+ American Ninja Dad +

Outside of Phineas and Ferb there isn’t much on television that our whole family can agree on. We never watched American Idol or Dancing with the Stars or the myriad competition shows until Elliott discovered American Ninja Warrior. Have you seen this spectacle? At first I thought it was something along the lines of Wipeout, with ridiculous contraptions designed to make people look like idiots.

et your heart rate up at least 30 minutes a day.

Guerrieri, and her

Isaiah , right, working out at the Fitwit gym on College Avenue in Kirkwood, which also hosts exercise classes for children northside.com

But American Ninja Warrior is a higher quality of ridiculous and it is compelling.

For starters, you need to be a phenomenal athlete to compete. The obstacles border on the insane. People like me who played traditional sports in high school generally suck on this show. But if you were a gymnast – sure, this could be your thing. Rock climber? Even better. Circus act? Best. It’s comical when the announcers summon wonderment when making comments like, “He was not even an athlete in high school!” Oh really? He couldn’t make the trapeze team?

The competitors are featured in background segments designed to make people cry – or laugh – or laugh at themselves for crying. There was the single dad whose three kids are struggling in school, so he practices balance on the top of a fence that separates a state road from a canyon. Or the guy whose wife is wheelchair bound so he climbs the underpinnings of bridges. I must be the only one thinking what if they fall and wait – why? It never seems to be a concern because American Ninja Warrior has a solution for life’s toughest challenges – work out like a maniac. Can’t pay the bills? Do 7,000 pull-ups. Living in a van and dumpster diving for food? Try going to the beach and doing some back flips, brother.

Occasionally, the vignettes last longer than the contestant’s actual run on the course. They did a lengthy bit on the CEO of Cliff Bar. He cross trains with his employees at lunchtime and does headstands during meetings! He’s not your average CEO! But he splashed out early on the quintuple steps, so I was wanting those three minutes of my life back. Obviously his resume was a little light on hardship. Sigh.

It seems the most surefire way to be successful is to own a gym. And I don’t mean the Soloflex in your basement. You need to be a trainer of people who aspire to have the same physical awesomeness as you, but never will. Also it is helpful to be a master carpenter. The backyard setups these people build are remarkable and allow for additional training in the scant hours of the day when they are not in the gym. By the way, do any of you know how to build a perfectly calibrated, fourteen-foot warped wall? I don’t, but that’s what Elliott wants for Christmas.

Elliott and Margo create their own family-room courses. They run down the hall and leap onto the back of the sofa, carefully scaling their way to the chair, the side table, the other chair, and then stick the landing on the ottoman. If they slip and fall on the rug, that’s hot lava (their own wrinkle). In the show, the contestants fall into a pool of water, but one guy did train by setting his landing area on fire as added inspiration to not fall. I’m good with just the pretend hot lava.

They keep lifting up my shirt to inspect how my abs are coming along, but American Ninja Warrior contestants in their 40s are marveled at as if they had recently been exhumed. So I’m good with a support role here and training for the next generation. The kids have been inspired enough to join FitWit Kids to begin unleashing their inner awesome. I’m all too familiar with their gene pool, so we’re looking at something of a long shot here, but unless they start scaling bridges, I’m calling our family TV viewing a success.

Tim Sullivan grew up in a large family in the Northeast and now lives with his small family in Oakhurst. He can be reached at tim@sullivanfinerugs.com.

Getting your heart rate up 30 minutes a day at least five days a week has countless health benefits. Why not get up and move? It’s good for the heart, blood pressure and weight control. And at the game, it helps you rock the house.

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