Children build muscles and minds at ninja camp
Not all ninjas carry nunchucks, and not all heroes wear capes.
Some, including 5-year-old Lily Arnett, prefer a ruffled T-shirt and sparkly sneakers.
On a Thursday afternoon in August, Lily jumped across foam obstacles, leaped over a pit and climbed straight up a wall on the final day of ninja camp at Movement Lab Ohio.
She joined five other youngsters between ages 5 and 12 to clamber, swing and sweat for three days at the gym, situated in a strip of offices north of Worthington near Polaris Fashion Place.
Arnett, like most of the other children, discovered the intense sport through the TV show “American Ninja Warrior,” whose 10th season is currently airing on NBC. (The final episode will air in September.)
Although the show features muscular adults moving across set obstacles with gritted teeth, teaching children the sport sometimes requires going off-course.
“Some kids could literally run the same obstacle course 10 times in a row,” said Michelle Warnky, owner of Movement Lab and a contestant on this season of “American Ninja Warrior.” “Some want open gym, to try as many as possible. Variety is really helpful.”
To keep things moving, camp leader Kyle Wheeler led the children in multiple rounds through an elaborate obstacle course.
First, they jumped across slanted foam pieces called “quad steps,” before hopping over thin wooden beams. Then they jostled up a staircase to a giant pit filled with blue foam pieces, ran down the stairs and flung themselves up a curved “warp wall” onto a platform, where the first child up smashed the victory buzzer.
“Kids, they never seem to tire, but you see them exhausted,” said Warnky, 34. “Parents are like: ‘Yes! They’re going to sleep well tonight.’ ”
The mini-camp was the last of seven during the summer, and although most parents enroll their children to work off some energy, Warnky figures that 60 percent of ninja training is mental.
The sport is a sneaky way to learn confidence (facing fears) and coordination (falling correctly), she said.
“It’s super-popular right now, but it also helps in daily life.”
The National Ninja League, a nonprofit ninja-competition organization for which Warnky is a board member, began hosting youth events two years ago. The group expanded from three to five youth divisions in the first year because of high demand, with more than 2,500 children and teens signing up for a competition in 2017.
Sunday, several of them competed in an NNL competition at Movement Lab, where they must master 10 to 20 different obstacles.
Come fall, the growing interest in the sport among young people will be reflected in the debut of “American Ninja Warrior Junior,” to be shown on Universal Kids, a cable network owned by NBCUniversal.
Unlike ninja training, the practice of parkour doesn’t adhere to a set course of obstacles, but the physical activity also teaches children the best ways to do what they already do in everyday life: tumble, jump and run.
At Parkour Horizons in Worthington — where the goal of training parkour “is not only to master a set of skills but also can be to develop oneself more deeply as a person” — Richard Skowronski’s two favorite words are “strong” and “safe,” both of which he repeats often to his pint-size students.
During a Friday morning preschool class, Skowronski held Jimmy Tullis’ hand while the 5-year-old — wearing a gray T-shirt bearing the faces of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — carefully stepped across a metal bar.
“If you learn how to fall safely, it’s not a fall anymore,” said Skowronski, 30. “It’s a transitional landing.”
In the 12 years that he has been practicing the activity, the parkour instructor has honed his ability to capture the attention of squirrelly children.
He shouted encouragement as Jimmy and Jimmy’s 3-year-old brother, Eddie, swung off high bars or jumped off a wooden box twice their height.
Anne Tullis, who signed Jimmy up for the class two years ago after an episode of “American Ninja Warrior” inspired him to jump off the furniture, said she’s no longer afraid when her sons play together.
“It makes me less fearful because they’re going to do all this anyway,” she said. “You can’t stop a kid from thinking they’re invincible. But here, they learn to jump, to fall, to climb and not hurt themselves.”