Ninja Warrior Gym Opens New Location Amid Pandemic Struggles

Danvers, MA — American Ninja Warrior — the popular show where athletes test their ability to conquer a variety of obstacles within a certain time limit — has spawned a number of gyms where people can test their mettle on a Ninja Warrior course. Gymja Warrior, inspired by the show, first opened its doors seven years ago.

Joshua Rudin — who had become friendly with its then-owner — purchased the gym in 2017.

“My wife and I were always very interested in helping unhealthy kids get in shape,” Rudin said. “We were looking for ways to do it when we found Gymja Warrior.”

Coming in, Rudin cleaned up processes and set his sights on expansion, recently opening a new location in Maynard.

“After a long Covid break and mostly Covid delays, we had our grand opening weekend July 24 and July 25 and it was huge,” Rudin said. “It was nice to see. We’re doing a lot of finishing touches on here which we’re going to be doing for the next number of months.”

When Rudin first heard the early rumblings of COVID-19, he met with his staff and decided to proactively close the gym several days before state-wide lockdowns were initiated.

“Mid-March, we shut the doors like every other business in the state,” Rudin said. “What it looked like was my coaches went on unemployment, and I spent the next month-and-a-half refunding birthday parties.”

Gymja Warrior is built around a few major revenue streams — largely classes and birthday parties.

“We all thought in April, we’re opening up again. When April came and it was clear nothing was getting better, we ended up doing a lot of party refunds, membership refunds,” Rudin said. “That was the first big wave of COVID. In early June, we regrouped.”

Still with a number of annual members that had chosen to remain with Gymja, Rudin started doing a limited quantity of virtual classes for those members — heavily scaled down from what a class in-person used to look like.

“It was things you could do in your living room. Get the sofa, get a chair, and we’re going to do some stuff,” Rudin said. “It kept a lot of the kids engaged. That lasted for a couple of weeks, and then at the end of June, they opened up indoor sports. We were able to open up with limited functionality at the end of June.”

At that point, just a few months into the pandemic, classes and summer camps started up again. Taking advantage of the PPP offers, Rudin was able to bring his employees back to work.

“Since COVID started, no one had any avenue for exercise. Schools were shut down, everyone was remote. Even when they opened last year, there was no gym class — our program was one of the only things people could come to,” Rudin said. “That helped us really re-engage a lot of the members; it brought a lot of them back.”

Part of coming back for Rudin meant pivoting to the unique challenges posed by Covid. He changed the way Gymja Warrior did birthday parties, shifting them to be more of an open gym while also changing the parameters of open gym sessions.

“We had reduced sessions and added 30-minute breaks between sessions,” Rudin said. “That 30-minute break, we sanitized the gym. We washed it all down in between sessions.”

Birthday parties received a similar restructuring, allowing plenty of time between parties for the gym to be sanitized and aired out.

“This summer, we’re running in this temporary norm,” Rudin said. “When the summer started, the COVID was doing much better than it is now. After the state announced that we’re following CDC guidelines, we said we’re following state guidelines.”

And despite extreme shortages of materials, restrictions in class sizes and policy challenges, Gymja Warrior is beginning to make its recovery.

“I think we are making a recovery,” Rudin said. “There’s been a lot of support from our member community for the programs, especially with dramatically reduced activities for kids to do — they needed an outlet. Things are certainly slow — summer camp this summer is slower than it was last summer — I would say we are stable right now. We’re not sinking; we’re stable.”

“We’re making it work,” Rudin added. “Everyone is happy to be back. And what’s great about our community is most of our members have really been supportive.”

Despite concerns about the Delta variant and what might happen if the variant gets bad enough to necessitate another lockdown, Rudin remains optimistic about the future.

“The fact that we are stable and hopefully coming into another school year where things pick up a bit is a testament to the staff and to the members that have stuck with us,” Rudin said. “I would call us a pre-success story, coming out of COVID.”