Australian Ninja Warrior: Contestant Katie Williams’ intense training regimen

KATIE Williams is one of the fittest people you will ever meet. This how she trained for insanely tough obstacle course on Australian Ninja Warrior.

KATIE Williams is bloody strong. She can plank for four minutes and support her entire body weight hanging from a bar for five minutes.

If you follow her on Instagram - she has 30,000 followers - it’s impossible not to get lost in a trance while watching videos of her swinging from monkey bars, or upping her body’s lactic acid tolerance on an assault bike.

When she does a set of chin ups, dozens of tanned muscles pulsate wildly across her back.

Katie Williams on Australian Ninja Warrior

Williams, 23, is a machine. The former professional sprinter is one of the stars of Channel Nine’s new reality show Ninja Warrior, which premieres on Sunday night.

She’s one of the 5000 Australians who auditioned for the Aussie version of the popular American series and one of 250 selected to complete the challenging obstacle course on Sydney’s Cockatoo Island.

Ninja Warrior is famous for attracting the fittest athletes in the world. Only seven people worldwide have managed to complete the course in 20 years. In the Australian version, almost a third of all competitors are female, according to Nine.

The audition process included four, five-minute exercises. As well as the plank and dead-hang, there was five minutes of skipping and pull-up to push-ups. Williams completed them all.

Katie Williams on Australian Ninja Warrior

“It’s a hard application and I think that’s what sorts out the people who are just giving it a go from the people who are athletes,” Williams, from Sydney, told news.com.au.

“But training for Ninja Warrior is extremely difficult because you don’t know the course beforehand and what you’re going to face,” Williams said.

She trained at a special “Ninja gym” three days a week and did lots of rock climbing, because she needed her arms to be strong enough to support her body weight throughout the course.

“It’s crazy training. You can’t just go to a normal gym and train for Ninja Warrior,” Williams said.

“You have to have rock climbing walls and things that move, because you need forearm strength and cognitive ability to see where your next movement is.

“You have to have speed because in the course you might be running through obstacles or running over moving obstacles. I still did my hill sprints, running stairs, a lot of skipping, so I could get that fast feet action. At the gym you run up a vertical wall and that is the most challenging move.

“The biggest thing is working on your grip strength and endurance. You do it by doing dead hangs, rock climbing and monkey bars. Anything that involves hanging.

“You also need balance and co-ordination, so sometimes I went to the park and walked across those balance beams. You have to be extremely agile and light on your feet. like a gymnast, so I did lots of jumping.”

Aside from her regular sprint training, most of Williams’ preparation involved her upper body.

“Everything I did was purely body weight. I wasn’t doing any dead lifts or squats. I think I put on 3kg of muscles mostly in my arms, because so much of what I was doing was with my upper body. You have to be able to hold your body weight for several minutes,” she said.

“It’s bloody hard, because you’re using your forearms and they fatigue because they’re small. We all end up with big pop-eye forearms. I’ve got shocking calluses. My hands are all ripped apart.”

Williams didn’t change her diet too much during Ninja training, but she needed to eat more food to fuel her growing muscles.

“I upped my protein quite a lot and was taking BCAAs [branched chain amino ccids]. I was having BCAAs during the session and after, because during training I was getting so sore. That’s purely just from using your forearms so much,” she said.

“I have a different body now to during Ninja. I look back at photos now and I feel like I’ve slipped a bit, because I trained so hard.”

But Williams is human like the rest of us and says she’s not afraid to indulge when she wants to.

“My diet is not amazing. I would say I’m about 70-30 [70 per cent healthy, 30 per cent treats]. I love alcohol. I love chocolate. My philosophy in life is everything in moderation. For me it’s all about balance,” she said.

“If you go out and have cocktails that night, go for a walk in the morning. When your body needs a green smoothie, have one. When it needs an ice cream, have an ice cream. I go out all the time. I get invited to these events – as if I’m not going to go and have a champagne.

“If I’m going to have dessert I’m going to make sure I have an amazing dessert. I still drink, I still go out and go on holidays and blow out, and take it all off when I come back.”

The pressure on women to be thin is unhealthy, Williams believes, and hopes the show will help return the focus to overall health and fitness.

“There’s so much pressure on women to be a certain way and look a certain way. If I could use my time on the show in a positive way, I want my voice to be about life balance and enjoying everything in life,” she said.

KATIE’S NINJA DIET

Breakfast: Protein oats with banana and berries, or an egg omelet with vegetables or a green smoothie bowl with muesli and nuts.

Lunch: Salmon and vegetables, or vegetable soup or rice paper rolls

Dinner: Chicken and sweet potato nachos. “My boyfriend makes it with chicken breast and roasts sweet potatoes as the chips. We do that a lot and mix beans with it,” Williams said.

Ninja Warrior airs Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights at 7pm on Nine.