would push to set the fastest times. Most weeks I was in the top three for fastest time. Wednesday was my rest day. I would usually take that day to practice my guitar. Thursday, back at the gym was strength day. This was the hardest day to get through. I started off with twenty pullups on a bar, then I did a total of thirty pullups on a single two-inch nun chuck. What I did with that was I would do five with my right hand on top then switch to my left hand. I would repeat that until I hit a total of fifteen pullups with each hand on top. Once I was done with that, I used two two-inch nun chuck to do another ten pullups, then another ten on a three-quarter inch cliffhanger (if you don’t know what a cliffhanger is, it’s just a small ledge that hangs off a wall). At this point my forearms are killing me but I have thirty more pullups to do. I go to the vertical limits (which is a pinch grip with a ledge of roughly a centimeter) and I fight through ten more pullups. To finish off the pullups I would through on a twenty-five-pound weight vest and pushed through the final pullups. In the end I did a total of one hundred pullups. Then I cranked out another hundred pushups which took me much less time. After that, I did fifty crunches, then fifty side crunches on each side, and finished the workout with fifty V-ups. I never trained legs because I worked them on another day. After a rest on Friday, I was back at the gym on Saturday for mega wall training and ANW style course runs. For those who don’t know what the mega wall is, it is an eighteen-foot tall, curved wall that you have to run up. The main idea for Saturday is to be prepared for the first course that I might see on ANW. I never train on Sunday because the gym was closed, and I also needed the rest.
When I was at home after everyone was asleep, I needed to find a way to keep my mind functioning well in those late hours of the night. I would start off by playing a few NHL games usually I’d win those games. Then after I eat dinner, I would go to my room and play solitaire on my computer for hours and hours. I averaged twenty-five wins or more every night. I would also spend a lot of time planning out the shirt that I would wear on the show. Once I had the shirt designed, I had to cut the and iron the vinyl. I made I think ten shirts in total that were given to my family and friends who would be on my sidelines. I also needed two for myself in case I got wet and needed a spare.
You might think that the physical training was the hardest part of the preparation process, but you would be wrong. Those late nights were killing me. I will get into more detail at a later time but all I will say for now is the path I took was a lonely path. For almost three months I lived mostly alone in the dark. My mind was starting to get to me. I fear I may have taken it too far alone.
Next week I will talk about getting to the hotel and the B-roll that I did days before the biggest moment of my life. Be on the lookout for that.