How American Ninja Warrior Jessie Graff Turned a Debilitating Injury Into the Accomplishment of a Lifetime

(cheering and clapping)

[Jessie] Ever since I was 12,

I wanted to be a superhero on TV.

[Male Speaker] (exhales) No hands!

We live in a culture that loves to celebrate

pushing through it, going to the limit, and I love that.

There's an endless amount of skills to learn and knowledge

to have and you just keep studying.

When I blew out my knee a couple years ago,

I was so in love with all my martial arts training

and freerunning and flipping.

Everything seemed to involve legs and I knew I needed

something to be passionate about, something to work towards.

I couldn't just do the mental part for 12 months

while I waited for my knee to heal.

I'd done Ninja Warrior once before.

It seemed fun.

Everyone seemed nice and I knew I was missing grip strength

and pull-up strength.

And so I was like, Just work on your pull-ups.

I started at six pull-ups and just every time I did them,

I tried to beat a record.

So, I got up to 14 and I was like, I feel pretty strong.

You know, I still couldn't walk yet but (laughs)

but I could do pull-ups.

When I was healthy and I could compete the next year,

I was just all in.

I was totally in love with it.

Doing things that I never thought I would be capable of,

it was so exciting and became such a huge part of my life

and it worked so well as a complement to being a stuntwoman.

When I bought this house,

this was gonna be a martial arts room.

We put up a little rock wall to train on

and then a peg board and started

hanging things from the ceiling and eventually,

we can almost play a full game of hot lava going laps

around the room, never touching the floor.

And eventually, we're gonna have truss,

so that everywhere is climbable.

I want the whole ceiling. (laughs)

The women literally do compete directly against the men

on the same course, same obstacles, same distances

of everything and rank among the men.

So much of it is mental, that if I pay more attention,

I can beat most of the guys.

The thing I apply to all of my workouts and all the skills

I work on is, yes, it feels impossible.

That's normal.

Good.

You're challenging yourself at the right rate.

Now, just keep working on it.

Find those baby steps, those drills,

and impossible becomes possible and then easy.

And you get to keep finding these new skills

that will feel impossible.