With the open casting for American Ninja Warrior 4 (ANW4) coming up and the actual regionals coming up in March, I figured I’d post a couple of videos contrasting American Ninja Warrior vs an actual parkour community competition.  American Ninja Warrior is serious competition (at least compared to Wipe-Out!), yet goofy and of course awesome, entertaining and a tons of fun.  It’s made for TV, so it’s made and edited to be entertaining.   For example, they don’t actually show all of the contestant’s runs on the actual show, after all, they have to edit it to make it fit the show’s time slot!  Also, they may not even show the runs in the actual order that they happened.  (At least, that’s my impression, considering that I’ve competed in American Ninja Warrior 2010 and 2011 and the show didn’t seem to completely square up with what I actually remembered.)  Maybe as the show evolves, gets more popular, and commands a larger time-slot it’s possible that there will be more complete coverage of the actual runs.  No matter, it’s still an awesome program and lots of fun.  After all, where else can you get to actually run such a wickedly creative course?!  Well, maybe at local parkour competitions.  Hmmm…  As parkour gets more popular and more parkour gyms sprout up around the country and certain gymnastics gyms expand to have parkour programs you’ll start seeing more and more parkour competitions.  Parkour Visions in Seattle, Apex Movement in Colorodo, and of course, The Cave in Corte Madera have all hosted and organized parkour competitions of different sorts, whether open to the larger PK community as a whole, or tailored to members participating in classes, or kids or specifically elite traceurs.  So here are a few videos from said events.

First, a collection of some memorable 2010 American Ninja Warrior 2 runs.  Goofy, serious, or otherwise:

I’d like to emphasize that Sasuke, (the term used to describe the obstacle course competition in Japan from which they created the show “Ninja Warrior”) is not parkour.  Parkour can be useful for doing well in Ninja Warrior, but training for Ninja Warrior isn’t necessarily the same thing as practicing parkour.   For example, training the technique for passing “The Bridge of Blades” can hardly be considered parkour since you won’t find too many “bridge of blades” in your natural or urban environments.   Backgrounds in various areas of physical endeavor can be useful for improving your Sasuke skills, such as  gymnastics, climbing, soccer, track, martial arts or other sports.  In my opinion though, the three areas of athletic endeavor that typically help the most for Sasuke (Ninja Warrior) are parkour, track and field, and rock climbing, (ok, maybe add rope-climbing to that mix) but training specifically for Ninja Warrior on a replica obstacle course can probably give even better returns for your training time.

Here is our own (The Cave’s) inter-gym invitational from Dec. 10th, 2011.  The idea behind this competition was that it should be tailored for local bay area parkour programs, specifically for our members/ clients who had been taking the classes consistently and had risen to at least an intermediate level.  Vargas gymnastics even fielded a complete team that showed up in uniforms.  The competition had three parts.  The first was a speed course that was parkour.  The second was a sasuke / feats of strength type obstacle course and the third was a free-running event modeled after “Jump City Seattle”.  Unfortunately somehow this video featured more of the “special guests” and coaches’ runs than the runs of the actual local inter-gym competitors.  Here is Malachi, the Vargas Parkour & Freerunning Coach’s run:

The following is a compilation from the 2010 Apex Movement Invitational.  Ryan “Deamon Drills” Ford and the team from Apex Movement have been influential early innovators in the parkour community in the United States.  The organization and level of competition at this event was excellent and you can see how the bracket system that they used enabled the competition to be open to a large pool of competitors for the first stage and by the last event they had narrowed the field to a sharper and more manageable talent pool.   The videos looked amazing.  Wish I had been there.

Here is what I consider to be “The Real Deal” for parkour competitions.   Parkour Visions, one of the most serious and purest parkour programs in the country hosts an intense, well-run, serious parkour competition invitational where they invited mainly the best of the best from around the country:

These are the programs that I’m more up to date with.  I don’t even know what Primal Fitness, Miami Freerunning or other east-coast gyms have been doing.  These days there are many more parkour programs sprouting up throughout different communities and I foresee a time when parkour competitions may become as prevalent as gymnastics meets or rock-climbing competitions.  I certainly hope so!

I know from personal conversations that some of the most serious parkour coaches from the local communities think that Ninja Warrior is a bit gimmicky (which it is) and they’d like to keep the parkour competitions local and in and by the communities.  I think that those are noble thoughts and there are definitely compelling reasons to support, promote and continue hosting those local competitions and events.  I however, still love Ninja Warrior despite the “gimmicky-ness” and I admit that I train obsessively for it whenever I get a chance, which is not nearly as often as I would like.  Also, it makes it that much more fun that the television networks have the means, organizational power, business model and resources to build ridiculously awesome obstacles that even if you mess up on you’ll probably be OK just and just plunge into the murky ninja water all while offering some serious prize money.  I’m looking forward to G4’s crews coming up on Sunday Feburary 12th and I can’t wait to see what this new season of American Ninja Warrior will bring us!

Cheers,

Amadraeus

Andres - at - InTheCave.com