Developing the Sport of Ninja Beyond Rock Solid Warrior’s Current Locations

Just almost everyone is somewhat familiar with the reality TV show “American Ninja Warrior”.  But far fewer people realize that the show inspired an incredible sport that has a life of its own.  And though there are a few thousand facilities around the country that offer some sort of “ninja challenges” or “ninja training”, not everyone has one close by.  Many more people who would love to get a shot to “beat that wall” or “hit a buzzer” don’t have a facility that can really prepare them to enter the great sport of ninja.  That is slowly changing, and we’d love to see the day when the sport of Ninja is as accessible as gymnastics or soccer.

You may or may not know that Rock Solid Warrior is known as one of the top training facilities in the sport of Ninja, and a leader in the advancement of the sport.  Ninja athletes from many areas of the country – and their parents and coaches – are often either jealous or inspired by many aspects of our facility and staff.  We are blessed with both.  We also recognize the unique gifts we have been given as a family who entered the sport in its early years, had the opportunity to travel to many facilities around the county, competed at the highest levels in many leagues, and had the ability to invest a lot more into our facilities than others in a market that has year-round schools which have enabled us to operate during the day in a way other facilities cannot.  We are so grateful these gifts and continually desire to  “give it forward.”

When we started our facilities in southern Wake County, we were just about the only ninja athletes in the area, and had to grow our local athletes from the ground up.  We had some major advantages in that we were able to recruit some others we knew who were willing to relocate to our area, as well as have friends who were athletically gifted and shared our values who we could train up to serve alongside us.  We had believed that the unique location of southern Wake County would be fruitful soil to grow the sport, and it has exceeded our expectations.  But we also recognized that there are many more areas that need “ninja love” and we’ve wanted to help others to grow the sport and share what we have learned.

One of our first experiments in the sport, before we even opened our first facility in Fuquay Varina was a “Mobile Ninja Warrior” rig.  Caleb created and engineered it to exceed the expectations of most ninjas and it was used at a variety of big outside events in North Carolina – including those featuring Daniel Gil – and one inside event in Tennessee.  But it was a big job to set up and tear down and when we opened our facility in Fuquay – and COVID hit – the opportunities dwindled.

As we examined our options, we came back to our goal of growing the sport.  We were gifted with a variety of young ninja athletes that were passionate about the sport and serving others.  We have always desired to grow them professionaly so they could have a career in the sport.

We recognized that neighboring counties didn’t have any ninja training facilities and we pursued an opportunity to move it indoors to a “permanent” home in Clayton with “Nick’s Flippin’ Kids” (now Element Gymnastics and Sports Center).  Jeshuah Lewis was a promising leader at Rock Solid and the Harper family had just purchased the business in Clayton with a desire to grow its offerings.  We worked with them to move the “Mobile Ninja Warrior” rig to a new home and develop a Ninja Warrior program there with the possibility of transitioning them to eventually run the program.  We grew the program (and added more to the rigs based on our Rock Solid Warrior design system).  A few months ago, we began a transition plan to train up a few of their coaches and connected them with another experienced Ninja Coach, and worked out a deal to sell the equipment to them.  Now they are operating as “Element Ninja Academy”.

We’ve had a variety of people who were exploring starting up gyms seek our advice (and ask us to franchise) over the years.  For a variety of reasons, we have no intentions to franchise, but we always try to respond to whatever questions we get with as much openness and transparency as possible.  We do want to expand and eventually open up other locations within Wake County, but we don’t want to compete with other gyms who are active in the sport.  Our unique model in Wake County is not easy to replicate without the year-round school system we have here, so we encourage others to come up with a business model that works wherever they are.

Short of franchising, we’ve been exploring ways we can package up the things we’ve learned that could be applicable to any business model that also wants to include participation in the sport.  Here’s a few things we’ve been working on and will continue to work on:

• Exporting our Coach Training & Certification Program – as we began training our own coaches, we learned a lot and have developed our own coach training and certification program into a series of videos and “clinical tests” and procedures.  We’ve used the “1.0 version with Element Ninja Academy in Clayton and Rugged Obstacle Courses in Williamsburg VA.  We’re wrapping up our 2.0 version and looking forward to help others train and certify their coaches as we approach 2025.
• Rock Solid Warrior Design System – lots of people in the Ninja Sport use aluminum trusses for their ninja rigs.  They kind of look “like the show” but we’ve found they are far less practical than our design system.  We had a lot of our brackets custom made, but we’re exploring manufacturers to produce them on a larger scale, and tweaking a few things for what we’re calling our Design System 3.0 which we are planning to use as we expand our Fuquay location this year as well as preparing for a 3rd location.  And, once we are satisfied with that, we’ll be offering the design system along with our consulting to gyms who want our cost effective and flexible systems to be the standard in their gyms.
• Ninja Sport Ambassador Packages – we have recently appointed Michael Bellion as our Ninja Sport Ambassador, and he is working on a few packages to help boost less experienced gyms in course design and more.  Stay tuned as we roll out some of those packages in 2025.

If you are interested in bringing the sport forward in your area, either by starting a new ninja gym, or enhancing what you are currently doing, we’d love to help.