What is harder: American Ninja Warrior OR a sub 3-hour marathon?

You know who seems like he'd be really good at this ANW thing? Alan MF Webb. He's got strength, speed, endurance, WIM (want-it-more)...what more could you ask for?

ataglance wrote:

I'd bet any D1 level gymnast would destroy ANW. It's like D1 runners and the local road race.

At least for stage 3 of Mt Midoriyama, gymnasts would have a LOT of trouble with finger strength, which takes years, even decades to develop compared to muscular strength. Also, the creative/improvisational nature of new challenges would be a problem in the qualifiers; climbers and parkour guys are better at innovation on the fly.

From watching a few seasons, getting past stage 3 at MM looks to me as the equivalent equivalent to redpointing mid-5.14, which probably several hundered U.S. climbers alone can do. Let's conservatively say 100 could have the potential. However, the dedication and re-focus on training obstacle instead of climbing would be a distraction for dedicated climbers (I seriously doubt Sharma would try, but who knows, with Ondra superceding him maybe it would be a fun new challenge). Maybe 10 climbers would have that kind of motivation, given enough incentive.

BTW I am a climber who trains a lot of obstacle-type stuff of similar nature as cross-training. If there was more running involved I would do really well (i'm slow by competitive standards but can outrun most other climbers at my level).

Maybe next year I'll give it a look....

Distance Express wrote:

Why wouldn't the ninjas who train on the specific climbing obstacles be just as good as a climber on the climbing obstacles? While i think a climber could do the salmon ladder would it not make more sense to practice on the salmon ladder or would climbing in general translate to doing the technique required of the salmon ladder?

The ninjas that train as ninjas would have an advantage as they do specific training on specific obstacles instead of non specific climbing.

I agree that this does sound like the classic elite distance runner attempting an ultra.

The salmon ladder would definitely be nice to practice on beforehand but, at the end of the day, it requires grip and upper-body strength and hand-eye coordination/precision, all of which strong climbers possess in spades.

When I'm at the bouldering wall and there are holds positioned in a favorable way, I'll sometimes do double dynos up the wall, which is similar to the salmon ladder. I'll start hanging off of one or two holds, then do an explosive chin-up, where I let go of the wall with both hands at the same time and grab 2 more holds above me, then repeat until I make it to the cieling or fall. Like the salmon ladder, it takes precision and explosiveness, but the holds you're going to are almost always much harder to grip than a metal rung. There's also a campus ladder that you can do them on, which is easier as the holds are more evenly spaced and predictable.

I can only boulder around V7 and climb 5.12-low. I can't fathom what it would take to boulder V15s or climb 5.15s but I suspect that anybody with that ability would be pretty unstoppable on ANW, provided they had a minimal amount of agility, which most boulderers possess.

Plenty of climbers, gymnasts and other specialties have tried ANW. Some excel and others exit early, proving there is no single background that is best suited. The best ANW athletes are full time and have built courses to train on. One side note I've noticed with climbers is that they seem to lack lower body power and explosion, making it difficult to scale the wall. This would make sense, as a climber you don't want to be dragging this big muscular lower half up a mountain.

Lighten up Francis wrote:

Plenty of climbers, gymnasts and other specialties have tried ANW. Some excel and others exit early, proving there is no single background that is best suited. The best ANW athletes are full time and have built courses to train on. One side note I've noticed with climbers is that they seem to lack lower body power and explosion, making it difficult to scale the wall. This would make sense, as a climber you don't want to be dragging this big muscular lower half up a mountain.

Yes, but what grade do they climb? Lots of people climb just as many people run. Very few do so at an elite level, which is what I'm talking about. In bouldering especially, having power in your legs is beneficial as many moves are dynamic and involve driving upwards with your legs. At any rate, you don't want big legs for most of the obstacles as they will weigh you down. I doubt that the warped wall is overly challenging if a female gymnast (who I'm assuming isn't particularly tall) has scaled it. I think that it would only be hard if you were wearing shoes with zero grip on them. The ANW athletes who build their own obstacles to train on take the show and their training extremely seriously. I'm not surprised that they'd beat a bunch of average climbers - especially on the easier stages. I doubt they'd beat an elite climber on stage 3, however.

This is actually very relevant to the discussion. A bunch of youth climbers tried out some ninja warrior obstacles after sport climbing nationals. They take to most of the obstacles quite easily.

http://www.epictv.com/content/americas-best-young-climbers-try-out-ninja-warrior-training-course-epictv

I don't know, I know almost nothing about ANW and even less about climbing. It was impressive watching a 5' girl finish the course though.

I have run sub 3 and tried out on a qualifying course this year for ANW as walk on. It takes crazy grip strength and upper body. What I noticed was how many of the elite invited athletes mostly with parkour and climbing backgrounds failed with stupid mistakes. Id say over 50 percent of the field was eliminated on the rolling log. I did not make it through the course and didn't expect to , but it was a very fun experience.

I just wanted to step in here and say that any of the people that think ANW is easy has no clue what it actually is and how hard it is. If you think it's easy you probably haven't watched more than a few minutes of it. I've watched every single episode from the beginning. Comparing ANW to a marathon is dumb, but if you did completing Mt. Madoryama would be worth way more than a sub 2:20 marathon. There have been world class climbers, NFL athletes, and countless others competing yet no one has comoleted it in the USA. There have been 3 to complete it in Japan ever, but they have had the competition for over 20 years. Just my 2 cents.