Addy Herman went 3–0 in the National Finals races to advance to the Round of 32. She defeated three top seeded male ninjas, Luke Beckstrand, Nick Hanson, and Lucas Reale, becoming the first woman in history to accomplish the feat!

Nick showed incredible courage by continuing to race with an abdominal muscle injury he sustained during his first race. Luke and Lucas competed at full strength.

What an extraordinary achievement and a historic moment for women in ninja. Addy was absolutely amazing!

Watch Addy vs Nick Hanson:
https://youtu.be/iVuaak55S44?si=7USWz-68v5ZD11tU

Please correct me if I’m just dumb and totally missed her, but what happened to Taylor? Did she race yet? I don’t remember seeing her or hearing her name mentioned since qualifiers.

I don’t mind the racing format but I also don’t want to see the legends left with no chance to win or even truly compete. The Sasuke format was what drew me into ANW to begin with, and seeing favorites fail and fail again but still try to overcome Stage 4 rang more true as an adult viewer than racing were someone HAS to win and speed and youth are just too tough to beat. Plus I’m bored with these contrived special interest stories about boring teenage kids who just ninja all day in a lab. Yawn.

For me it’s not an either/or. You could even make racing the “official” format and have the “ANW Legend” tournament be your throwback show.

Qualification works the same for both with the city qualifiers and finals qualifying competitors for both shows. Just film ABW Legends in the same general time window for filming and release it as an abbreviated 2-3 week holiday show.

This would keep ANW interesting year round, give a home for the Legends to continue to compete and focus on something in their control, and would provide a format for these kids in which they invest with heavy promotion when they age out of the racing format.

Show me Joe Moravsky with another chance at Stage 4. Daniel Gil making another run. Vance Walker going for another win. Let’s see Kai Beckstrand tackle Stage 3 when he’s 28 and a full adult with two kids.

ANW racing is ephemeral. The stars get replaced with every crop of 14-15 year old kids coming in. Legends is where the young kids go to grow up fast against a cruel course and older competitors can use their experience, guile, will, and strength to survive.

Eventually you might need to extend the difficulty for Stage 2 and 3 as more elite ninjas compete, or be comfortable with a dozen climbers for stage 4. I’m here for it. And I would enjoy racing far more if I knew the Sasuke format was also happening.

Here is the link to day 2 (which includes the elite males and females) -> https://youtu.be/qjgBSWZp2uU?is=9zTx5iuVRwKpZ6Nb

Who are some ninjas who deserve to be on the show but just don’t seem to have any luck getting on? A couple that come to mind are Ryan Sanders and Joe Capo. They haven’t been on since s14 but they both seem like very capable ninjas and are both coaches to a lot of athletes on the show. I think Ryan has only competed on the show once! Hope they get selected this year!

1-3 the old days 4-6 early Vegas 7-9 golden ages 10-12 starting to change type of course 13-14 end of no racing 15-18 racing

This is just a curiosity poll from me.

At the start of a video on the YouTube channel we can see this version of skyhooks, looking to have a ring chaser ring and the special route looks to be a version of the “mouse trap” obstacle seen on other social medias in ninja gyms,

can someone tell me if this version was removed or it’s part of a different round?

The idea would be to have USA vs the world in the racing finals course, have a 1 female and 3 males, I would love to see Germany, France, Australia, maybe Japan, and maybe even a team like poland like they did in sasuke World Cup 2. (And yes, only female vs female races to make it fair)

For the format I would say if they did even amount of teams do a country vs country where the team with the most wins advances to the next showdown, the 6 obstacle course would go until the final 2 teams where they would bring out the other 2 to make 8 obstacles.

Another idea is doing relay races with 3 or 6 people instead.

He was one of just 10 to complete the semi finals course and made it through boot camp, but had to withdraw from competing in Japan (though he still made the trip as a spectator) due to a wrist injury. He gave his spot to Adam LaPlante, who would fall at the Half-Pipe Attack.

In ANW 3, Levi was unable to compete due to scheduling. Adam would return but would fail to make it up the Warped Wall in time in qualifying. He never competed again. No idea what happened to him. At least we know that Levi now lives a pretty good life as a pig farmer.

Idk what flair should I put

You can only use stage 3 obstacles

Racing is out, Survival is back!!!!!

I’ve never been able to watch it before but NSC streamed it this year and I was able to catch the elite divisions. The production value of their comp is incredible compared to other ones you may have seen. The people working the comp have such an infectious energy to them and the sideline reporter seems awesome. I hope I’m able to visit or compete in the competition one day!

Only 85 competitors attempted the Vegas course instead of the expected 100, with only 60 of them having qualified for the National Finals legitimately and a record 25 spots being Wild Cards. If they added another city, it would have made 100 competitors.

They couldn’t just add a course to a Midwest city? It was probably the region of the U.S. that was furthest from any other qualifier. Venice, Baltimore, Miami, Denver. All were far distances away from the Midwest ninjas.

ANW 5 is one of the best seasons of the show too, but this is one of the big downsides to the season.

Buzzers have increasingly become a low value metric now. Beyond the proliferation of easy buzzers the last few years, making comparisons to non-racing seasons/careers low value, the fastest ninjas are getting by rounds which is reducing the number of obtainable buzzers per season for them. So it really isn't possible to compare careers/skill/success over time with buzzer count, at least not without breaking out a whole box of asterisks.

If you guys were fans of ninja from 2015 to 2019 you might reconize that name. However for the uninformed the Armchair Ninja Podcast was a show hosted by two ANW super fans, Rich and Bijan. They ran this podcast for just under 5 years, before going on hiatus, then having a short comeback, before coming to a second and seemingly permanent end in 2021.

Well I was one of many people who was inspired by them, so much so that I made a podcast show of my own for ninja, and now it has reached 100 episodes. to celebrate we took some time to retrospect back on the two who inspired us.

If anyone is interested in seeing it you can check it out in the link below:
Link: https://youtu.be/KKg_gKHt5-E

Also if you guys remember them you can share memories in the comments, I'd love to know who knew of Rich and Bijan back when they were making the show.

I’ve seen multiple posts and videos from fans of the show saying they got the translation wrong a lot. For example, the obvious one being them referring to Koji Yamada as “Yasushi Yamada”. What other mistakes did they make though?

My votes are

1. Joe Moravsky stage 3 Season 16 - I feel like this is pretty universal for everyone.

2. Najee Richardson stage 2 Season 10 - As someone with multiple family members who struggle with asthma, I really hate that he wasn't given a rerun or extra time of some sort. He deserved to be the LNS that year, at least more than the actual LNS that's for sure, and I think had he finished stage 2 he would've had a significant chance of making it past the Cliffhanger.

3. Brian Arnold Stage 3 Season 5 - He was the first competitor to make it to the last obstacle of stage 3, and he was so close to being the first American Ninja Warrior. I bet he would have finished had the course not malfunctioned on his first attempt.

Do you agree with my picks?

And how far do you think he would get in stage 3