Ninja warrior star comes to San Mateo

“I had already loved the sport and then rediscovered it and started trying to compete around the country,” Yorn said. 

Little by little, Yorn regained his strength and was a contestant on the TV show. On Saturday, March 22, he will compete at San Mateo’s Ninja Republic gym for the Ultimate Ninja Athlete Association Area Qualifier event. The event will host about 50 ninja warrior competitors from across the globe, ranging from young kids to adults in their 50s. 

“It’s an amazing sport because of the community. We’re all close friends and give each other tips, even though we’re technically competing against each other, but we’re also just competing against the course itself,” he said.

Regan Fletcher, owner of Ninja Republic, became involved in the sport as an adult, after undergoing emergency open heart surgery. 

“I was a typical Silicon Valley tech worker for 20 years. I had emergency open heart surgery six years ago, and as I recovered I realized I couldn’t keep doing cross-country flights to New York, which is what I was doing before,” said Fletcher, who has also been a lifelong athlete. “I took my kids to a ninja gym on the East Coast, and they loved it, and the owner shared her entire business model with me.”

The sport has grown more quickly on the East Coast and Midwest, which Fletcher said is likely attributable to high real estate costs in places like the Bay Area, as ninja gyms require ample space for courses, which may include swinging bars and ropes or rock climbing. 

The 7,000-square-foot Ninja Republic gym opened a little less than two years ago — in the former Kirkpatrick’s School of Dance — and is the only such gym from San Francisco down to San Jose. A couple gyms are located in Richmond and Corte Madera, but options are generally limited for ninja warrior competitors throughout Northern California. 

While obstacle course competitions are not new, ninja warrior competitions have evolved into their own sport category over the past 15 years, largely popularized by American Ninja Warrior which first aired in 2009. There are many similarities between the two, though the former has more predictable courses, Fletcher said.

“If you show up to an obstacle course race, you know in advance what those obstacles will be, and you can practice them in advance, but one of the unique things about the ninja warrior sport is that athletes cannot see the course before they are allowed to run.”

For the first time, obstacle course racing will be part of the pentathlon event in the 2028 Olympics, and Fletcher and Yorn said they’re optimistic ninja warrior will be its own sport by 2032. 

Yorn said the sport has not only helped him regain strength and athleticism, but it’s also allowed him to raise awareness for causes that are important to him.

“I’ve really seen how this sport has changed so many people’s lives, because of the community but also what it represents to a lot of people,” Yorn said. “People use American Ninja Warrior to advocate for different causes. I’ve been able to speak with senators trying to get more funding for Lyme disease, and a lot of people do similar things and use it as a platform.”