After weeks of exercise and dieting the tryouts finally came.
Saturday Feburary 9th was a brisk Arizona morning, my friend Jen Lampe and I woke up at 5:30am to drive to the American Gladiator tryouts in Chandler, Arizona. After a quick stop at Starbucks we arrived at the Pure Fitness location where the tryouts were to be held. Tryouts were to start at 10:00am but lining up was allowed two hours before. So we arrived around 7:30am thinking we would be early but we were wrong - dead wrong. There was a line almost around the building. We jumped into line a began our wait for our "big break". We met some really great people in line. We had an opportunity to really get to know them because we ended up waiting in line with them for almost seven hours. Yes, you read that right. We waited almost seven hours before we could even tryout. There were some many people there that it got crazy. I was number 181 and Jen was number 182.
Finally it was our turn to tryout......
The first thing they make you do was pull-ups. How many can you do in 30 seconds? It is amazing how many people can't do pull-ups. There were a lot of very in shape men there that couldn't do five pull-ups. Personally, I was able to do 22 but they only counted 19 because they said I didn't come all the way down on a couple. Liars!!!!!! Jen did two complete pull-ups. Which was good for girls.
The second thing they wanted us to do was up and downs. (up and downs are what you see football players do when they are standing up and they hit the ground, do a push up and jump back up to your feet) Here again was how many can you do in 30 seconds. Jen and I both scored really well on this.
Next was the shuttle run. This event is about speed, balance and fancy foot work. I started out a little rough on this one because I had never done this before. But after a few seconds think I did ok.
Finally we ended with suicides. A suicide is running from one end of a basketball court touch the floor and run back. (Back and forth equals one rep) We had to do ten reps as fast a we can. The lady who was judging me said that I was the fastest that she had seen all day - I wonder how many people she told that to.
They made us do all of the physical exercises back to back without a break to see how winded we would be for the interview process. So after the exercise portion we were rushed into an interview where they asked all sorts of questions. Why do we want to be on the show? What would I do if I won? What is special about you? blah blah blah... I have to be honest, I was winded. I was breathing heavy during my interview so I don't know how that looked to the judges.
They said we would receive a call if we made the cut. That call never came. There were hundreds of guys just like me so I didn't hold my breath. It was really a neat experience. I met a couple of the Gladiators "Wolf and Siren" and I can offically close the book on trying to get on a TV show!
Saturday Feburary 9th was a brisk Arizona morning, my friend Jen Lampe and I woke up at 5:30am to drive to the American Gladiator tryouts in Chandler, Arizona. After a quick stop at Starbucks we arrived at the Pure Fitness location where the tryouts were to be held. Tryouts were to start at 10:00am but lining up was allowed two hours before. So we arrived around 7:30am thinking we would be early but we were wrong - dead wrong. There was a line almost around the building. We jumped into line a began our wait for our "big break". We met some really great people in line. We had an opportunity to really get to know them because we ended up waiting in line with them for almost seven hours. Yes, you read that right. We waited almost seven hours before we could even tryout. There were some many people there that it got crazy. I was number 181 and Jen was number 182.
Finally it was our turn to tryout......
The first thing they make you do was pull-ups. How many can you do in 30 seconds? It is amazing how many people can't do pull-ups. There were a lot of very in shape men there that couldn't do five pull-ups. Personally, I was able to do 22 but they only counted 19 because they said I didn't come all the way down on a couple. Liars!!!!!! Jen did two complete pull-ups. Which was good for girls.
The second thing they wanted us to do was up and downs. (up and downs are what you see football players do when they are standing up and they hit the ground, do a push up and jump back up to your feet) Here again was how many can you do in 30 seconds. Jen and I both scored really well on this.
Next was the shuttle run. This event is about speed, balance and fancy foot work. I started out a little rough on this one because I had never done this before. But after a few seconds think I did ok.
Finally we ended with suicides. A suicide is running from one end of a basketball court touch the floor and run back. (Back and forth equals one rep) We had to do ten reps as fast a we can. The lady who was judging me said that I was the fastest that she had seen all day - I wonder how many people she told that to.
They made us do all of the physical exercises back to back without a break to see how winded we would be for the interview process. So after the exercise portion we were rushed into an interview where they asked all sorts of questions. Why do we want to be on the show? What would I do if I won? What is special about you? blah blah blah... I have to be honest, I was winded. I was breathing heavy during my interview so I don't know how that looked to the judges.
They said we would receive a call if we made the cut. That call never came. There were hundreds of guys just like me so I didn't hold my breath. It was really a neat experience. I met a couple of the Gladiators "Wolf and Siren" and I can offically close the book on trying to get on a TV show!
1 comment:
Siren was my PT for awhile, and I went to high school with her...cool girl. Actually trying out is about 100 times more effort than most people would give. Hope you get the call though.
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