Meet Medford's Own 'Ninja Warrior'

Few, if any, real ninjas reside in Medford (or maybe that’s just what they allow us to believe).

However, the city can boast of at least one citizen capable of matching those notorious assassins’ athletic prowess.

That’s Phil Lambrukos, a 26-year-old auto mechanic, who has spent the better part of the last 15 months bounding around like a modestly-dressed Spider-Man, training for his mission to appear on “American Ninja Warrior” - the NBC version of the long-running Japanese obstacle course competition.

Patch caught up with Lambrukos, who’s waiting to hear if he’ll be picked to join 100 others in the regional tournament in Pittsburgh this upcoming May.

Give us the CliffsNotes of your life story.

Alright, well, I’ve lived in Medford for the last 21 years. I was never an athletic kid. I work as a mechanic at a dealership up in Peabody.

My father passed away about a year and a half ago, and I was looking for something to get my mind off of everything with that. It just so happened that my brother-in-law’s brother-in-law [Robert Logan Sr.] competed on “Ninja Warrior” the last two years in a row, and he was at my house for Thanksgiving. He was like, “I have an obstacle course in my backyard. Why don’t you come over and give it a shot?” And I’ve been training for the last year and three months now.

Wait, you weren’t an athletic kid? Watching your videos, I figured you did wrestling or martial arts or something….

Yeah, the last time I participated in any type of athletic sport was little league baseball. Since then I’ve mostly just focused on being a mechanic. I’ve never taken any gymnastics or any martial arts or anything like that.

Is the American version of “Ninja Warrior” much different from the Japanese version?

The obstacles are the same, as far as difficulty. The American version of the show is a little….Overproduced, I think I’d call it. In Japan, the show’s very bare bones. It’s “Here’re the obstacles, here’s somebody running it, here’s 10 seconds about their life.” Whereas the one produced by NBC gives a little more backstory to the competitors and you don’t see as much competition. It’s more sports entertainment in America, as opposed to more of an actual sport in Japan.

If you get picked, are there certain obstacles you envision giving you trouble? Or maybe obstacles you know you’d excel at?

The biggest thing I have as an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on which obstacle I’m on, would be my height. I’m 6-foot-4 and weigh about 200 pounds, give or take a couple of pounds depending on how well I’ve been training. Most of the competitors are significantly shorter than I am. The people who make it the furthest are usually somewhere in the 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-10 range. At the same time, my height and my reach give me a lot of advantages that shorter guys don’t necessary have.

Purely in terms of statistics, what do you think your chances are for getting chosen?

It’s hard to say, because they call about 100 people per region, so in essence, that’s 500 people, and I’m sure 10,000 to 20,000 people applied. I think the last figure I heard was, in 2014, they expected 15,000 people to submit videos for the show, and I’m sure it’s gone up since then. Last year was a big year for them. They had a female competitor- Kacy Catanzaro - actually make it to the end of the course. She’s been on “Good Morning America,” and she really brought it to the mainstream.

But the big thing about it coming to the mainstream....There are people who tryout, but aren’t training specifically for “Ninja Warrior.” They’re just like, “Oh, I want to try that.” Some people don’t like that, because if they’re training seriously and specifically for the show, they might get overlooked because somebody with a more interesting life story gets picked.

You’ve said you want to be on ”Ninja Warrior” to make your parents proud, but, I mean, you could do the same thing with a cake-building contest or by joining the Peace Corps or anything, really. Why “Ninja Warrior?”

I think the biggest thing for me is, watching the show...There’s always an element of, “I wish I could try that.” And I’m 26, but I joke and say, “I’m just a big 5-year-old,” ‘cause when I’m training, it doesn’t feel like I’m working out. I just feel like I’m a kid playing on a playground, except it’s just super-sized. I remember being a kid and getting across the monkey bars. That was fun. So doing an obstacle course that’s modeled after the one on “Ninja Warrior” brings me back to that, and makes me feel like a kid again. This is one thing that’s really gotten my gears turning and made me an overall happier dude.