American Ninja Warrior: American Ninja Warrior Season 14
August 31, 2022 5:31 AM - Season 14 (Full Season) - Subscribe

ANW season 14 wrapped up Monday night. Is anybody else watching?

My thoughts.

The kids are really taking over the show.
They are probably going to up the difficulty level of stages 2 and 3 next year.
I'd like to see some really hairy balance obstacles added to the courses. Given how often people fall on the balance challenges in the early stages adding more would up the challenge level without disadvantaging women by leaning more into the upper body strength requirements.
posted by COD (4 comments total)
 
The kids are really taking over the show.

After watching Ninja Warrior Jr. with my kid it's fun to see contestants show up on the big show and do so well. I've heard complaints online about having too many teens but it mostly comes across as sour grapes. But I also didn't watch the qualifiers or most of the background montages so maybe I just missed all the unqualified kids.

I'm ok with the difficulty of the final stage but a rope climb is boring TV. With one or two people you can hype up the money or the accomplishment. With five people the shine wears off fast.
posted by Gary at 4:16 PM on August 31, 2022


I watch a few rounds occasionally. It looks like it'd be fun to try, if I was.. well... strong.
posted by sammyo at 8:49 PM on August 31, 2022


I'd like to see some really hairy balance obstacles added to the courses. Given how often people fall on the balance challenges in the early stages adding more would up the challenge level without disadvantaging women by leaning more into the upper body strength requirements.

I think about that a lot too. They go out of their way to try and get more women farther along in the season simply by saying well, women don't really have to finish stage 1, we'll just take the top finishers no matter how far they get. I don't see why they don't try to adjust the imbalance by making more balance obstacles that would challenge men in different ways, instead of everything being variations on hanging grip strength. If you want a more gender balanced group of finalists, make the obstacles more gender balanced in the type of challenge they pose.
posted by dnash at 9:17 AM on September 5, 2022


make the obstacles more gender balanced in the type of challenge they pose

We've been fussing about this in our house for a few seasons now (they do actually build obstacles from fan designs, so this is a fixable problem, conceivably). Not just more/better balance obstacles, but maybe some that focus on lower body strength, where women can be more competitive, too?

I don't mind the young competitors, as long as the spirit of competition stays athletes vs. course, rather than each other. Also noticed this season: use of the word 'lache' (from parkour). Matt and Akbar, to my recollection, never used the term until it came up through some Ninja Warrior Jr. competitors recently, and now they say it all the time.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:29 AM on September 5, 2022


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