The Rec Miler Club held it’s first Ninja Warrior event Jan. 27 at State Gym with a surprising steady early turn out.

Within the first half hour, close to 30 participants had signed up and were halfway done with completing the five-obstacle course.

The Ninja Warrior event is based off of a NBC show, “American Ninja Warrior.” On the show, contestants compete by tackling multiple obstacles, moving on to different stages of difficulty as they finish each series of challenges.

For the event, the Rec Miler Club set up five different obstacles that led contestants across State Gym. Luke Lewarne, senior in advertising, personal trainer for rec services & a designer of the Ninja Warrior stations, broke down the obstacles the participants completed.

“First, is the boulder climb, then we send them up to the bicycles where they bike a mile with the resistance of five, next they go to the track and complete 10 pushups, sprint a lap, 10 body squats, and sprint another lap. After the second lap their timer stops,” LeWarne said.

From there, the competitors are moved to the fitness suite where they complete 10 burpees, 30 jump ropes and a minute plank. The final task was to complete four sets of different stair climbs.

“After they’ve completed everything they come back to the sign-in desk and can add on another half a mile by eating a piece of fruit,” said Lewarne.

The Rec Miler Club is a program that has been at Iowa State for several years and its number one goal is to encourage students to live healthy lifestyles.

Any student can be a member of the program by simply logging in with their Net-ID and password. Once you’re a member, participants are responsible for keeping track of their own healthy activity.

The website allows participants to chart their activity and see where they stand in accomplishing their own milestones.

Jennifer Pollard, recreation services communications specialist, discussed what her team is working on to improve the Rec Miler Club.

“This semester we’re going to be taking a closer look at the program,” Pollard said. “We’re going to look for ways to revamp it, so we’ll be looking for a lot of student feedback.”

The Rec Miler Club is not necessarily known for holding events like Ninja Warrior, but after seeing the number of students participating they plan to hold more in the future.

“This event was planned to try to raise awareness about the club and to get people to sign up,” Pollard said. “We may be doing a lot more events like this in the future because we’ve had a great turn out and people are really excited about it.”

Students may think that logging in a mile or two means you’d physically have to run or bike that distance for it to count, but Pollard explains that it’s much simpler than that.

“Any activity really counts,” Pollard said. “If you play basketball for an hour, it counts as three miles or if you eat a piece of fruit, that counts as half a mile. It’s really just about developing a healthy routine and being on your feet.”