When most people watch American Ninja Warrior on TV, they see the obstacle course for what it is: America’s craziest playground. Colleen McCormack doesn’t.
Instead, she sees it as a metaphor for life.
McCormack, a Plant City resident, knows it better than most. She’s preparing to compete on the show for a third consecutive season in mid-April when she’ll travel to a regional competition in Miami that will be televised nationally in May. There, as usual, she’ll aim to complete two goals: win the event and inspire viewers to chase their own dreams.
“I’m just a normal person,” she said. “I’ve been through some really rough things that most people don’t ever have to go through. Here I am, dreaming big, and you can do it.”
A longtime fitness enthusiast, McCormack was introduced to the show in 2014 and got hooked right away. She found inspiration in Kacy Catanzaro, who made history that year by becoming the first woman to climb the warped wall and complete city qualifying and finals courses.
“That opened the door for women to be like, ‘Wow, we can actually do this. Let’s do this,’” McCormack said.
McCormack completed the show’s application process and trained for eight months with the goal of appearing on the show in 2015. While the fitness portion seemed straightforward enough — you must prove you’re physically strong and able to compete — the producers also wanted some backstory in a three-minute video. She said they tend to look for both inspirational stories and “regular,” working-class folks.
She checks both boxes. When she’s not training, McCormack holds down two jobs as a server and a bartender, and much of her surplus income is devoted to saving for American Ninja Warrior events, training and maintaining a healthy diet. Aside from being inspired by Catanzaro’s 2014 runs, she’s endured several personal tragedies.
“In a nutshell, I lost my mother to MS when I was a teenager,” McCormack said. “When I was 27, my dad became permanently handicapped with a memory disorder due to alcoholism. I’ve certainly had my fair share of obstacles.”
For McCormack, overcoming the obstacles on the American Ninja Warrior course is just like overcoming the obstacles in her childhood and adult life. That keeps her motivated every time she sets foot on a course or even at her home gym, Evolution Dynamic Fitness in Valrico.
“The obstacles on the show represent overcoming obstacles in life, so that, paired with watching (Catanzaro) conquer this course, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m meant to do this.’”
Though she barely missed out on the 2015 TV tapings, even after waiting a week in the show’s walk-on line and getting a chance to run the course off-camera, McCormack persisted in the gyms and got the casting call for the show’s eighth season in 2016. She made it to that show’s second obstacle, got eliminated and vowed to come back.
In 2017, she did. But McCormack faced yet another obstacle before that TV appearance when, while training for the Team Ninja Warrior spin-off show, she tore the triceps tendon in her right arm off the bone. After a grueling, “humbling” four months of physical therapy, she resumed training and again got the casting call. But, perhaps because she missed so much training time while rehabbing her arm, she was once again eliminated at the second obstacle.
She’s spent the last nine months training at Evolution, where owner John Hambor has gone all-in to help out. Hambor updated the gym’s equipment to better suit McCormack’s training needs, adding things like a peg board, ledges, specialized monkey bar obstacles and more. Though McCormack’s training was the reason they were built or acquired, Hambor and the other gym members use them to put a unique spin on their own training.
This year, she said, she’s ready for anything the show will throw at her — especially that second obstacle, which does change each year. But whether she makes it to the second obstacle or the show’s national finals in Las Vegas, McCormack wants to show people that, no matter what obstacles life throws at you, you can persevere.
“Even adults need a reality check,” she said. “Don’t stop playing. Life gets hard, there’s adult problems that we have to deal with, but you can still have fun in the midst of it and be healthy and be happy.”