Describe your endeavor.
Right as COVID-19 was crushing us and most of the gyms opened, I became a Ninja Warrior as a way to spend time with one of my daughters, Sydney, who was five years old at the time. I was looking for a sport for my daughter to do. For kids, they have classes and teams and for adults, they have open gym times. We started watching the American Ninja Warrior television show together and one night went to an open gym at Ultimate Ninja.
Honestly, anyone can be an American Ninja Warrior. It’s a television show and has a combination of good athletes and people with interesting stories or jobs. After my daughter and I started doing it in gyms around Chicago, I applied for the show and didn’t make it on the first try but made it on my second application. Now, I’ve been on the show twice.
What is about being an American Ninja Warrior that draws you?
First and foremost, it’s what my daughters love to do and why I keep doing it. They love it and now I’m coaching them.
I like it as a sport because of the engineering that goes into the building of the obstacles. The television show actually has an obstacle design competition, and I won that competition. My design is called the pressure cooker—it’s an obstacle close to the end. There’s no other sport where the equipment changes so rapidly. There is so much failure that goes into being an American Ninja Warrior. You’re going to try something and fall and every time you go to the gym, you’re probably going to fail. Yet, that resilience building helps me to deal with future failures. And it’s helped me to learn that a failure is not forever, you can make progress.
How do you think being a Ninja Warrior makes you better at your job?
Exercise has always been a foundation of mine—it’s how I stay healthy both mentally and physically. Our work can be stressful and sometimes you do everything you can but still have a poor outcome. I think it’s important to have a way to deal with those emotions and recharge. For me, that’s been exercise.
Being an American Ninja Warrior has taught me that even when you fall, you can get back up and try again. And when you start, pretty much everyone is terrible. It makes you okay with laughing at yourself and being willing to failure to have future success. I hope one day it becomes an Olympic sport. I think it’s a beautiful sport that encourages everyone to cheer for others because it’s you against the course and not you against your competitors.
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