Everybody has a dream. If you’re reading this, we think we might know what yours is. You’ve trained hard, applied to be a contestant, and you think you’re ready. You’re appearing on the television show American Ninja Warrior, and you have a struggle ahead of you. You need to make it through 4 incredibly difficult obstacle courses, and believe us when we tell you, the Ninja Warrior course is tough. But through persistence and grit, you made it! Now, you can see yourself ascending the heights of Mount Midoriyama and achieving total victory.

That’s a great dream, but here’s the reality. When season 1 of American Ninja Warrior began, there were 1,000 applicants. For the most recent season, which was season 8, there were 70,000 applicants. Guess how many people have won it all and walked away with a million bucks and bragging rights? Two people. Of the 4 stages, most competitors can’t complete the first stage. If you want to win, you need to be strong, fast, flexible, and smart. While your odds aren’t good, somebody has to win, so it might as well be you, right?

Yesterday we shared a few training tips to help you get into shape and achieve total victory. Now, we’d like to share a few more.

• Want to dominate the course? You’ll need to be able to jump and jump well. Explosive jumping is the key since you’ll need to be able to leap off a trampoline onto a net and navigate the insanely tough Warped Wall. A few ways to boost your jumping power is to work on box jumps with one foot and with both feet, squat jumps with and without holding weights, and lunge jumps both with and without weights. Practicing general jumping, leaping, and bounding is key to success, and the best place to do that is an indoor trampoline park. Good thing we can provide that for you.
• Flexibility is critical on the course, since your body will be contorted into all sorts of positions, and you’ll need to extend both arms and legs. Start off with getting muscle integrity in order with foam rolling and deep tissue massage. After that, get comfortable with lots of dynamic flexibility exercises like leg swings and arm swings, both front to back and side to side. On a regular basis, factor in exercises centered around flexibility like yoga, Bikram yoga, and gymnastics.
• You know what’s the most common thing that happens to contestants on the course? They fall. Either they slip going across a wet log, mistime a jump on a trampoline, you get the idea. The better your balance is, the better the chances are that you won’t go down. There are lots of options available for balance exercises. Single leg yoga poses and single leg squats do a lot of good, as does using gym equipment like stability balls, bosu balls, and wobble boards. But don’t think you need lots of stuff to train. You can start by balancing on a curb or fence, then move up to slack lines or balance beams. Practice jumping from one unstable surface to another in order to get the hang of balance transitions. Finally, taking care of your joints, ears, and eyes will keep your balance steady.