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American Ninja Warrior is a sport originating from the Japanese television show ‘Sasuke’. Since its arrival here in the States, it’s grown from its humble entertainment roots into a thriving fitness and competition circuit. Ninja Warrior focuses on navigating unique obstacle courses using specialized skills, with the goal of improving both speed of completion and mastery of technique.
Ninja Warrior is a sport in which the athlete navigates a pre-designed course with specialized obstacles designed to be overcome with specific skills.
Parkour is an art and discipline in which an athlete adapts themselves and their movement to any given environment, be it urban, natural, or something like a Ninja obstacle course.
In sum; Ninja is obstacle specific; Parkour is environmentally adaptive.
Ninja’s early history was tethered strongly to the culture of Parkour. Many of the initial competitors where Parkour Athletes, and to this day top Ninja Athletes share some level of Parkour influence on their training. Many course testers & designers are active Parkour Athletes, and Ninja is seeing the inclusion of more Parkour techniques such as Cat Leaps and Cat Backs are finding their way into competition.
There’s even a link between the language of Parkour and Ninja. Terms like ‘Lache‘ are derived from Parkour. Lâché simply meaning ‘to let go of’ in French–France being the country from which Parkour’s earliest roots’ originated.
However Ninja Warrior develops in the future, it’s certain Parkour will remain a closely linked companion of the sport.
Our classes focus on the fundamentals of Parkour and its exploratory process of assessing an environment and the ways it can be navigated. The vast array of foundational skills allow an athlete to swiftly adapt to new obstacles, environments, and physical challenges. By removing obstacle-specific limitations, athletes learn to approach challenges with a more variable eye.
Beyond the skills, our gym mixes traditional Ninja obstacles and equipment with our Parkour-inspired architecture. As their skill-base grows, students are encouraged to envision their own lines (Parkour’s word for Courses) where the challenge becomes the creation, execution, and fluidity of skills they intend to use to complete it.
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