Karate, pole vaulting – and now, ‘Ninja Warrior’

Cassie Craig is 5 feet, 2 inches tall, 125 pounds of muscle and likes to do things that look impossible – pole vaulting, back flips and extreme yoga.

The 26-year-old Wichitan is competing on an extreme-sports TV show called “American Ninja Warrior.” The show consists of increasingly difficult obstacles that tower above pools of water. The winner gets $1 million.

Out of 50,000 audition tapes submitted to the show last year, Craig made the cut for the national competition in Las Vegas. She was also selected for the debut of a second show called “Team Ninja Warrior,” which consists of obstacles for three-person teams.

That was her rookie year.

Now she’s training for her second season. The regional competition in Oklahoma City films May 13 and airs on NBC at the beginning of June.

“The experience of walking up those steps and having the camera man counting you down, and the lights, and the sounds and the crowd,” she said.

“The bigger-than-life aspect of it all, that is the part that’s the hardest to get used to – being used to being in that atmosphere and have tunnel vision at the same time.”

Last year she fell on the second-to-last obstacle at the regional competition and was disqualified on the first apparatus in Las Vegas.

But she said she’s hooked because the show embodies an array of sports she’s loved her entire life.

At 5 years old, she said, she started karate with her dad, who has a black belt, then competed as a gymnast for eight years in elementary and middle school, cheered, power tumbled and pole vaulted in high school and competed as a Division I pole vaulter and hurdler at Wichita State University.

She won state pole vaulting twice while at Maize High School, won three Missouri Valley Conference pole vaulting championships and is now the third all-time best pole vaulter at WSU. She’s also the fifth-best all-time indoor 60-meter hurdler for WSU.

“At a meet, yes, you only get one try, but you’ve been doing it over and over and over again hundreds and hundreds of times,” she said. “When you go to this show, you don’t get to practice anything.”

‘Cass is rare’

Craig said she’s drawn to the show because of the all-around athleticism involved with training for it and because of the culture and camaraderie among athletes.

She’s friends with Kacy Catanzaro, the first woman to conquer the warped wall – a 15-foot vertical wall that curves at the top – and Meagan Martin, a professional bouldering competitor. Bouldering is a strength-driven version of rock climbing that sits lower to the ground and doesn’t use ropes.

“Everybody is so incredibly athletic,” Craig said about the show contestants.

While many competitors work in athletic fields, own gyms or are personal trainers, Craig works as a full-time graphic designer for PK Cos., which works in the oil and gas field.

She trains about two hours a night after work.

“Everybody is doing what I’m doing – finding new ways to train,” she said. “If you follow some of the ninjas, it’s like ‘that’s insane but probably perfect.’”

In person, Craig carries an alluring demeanor and has a charming chuckle that often comes out while she trains. Her small stature comes packed with power, even pushing back David Rickles, a professional fighter nicknamed “The Caveman,” who trains her in kickboxing.

She strength trains Mondays and Wednesdays, boulders and rock climbs Tuesdays and Thursdays, runs hills at least twice a week, teaches a trampoline fitness class, kickboxes, tumbles and practices yoga.

“I like it because I don’t have to come to the same gym every day ,” she said. “I don’t even touch weights.”

Marquis Bradley, her personal trainer at Omnicut Motivational Fitness, trains several high-profile Kansas athletes, including Rickels and Chris Harris, both professional mixed martial artists, along with marathon runners and elite-level basketball players.

Bradley and Craig said they started training together in the spring of 2015.

“Cass is rare,” Bradley said. “She’s fast, she’s strong, she can sing, she can dance, she can do karate. Whatever Cass wants to do, she wants do.”

When they started training together, he said, she required research.

“Cassie is unique because she can do everything,” he said. “So you have to find ways to push her limits.”

Ninja gyms

Contestants don’t get to examine the ninja course before the competition, so an over-arching theme is to test the athlete’s ability to adapt to physical challenges on the first try.

“It wasn’t supposed to be something you could specifically train for, like a 100-meter sprint,” Craig said. “You don’t know what you’re going to be doing, so just be able to do everything.”

Places called “ninja gyms” have popped up across the country as the show gained popularity. The gyms replicate obstacles from the show and offer full-body training for general fitness and for show contestants.

Many of the gyms are owned by past or current ninjas.

Craig visited one in Springfield, Mo., four hours away, over the weekend.

“That’s the only time I’ll get to go on those obstacles until I do them on national TV,” she said.

Because of the rise in ninja gyms, the show has created increasingly outlandish obstacles not yet seen in the gyms.

“The show just gets more and more challenging, honestly, because ninjas get more and more creative at building things,” Craig said

‘It just messes with you’

The show films overnight and uses lighting effects to illuminate the outdoor obstacles and crowd.

Craig said when she competed at regionals in Kansas City, she checked in on set at 9 p.m. It was 3 a.m. by the time she competed.

Leading up to her performance, she said, she spent the night watching everyone run the course. Many disqualified on the first apparatus, which required contestants to jump to and from slanted rectangular pads positioned above a pool of water.

“You just get freaked out of your mind, and you feel like you’re about to fall on the first obstacle,” she said. “By the time you get up there you’re like, ‘This is the worst idea I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t know why I ever decided that this was a good idea.’”

She said that watching other contestants doesn’t always help. Two people can attempt an apparatus the same way, and one will succeed while the other fails.

“You get up there and you’re like, ‘Wow, everything is bigger than I ever thought it was going to be,’” she said.

Her goal by the time it was her turn: don’t fall.

“I was like, ‘OK, I’m not going to fall on this first obstacle,’” she said. “And then I didn’t, and I’m like ‘Ah, thank God I didn’t fall on the first obstacle.’ That was my goal.”

Then she made it through the second, third and fourth.

“Every time I just got more and more excited,” she said, and thought: “OK, at least I didn’t do terrible.”

Then came the second-to-last obstacle. She hung from a bundle of rubber strings – resembling a tortured version of monkey bars – using arm and grip strength to move from bundle to bundle.

As weight brought her down, the rubber expanded, getting smaller and requiring tighter and tighter grips.

“It just messes with you,” she said about the psychological aspect.

When she transferred from the last set of rubber bands to a downward-slanted pipe, she fell.

“My grip just went out,” she said. “My hands were dead. My arms were so dead.”

Now she hangs from a variety of shapes connected to chains to work on grip strength.

Because she disqualified on the slanted pipe obstacle, Craig didn’t compete in the second day of regionals.

But the show selected her as one of 10 contestants to compete as wild cards at nationals. The wild cards are awarded to contestants who performed well but didn’t make the top cut, or who previously performed well on the show but had a bad night. Craig won one of those bids, but was disqualified in the first round of the competition.

She said she hopes to compete for the show as long as she can, given she avoids injuries. She has to get through regionals to make the national competition this year.

“Every year, it’s harder and harder to make the show, she said.

This story originally appeared on kansas.com.

This story was originally published May 3, 2016 at 10:20 AM with the headline "Karate, pole vaulting – and now, ‘Ninja Warrior’."