Fitness Training
Grit & Glory: Rancher Strong
Imagine a fitness competition that is part CrossFit, part American Ninja Warrior—and all country. If that sounds like a good time, then you’ll love a new event called Red Bull Rancher Strong.
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The Cowboy Ninja wears a black hat, brown work boots and blue jeans. Running through the soft dirt spread across the arena floor at the Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas, he leads a reporter through four obstacles being tested in the lead- up to a new, one-of-a-kind event called Red Bull Rancher Strong.
A fitness and agility challenge designed to celebrate and test the folks who produce our food, Rancher Strong is part American Ninja Warrior, part CrossFit Games—and all country. The inaugural Rancher Strong competition will be held at the historic Fort Worth Stockyards in June.
The mastermind of Rancher Strong, event director Lance Pekus, is a former college wrestler, wilderness guide and grass- fed-cattle rancher who gained acclaim as the Cowboy Ninja on 14 consecutive seasons of NBC’s popular obstacle-course racing show, AmericanNinjaWarrior.
Pekus, aka Cowboy Ninja, smiles during the test event.
© Chad Wadsworth
During the development of Rancher Strong, Pekus says, he wanted the course to “tell the story” of day-to-day life on a ranch or farm. “First you’ve got to load the grains sacks,” Pekus explains, shuttling four 50-pound bags to a single-axle trailer. “Then hitch the trailer to the truck.” Pekus is breathing heavier now as he drags the trailer through the dirt.
Next, he heaves two tractor tires over a towering corral fence. “But wait ... dad says, ‘We just need one tire!’” Pekus groans, throwing the extra tire back over. “There’s a problem in the pasture,” he yells, leaping across a series of wobbly stumps. “Take the short cut across the creek!”
Finally: “It’s time to bring in the bull.” He hops onto a Western saddle firmly mounted on a pedestal, grabs hold of a thick rope and pulls in a weight sled with a custom-welded bull’s head. After patting the bull’s head, Pekus dismounts the saddle and runs off the arena floor, leaving a plume of dust in his wake.
Watching Pekus’s trial run of the Rancher Strong course are five additional athletes, who’ve been tasked with beta-testing the obstacles: the event’s co-commentators, Amanda Nigg, founder of the fitness and nutrition platform Farm Fit Training, and Red Bull fitness athlete Noah Ohlsen; as well as fitness content creators Romeo Centeno, Kaitlyn Hoefling and Jalen Noble. The group looks at each other with apprehension and excitement: Who’s next?
Romeo Centeno, a Dallas-based creator, shoulders a load as the clock ticks.
© Chad Wadsworth
The creation of Rancher Strong tracks closely with Pekus’s own evolution as the Cowboy Ninja. As a three-sport athlete at Battle Ground High School in Washington state, Pekus earned a wrestling scholarship to the University of Great Falls in Montana. There he met his future wife, Heather, who played on the school’s basketball team. Heather’s family runs a cattle ranch in Salmon, Idaho. “She grew up on a horse and loves riding,” says Pekus of his wife. “And I got into ranching through her and her family.”
During their summer breaks, Lance and Heather would return to Idaho and help work her family’s ranch, nestled in an idyllic valley amongst the Salmon River Mountains. The rugged region is adjacent to the Frank Church—River of No Return Wilderness, the largest federal wilderness area in the U.S. outside of Alaska.
In that vast roadless area, Pekus began working for the Forest Service as a packer. “Leading six to seven animals and bringing mail and food to crews of college kids that were out there for months at a time.”
Heather recalls these early days with fondness. “When he began working on my parents’ ranch, Lance started wearing a cowboy hat,” she says. These days, Pekus mostly wears Jaxonbilt hats, made right in Salmon, Idaho.
Centeno looks in his element at the test event.
© Chad Wadsworth
Lance and Heather were still in college when Heather was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “We were doing a fun Fourth of July horse race where you ride double back. She swung up on the horse and her arm went numb,” Pekus recalls. Doctors eventually determined Heather had the neurological condition, but with medical treatment she is able to effectively manage the disease and live a mostly symptom-free life.
After graduating, the couple moved back to Heather’s family home in Salmon, where she began working as a high school counselor. Lance, who graduated with a degree in environmental science, continued leading expeditions into the wilderness.
Like many former collegiate athletes, Pekus says, “I was looking for something to keep me motivated to work out.” He tried a triathlon but flailed in the swimming leg. Then, in 2011, Pekus came across an obscure obstacle course race called American Ninja Warrior on cable TV. The contestants had to leap across pylons suspended above pools of water, fling themselves between a series of trapeze-style contraptions and scale an inverted wall.
Rancher Strong reflects Pekus’s own evolution as the Cowboy Ninja.
© Chad Wadsworth
He tried out for the show in 2012 but couldn’t make it up the “warp wall.” The next year, Pekus says, “was kind of my breakout year.” American Ninja Warrior had been picked up by NBC, and Pekus made it to the national finals. As he emerged as a fan favorite, the show played up his experience on the ranch. He competed shirtless, in work jeans and his trademark black cowboy hat. The Cowboy Ninja was born.
“In Hollywood, a black hat represents the bad guy,” Pekus says. “I like breaking stereotypes.”
Pekus won multiple qualifying and semifinal rounds of American Ninja Warrior and made the national finals seven consecutive times. He was invited to participate in spin-off series like Team Ninja Warrior and Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge. As an ambassador for the Idaho Beef Council and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Pekus also hosted his own obstacle course races, incorporating challenges from his life on the ranch.
