Sasuke Happens

Sunday was a return to the "B" bodyweight workout. Feeling stronger, though on the towel-grip pushups all I could manage was three sets of 12, 11, and 11. It might be tough to develop grip strength and back/lats simultaneously.

Today was just an easy 4-mile run. I'm in a recovery week in my road running, and decided not to monkey with that schedule to sync it with my lifting workouts.

Something struck me on that other blog I found the other day; the link's in the sidebar. The guy writes about his efforts at the latest ANW tryouts. He mentions that before his turn a sumo wrestler got up to try the course, predictably wiped out, and soaked the quadruple steps. This made the very first obstacle darn near impossible at least for the guys who immediately followed ol' Slim on the course. Our blogger slipped and fell, and all his months of parkour training went town the drain.

Or did it? What can we learn from this?

First, you can't account for all the variables. Stuff happens. Stuff you probably can't specifically train for, and probably shouldn't waste your time training for even if you could.

Second, given that the unpredictable will occur, the best way to be prepared for it is to be generally ready for anything. In this training, that means not focusing on training for the specific obstacles you've seen on past seasons of Ninja Warrior. Instead, you should focus on getting your fitness and strength levels high enough that you can handle whatever the course throws at you.

The more you watch, the more sense this makes. How many of these guys who train on replica obstacles really benefit from it? How well would they do if they trained broadly to develop strength in a variety of ways? More importantly, how much better off would they be outside of this game show if they focused more on overall fitness?

Third, the right attitude is critical. This guy could've gone off in his blog about how unfair it was for them to not dry off the obstacles, how G4 made a sham of the whole event by letting this overweight clown on the course in the first place, and so on. He did none of that. He chalked it up to bad luck, went home, and resumed training. That tells me not only that he's a good sport, but that he's enjoying his training enough to continue without attaining his goal. It's like the Whos down in Whoville celebrating Christmas even though their presents are gone: you've got to remember what's important.

In other news, I intend to put some more general-interest ANW stuff on this page, because my personal training diary can't be that interesting to people. With the new season starting next week on G4, there should be plenty of material online. Details to follow.