Lisa Campbell's Australian Ninja Warrior challenge

Be columnist Lisa Campbell is a mum of one son Leo, plus a younger set of twins, and she reckons her fitness isn't what it was. Here she explains why Ninja Warrior is her new motivation.

Like a millions across the country, I have been watching Australian Ninja Warrior over the last couple of nights. The contestants make it look so easy – but when they don’t complete the course, as many of them do not, all of us on the sofas at home become experts at where they went wrong.

‘They didn’t have enough momentum! You need MOMENTUM to swing from rope, to tyre, to net!’

I could not swing from anything to anything to anything.

I spent the first thirty years of my life pretty much sedentary. My sporting career consists of one engagement - I was in the swimming team when I was eight, came fourth in my first race, missed out on a medal, lost interest, recognising that this sport business was not for me. All that effort for no medal? Please. You don’t lose if you don’t take part. Sports mean two things – potential injury and being outdoors – and its cold and probably raining out there, so I don’t think I’ll bother (I am from England, which I am sure explains a great deal).

Over the next couple of decades, my body was nothing more than a way to transport my head. I didn’t even dance at parties. Dancing was too much exertion. I was far too busy drinking and smoking (I KNOW! Remember smoking? What happened to that?!).

Then after my first son was born, I changed my opinion. I can’t remember there being a specific moment. Maybe I had a subconsciously aware of my own mortality? Maybe I became more vain? Who knows? But it changed and now I am much more conscious of my health and fitness.

But please remember that I am just marginally more fit than I was, which was not fit at all. Pilates once a week and I occasionally go for a run and have a little go on those exercise areas in parks with all the bars and odd benches. I often have a sly go at a pull up, convinced that I MUST be able to do it as it looked so easy when Rocky does it in a montage. But all I could manage was to hang there until my arms burned and my fingers slipped off.

So I made a New Year’s Resolution; to learn to grip on to a bar above my head and to pull my body weight up - a single solitary pull up. It looked like a really useful thing to be able to do. Not day-to-day useful, but come-the-zombie-apocalypse useful.

It went the way of most of my resolutions.

Cut to June and I’d done nothing about it – then I saw the Australian Ninja Warrior ads and remembered my resolution I walked into a gym and signed up with a trainer. He asked me what I wanted to achieve – was there a specific event I was getting in shape for? Nope. I just need to be able to do a pull up and then I’m done.

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I am a few weeks in. I am getting better – I am still a long way off, but I am confident that I am going to get there before December.

Look it’s not much… I’m never going to be a Ninja Warrior. But being under this bar is a vast improvement to the ones I was under in my 20s.

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