But as Lance’s profile grew, Heather’s health began to decline. With two young children now at home, Heather and Lance had tried to keep her struggle with MS out of the public eye. In 2014, an American Ninja Warrior producer encouraged the couple to share their story, including the inspiration Lance drew from Heather’s strong, positive mentality. “The support from the community was overwhelming,” Pekus recalls. “I had my best season ever.”
Creator Kaitlyn Hoefling gets a taste of the event’s demands.
© Chad Wadsworth
Amanda Nigg is known as Farm Fit Momma on social media.
© Chad Wadsworth
Back at the Cowtown Coliseum, Pekus is discussing the Rancher Strong course layout with Amanda Nigg, who goes by Farm Fit Momma on social media. Though Nigg was able to lift the large tractor tire over the corral fence, she wonders if a smaller tire might better suit contestants during the earlier rounds of the Rancher Strong competition.
“Do you have a skid-steer tire?” Nigg asks. “That’d be perfect.”
Nigg’s family operates a fifth-generation farm in South Dakota. In consulting with Pekus on Rancher Strong, she says, she hopes “to highlight common misconceptions about the farming industry.” While growing produce demands long, tough days, Nigg says, “farming can also be sedentary.” Farmers often spend hours driving tractors and combines. And access to physical and mental health resources is often limited in rural areas. According to the National Rural Health Association, farmers are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population.
Pekus understands that the romanticized image of the isolated, small-town athlete drives his popularity on American Ninja Warrior. But he also knows that community and goal-directed events can motivate people to live healthier lives. In 2024, he trained for American Ninja Warrior with his local butcher and a game warden in Salmon, Idaho, and all three were ultimately invited to compete in the qualifiers for the show.
“We want Rancher Strong to reach and inspire people in rural communities,” Pekus says. It’s fitting, then, that Rancher Strong will debut at the Cowtown Coliseum in the Fort Worth Stockyards. Since the 1860s, the Stockyards has served as a point of congregation for people who live and work well beyond the urban centers. First, as a respite for cattle drives, prior to the long push north on the Chisholm Trail. Then, with the arrival of railroads in the 1900s, as a hub for the livestock industry.
Today, the Stockyards is primarily an entertainment district. Saloons, steak houses, dance halls and Western wear shops occupy the historic buildings that line the red-brick streets. The Cowtown Coliseum, built in 1907, held the first-ever indoor rodeo. Elvis Presley performed there on four different occasions, and President Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech in the arena in 1911. Nearly every Friday and Saturday, the Fort Worth Stockyards Championship Rodeo takes place at the Coliseum.
At the modern-day Stockyards, bull riders, ropers and two- steppers mingle with tourists and business travelers.
Pekus is a former college wrestler, wilderness guide and cattle rancher.
© Chad Wadsworth
Romeo Centeno, whose dad works at a Dallas-area rodeo, is the first to try a full run of the course. Wearing a straw hat and overalls, Centeno stumbles and drops the 50-pound sacks before reaching the trailer, but gathers himself and completes the scaled-down test course in under two minutes. “I don’t know if that was Rancher Strong, but it was good,” he says afterward as he cheers on his fellow participants.
Ohlsen, a self-described “city boy” from Miami, goes next. The 11-time CrossFit Games veteran is tested by the last obstacle, the Bull Pull. “The hardest part is squeezing the saddle,” he says, rubbing his legs. “Using that inner thigh muscle.”
During her run, Nigg is loading the trailer with the 50-pound sacks when it tips and dumps everything back on the arena floor. “Son of gun!” she shouts.
"We want Rancher Strong to inspire people in rural communities.”
© Chad Wadsworth
In a prelude to the live event, Pekus interviews the participants as they finish. Still gasping for air after completing the course, Hoefling, who played soccer and ran track in college, jokes, “You’re trying to ask me questions right now?”
“Right? I’m blacking out,” says Jalen Noble. The fastest of all the participants, Noble owns a small ranch outside of Austin and turned an old barn on the property into his home gym.
As the test event wraps, Ohlsen and Pekus’s wife, Heather, start to chat. She’s been watching the show from the arena’s edge, seated in a motorized wheelchair. She still works full-time as a school counselor, helping teens navigate tough moments. Despite her illness, Heather says, “I’ve been able to see my kids grow up.”
Pro fitness athlete Noah Ohlsen took at the Rancher Strong test event.
© Chad Wadsworth
The chance to create Rancher Strong came as Lance began contemplating his future as an athlete and competitor. Could he still be the Cowboy Ninja? Obstacle course racing is slated to debut in the 2028 Olympics as part of the modern pentathlon. And a new crop of Ninja Warriors are performing previously unimaginable feats of athleticism. “Well, three people recognized you just on the flight to Fort Worth,” Heather reminds him.
Large glass windows frame the walls of the Cowtown Coliseum. Heather looks out at the arena floor, bathed in afternoon light. “I understand there might be more obstacles during the actual event,” she says. On this April afternoon, Lance is finalizing the layout, but he knows competitors will enter the course by climbing down a steel pole, opening and closing weighted, cable-actuated gates or scaling a hay-bale mountain—evoking the sorts of challenges a person might encounter working on a ranch or farm.
Heather affirms this idea with a knowing nod. “There are always obstacles,” she says.
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