Pembroke’s Addy Herman, winner of NBC’s American Ninja Warrior Women’s Championship in Season 16, is inspiring young people from the South Shore and around the world to dream big.
By Kelly Chase — Photography by Derrick Zellman
“I get super nervous, but I have learned to use the nerves to my advantage. I tell myself that I’m nervous because I care. Then I hear the countdown–three, two, one–and my mind almost shuts off and my body takes over.”
– Addy Herman
Standing on the platform at NBC’s American Ninja Warrior Season 16 in Las Vegas, Addy Herman found herself face-to-face with a three stage competition designed for top athletes to test their physical speed and agility. The crowd was cheering loudly and camera lights were shining bright. The moment was both nerve-wracking and thrilling for the 18-year-old Pembroke native, yet her face remained composed and focused. At the sound of the starting buzzer, Herman launched herself across the Salmon Ladder and up the Warped Wall with ease and precision.
“I get super nervous, but I have learned to use the nerves to my advantage. I tell myself that I’m nervous because I care. Then I hear the countdown–three, two, one–and my mind almost shuts off and my body takes over.”
Herman has competed in seasons 13, 14, 15, and 16 of American Ninja Warrior–a popular sports entertainment reality show that brings elite athletes from across the country together to compete head-to-head. In its 16th season, which aired in May of 2023, the South Shore teen won the entire competition, becoming the women’s champion. It was a moment that Herman had been dreaming of and working towards for a long time. “I started watching the show when I was 9 years old. I wanted to be on it, but it felt like a pipe dream,” says Herman. “Now I’m the women’s champion, which is just insane to think about.”
So, how does one become an American Ninja Warrior? For Herman, the inspiration to try the sport came at 11 years old, after a foot injury derailed her from doing gymnastics. “I couldn’t do gymnastics for six months, and over that time, I didn’t miss it,” she says. “I just realized that I didn’t have a passion for it and I wanted to try something else.”
Herman and her mother, Stacy Herman, used to tune into American Ninja Warrior each week like clockwork. When they discovered the ninja gym TA Fitness in Weymouth, located just 20 minutes away from their home, Herman decided to give it a try. “I started going there and I loved it immediately,” says Herman. “I wanted to go all the time, and then I started competing and I became really passionate about it.”
Eventually, Herman switched to Vitality Obstacle Fitness in Fall River, where she began training with other young athletes who aspired to compete on American Ninja Warrior. In order to make it onto the show, competitors must submit a video and are then invited by the producers to compete in the qualifying round. After the qualifying round, competitors move into the semifinals and then the finals. There are opportunities for cash prizes throughout the season, and there is the promise of a $1 million cash prize to the fastest warrior (however, only three competitors have won this in the show’s 16 seasons).
Competing in American Ninja Warrior requires a large time commitment. Traveling and filming takes a few weeks out of the year, and training is nonstop. For most of her education, Herman attended Samuel Fuller School in Middleborough, but for her final year of high school, she took online courses through Liberty University, so she could focus on ninja. She graduated in May of 2024. “I was worried about the social aspect of it, but then I started making all of these friends in ninja, going to competitions every weekend, and going on road trips with my friends in ninja, and I just kind of realized that this is where I want to spend my time,” says Herman.
Herman’s mom travels with her to competitions and filming, and the whole family flies in for the season finales. Herman has an older sister and two younger brothers. Both of her brothers are athletic and participate in the sport of ninja, but they have other passions as well. “One of my brothers is really into professional scootering, so we have a skate ramp in the backyard, and my other brother loves basketball and my dad coaches his team,” she says.
When Herman is at home on the South Shore, she trains on a custom-made 50 by 50-foot ninja course, which she, her father, Bob Herman, and a family friend built together. The course is so well-designed and challenging that other ninja warriors from across the country have come to train with Herman in her backyard. “There are a ton of obstacles on it that are on the show like the Warped Wall and the Salmon Ladder,” says Herman. “Obviously it’s hard to train here in the winter, but that’s where I train in the spring, summer and fall.”
On the surface, ninja may seem like an individual sport, but according to Herman it feels more like a team activity. Many of Herman’s closest friends compete and train alongside her and they work together to come up with different strategies for completing difficult obstacles. The sense of camaraderie became clear to Herman during a USA Ninja Association World Cup event. “I ended up winning, and afterwards, I ran over to my team on the sidelines and I remember being more happy to see how happy my team was than I was about winning,” says Herman. “To feel that support is something that everyone wants. At that moment I really felt so lucky to have my team and this sport.”
In the winter of 2024, Herman combined her love of ninja and physical fitness with a church mission trip coordinated by New Hope Initiative. She traveled to Sierra Leone in West Africa, where she and a team built a small ninja-inspired obstacle course at an orphanage. “For years, I had this dream of bringing ninja to other parts of the world that didn’t have access to it and sharing the joy that I discovered in ninja with others,” says Herman.
There were a few hiccups when it came to assembling the ninja rig—the wood was more warped than the team anticipated and everything had to be sanded by hand. “We were a little behind on our timeline, but we got it done,” says Herman. There were also some miscommunications at the beginning, but that was less important once the course was fully assembled. “I don’t speak Mende, so there was a language barrier in the beginning, but when I started showing them how to use the rig, language didn’t matter as much,” says Herman. “They were all really excited to try the course.”
On one of her final days in Africa, Herman watched as some of the children played on the obstacle course. One of the smaller children decided to try his luck on the cliffhanger–an iconic ninja warrior obstacle that consists of a series of narrow ledges that competitors traverse using their fingertips–but the child hesitated halfway through. “He stopped and started to drop and all of the kids ran over to cheer for him,” says Herman. “He ended up getting across and finishing it, and he was so happy. It made me want to cry because the support and encouragement all happened so naturally for them and that’s been my experience in ninja too.”
Herman is currently planning the next steps in her career. She is looking into public speaking opportunities and other avenues. In the meantime, she is still focused on ninja, as she trains for another season of American Ninja Warrior. She hopes to continue to spread the benefit of the sport of ninja here on the South Shore and abroad.
“I’ve learned so much from ninja that has translated into my life, which I think is so beneficial for everyone to get to experience as well,” she says. “The encouraging atmosphere of it and how people are there to support you, whether you are racing against them or not. I think the world needs more of that right now, and ninja is an amazing tool to help show how powerful that love and encouragement can be.”
Follow Addy Herman on Instagram @addyherman.116 and on her Youtube channel, youtube.com/@addyherman.