My journey to ninja...by Michelle Warnky Buurma

One of the most popular questions I get asked is how did I get into ninja?  Generally the follow-up question is how did MOVEMENT LAB OHIO get started.  To start off this blog, I am here to answer both questions!

I have always been active and competitive.  We joke that I always worked hard to keep up with my brother.  I loved playing everything growing up with our neighborhood kids- football, baseball, as well as hotbox, and homerun derby with tennis balls! We also ended up getting a basketball sport court in our backyard where my brother and dad destroyed me daily! My dad created different tournaments like knock-out and 21, and at the end of the summer, those that held records got Frostys from Wendy's :)  My brother always held the title of the most games won, because he played me all the time!

I always loved climbing, and I think around 2nd grade, my mom saw a newspaper article about a new climbing gym opening up called VERTICAL ADVENTURES! Her and I went to try it out, and I was instantly hooked!  We had been doing a monthly family activity of bowling, and we quickly shifted it to indoor Rock Climbing.  My brother and I would go with my parents each month, and I fell in love with it.  I competed at a few Vertical Adventures comps (there weren't teams or regular competitions like there are now) and also traveled to a couple other competitions around Ohio during my elementary school years.  As we got older and busier with cross country and track, I usually only had time to climb in the summer, but I kept at it.  It always took a few weeks out of the summer to get my calluses and upper body strength back to climbing level, but then I enjoyed climbing the rest of the summer.

I ended up going to college at University of the Cumberlands and ran cross country and track there, but every summer I'd come back and get some climbing in and had missed it so much.  After college I served overseas as an English teacher in Kazakhstan for 5 school years.  Many people have only heard of it due to a movie called Borat, which was actually filmed in Romania.  It is the 9th largest country in the world, and it's located south of Russia and west of China.  When I first heard about Kazakhstan, I went to look at a map and was shocked I knew nothing about it.  In Kazakhstan we walked all the time.  I lived in an apartment on the 6th floor and we always took the stairs.  It was about a half mile walk (or more) to the bus stop, another mile to the office where my Russian language classes were, a half mile to the school where we taught, another half mile or so to the bus stop at night, then another half mile walk or more to the apartment.  The 6 flights of stairs at the end of the day were rough sometimes! :)  While there I kept up my running some with a group of friends called "Physculturnicas" who loved to be active outside.  Together we ran a marathon together, went climbing and camping outdoors a few times, and did other active things.  I also helped teach and lead either baseball or football (in the snow) every Saturday with some of my fellow teachers.  We played with a group of students/former students in Kazakhstan every week.  Sometimes there were a lot of us, sometimes only a few, but we developed a strong bond during those times!  I actually just found out recently that 2 of the most dedicated guys that came 

I also tried something active with a friend that was very much out of my comfort zone.  I tried out belly dancing my second year there!  I really enjoy dancing, but only alone at home, or in a comfortable setting which is usually in a crowd or when no guys are around.  Thankfully it was all women in the class. The instructor was so impressively good that I was so focused on trying to recreate the movements, and I didn't get too embarrassed most of the time!  During my time in Kazakhstan, I was still way more muscular than almost any other female and people would comment on my arm muscles, but I had lost a lot of my upper body strength due to not using it much.  Every summer when I came back to the States, I would climb a little bit, but never had a lot of time to climb.

After 5 years in Kazakhstan, I very distinctly felt God telling me to come back to the States.  When I first came back, there were definitely many adjustment challenges of finding my new place in life, friends, what I should do with my life, etc.  I considered everything.  I love massages, so considered learning to be a masseuse.  I considered nursing, firefighting, and so much more.  I eventually called around about jobs and started out as a personal trainer at Urban Active, now L.A. Fitness.  I also got a job working as a server at Texas Roadhouse-yes their rolls are delicious!  As is all of their food!  The jobs were pretty much opposites-as a trainer I started around 5 or 5:30am, and worked till around 11am or noon.  Then I'd go home, prep workouts for the next day's clients, then head into work at Texas Roadhouse around 3:30/4pm and work till late.  I was running regularly and I started climbing again.  I started bringing some of my fellow servers from Roadhouse to Vertical Adventures to climb, and was getting a lot stronger.  But I was also burning the candle at both ends.  I started getting sick a lot more since I wasn't getting enough sleep, and needed to start crashing hard and taking a nap in the middle of the day.

During this period I tried out my first Obstacle Course Race (OCR) called the Warrior Dash.  I ran it with a climbing friend and a friend from college joined us too.  While we were walking to registration I remember one of them mentioning a TV show called "American Ninja Warrior".  They asked if I had ever heard of it and said they thought I would love it!  My college friend agreed and said someone from my college had also competed on the show.  It sounded cool, but I didn't think much of it.  We had a blast at the OCR race, and I won my heat for the women easily and didn't push too hard, but then I found out a female in another heat beat me by seconds for the overall top finish.  I already loved the race, but that lit a fire on me to wanting to race again with other top females!  In time I started going out to other OCR races like the Savage Race; Tough Mudder (and the Toughest Mudder 24 hr race, but that's a story for another time!); Spartan Races; Mud, Guts, and Glory; OCR World Championships; North American Championships and more!

I hadn't thought again about that show "Ninja Warrior" that my two friends had mentioned over the weekend, until one night the next week after a shift at Texas Roadhouse.  I was sitting at a table talking with some of my co-workers and eating, then I remember a friend coming up bright eyed and banging her hands on the table.  "Michelle!  Have you seen the show American Ninja Warrior?!  You would love it, you need to do it!"  She started telling me all about it and how she thought of me when she watched it.  My curiosity was finally peaked enough so that I went home to my parents' house later and looked it up with them.  It was love at first site.  I was watching it and it just