GETTING A LEG UP ON FITNESS
Kannon James, 9, of Loveland takes part in a ninja warrior workout at Wolf Den Ninja Training Facility in Loveland last week. A local doctor is tapping into the popularity of the NBC series “American Ninja Warrior” in order to help promote fitness in youths.
LOVELAND» You’d think an emergency-room doctor has the standing to persuade kids to eat healthier and exercise more.
Not really, says Noah Kaufman, an ER doctor here.
“If I tell them not to drink so much soda, they fall asleep on me in midsentence,” he said. “But if I’m the ninja doc, they listen.”
That’s “ninja,” as in one of the many obstacle-battling contestants on the popular NBC series “American Ninja Warrior,” where Kaufman swung, jumped and scrambled through several seasons when he wasn’t pulling overnight shifts at the Medical Center of the Rockies.
“The kids recognize me when they come in for an earache,” the 42-year-old Fort Collins resident said last week as he sat in a gym that he and other Coloradobased “Ninja Warrior” contestants have launched to help fans — young and old — of the show get in better shape.
Colorado, by many measures, is the fittest state in the country, but its rate of overweight and obese adults climbed from 20.2 percent in 2015 to 22.3 percent in 2016, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Among Colorado’s children, the 2016 rate was 22.3 percent — which amounts to 145,500 considered overweight or obese.
At the recently opened Wolf Den Ninja Training Facility in Loveland, Kaufman and the other comley founders are on a mission to battle these trends.
“Kids are getting more unhealthy — there are now clinics for kids who have adult-onset diabetes,” Kaufman said. “We’re harnessing our microfame to have an impact.”
Kaufman’s partners in the gym are Brian Arnold of Brighton, Ian Dory of Fort Collins and Meagan Martin of Boulder.
“I think it’s great that the show can invoke that kind of passion in kids,” said Martin, a coach at a Boulder climbing gym who has been one of the most successful women to compete on the show.
Since its 2009 debut, “American Ninja Warrior” has migrated from screens into gyms, arenas and backyards across the country. And Colorado, with its healthy-state reputation, has seen several “Ninja Warrior” gyms along the Front Range, and multiple competitors from the state have become iconic contestants on the show — including Fort Collins climber Isaac Caldiero, the first person to complete the TV show’s daunting course and win a million dollars.
At the Loveland gym, people can take part in challenges similar to those found on the show, such as swinging on ropes, jumping across pedestals and scrambling up a smaller version of the show’s popular “warped wall” — experiences that can be a lot more fun than running around an indoor track 20 times, Martin said.
“It’s ever-changing,” she said, “so it’s more exciting.”
“American Ninja Warrior” is what got Denise Walker of Arvada to bring her 6-year-old daughter, Charlie, to the gym.
“We were watching the TV show, and she said, ‘I have to do this,'” Walker said.
They’ve been driving an hour to the gym every Wednesday since it opened two months ago. Dory, the contestant who teaches classes at the gym, has become her daughter’s favorite personality from the show.
“It’s really wholesome for the kids,” Walker said.
The gym’s co-founders will also set up an obstacle course at a fall fest that starts Friday at the Bromley/Koizuma-Hishinuma Farm in Brighton. The fest will be held for six consecutive weekends at the historic, city-owned farm on Bro- Lane, with an emphasis on healthy, locally based eating and outdoor activity.
Nathan Mudd, who heads the Westminster and Arvada farmers markets and runs the Bromley Local Foods Campus, said various “American Ninja Warrior” competitors will be on hand during the fall fest weekends to help kids tackle the course.
“We have lots of kids who think a tomato comes from a factory somewhere downtown,” he said. “They are spending way too much time on their screens. This is about learning about good eating, physical activity and being outdoors.”
Kaufman said the gym, which he hopes to expand across the country, is a “natural fit” with the Bromley Local Foods Campus. His organization turned down a sponsorship from a natural soda company to fund the Wolfpack Ninja Tour — a “Ninja Warrior”-inspired touring offshoot that debuted in April at Magness Arena in Denver and is set to be held again in Loveland on Nov. 3-5 — because of his objection to consumption of sugary drinks.
“It was a lot of money, but it’s in conflict with our mission,” he said.
Vern Tharp, a manager at the historic Bromley farm, said what the Wolfpack Ninja group does is preferable to what he sees as the heavy hand of Boulder and its 2-cents-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks.
“What our Colorado ninjas are promoting are lifestyle changes by inspiring our youngsters to begin active healthy habits early in their lives,” he said. “I favor inspiration over taxation.”