When’s the last time you played on a playground? Think about it. Can you remember the last time you actually played on a playground? Not just went down the slide with your child but actually played. Not surprisingly It was yesterday for me. I’m almost 40 and not many weeks go by where I don’t spend a little time on a playground. Why? Because I believe in two things: having fun and challenging our bodies. Social convention tells us that we should stop playing sometime in the teenage realm and then most of us never quite do so again. The biggest drawback to this is that we start losing our physical connection to movement, play and creativity. Playgrounds keep all this stimulated and are outside, easily accessible and available almost year round.

I started my reconnection process when I became a father. When I would put my son on the swings I would think, “that would be fun to do” but then life would go on and only the kids would go on swinging. Then one day I was on a walk during a lunch break and saw a park with a couple swings and I just went over and thought, “why not?” So I swung for a while and it was glorious. After a few minutes I decided to do something I hadn’t done in a long time: jump off the swings. As I floated through the air I thought, “oh I’m definitely doing this again!”

Fast forward a few years, add a few kids and the desire to be an American Ninja Warrior and you have the Playground Ninja.

I hope to use this as a platform for sharing my experience both in play and in training so that we can start inspiring a little bit more fun and some great ninja training!