The Urban Ninja

What would an urban ninja be like? I have, like most of you watched old movies where we find ninjas in black, being great spies and great warriors. Of course this is the popular version of ninjas.

If we look at the historical ninjas we often learn they were normal “farmers”, finding efficient ways to fight for their rights. I wouldn’t be surprised if they used Sun Tzu’s principle from “The Art of War”. For those unfamiliar with Sun Tzu; he was a general back in old china creating a philosophy for warfare; which is still practiced today. His principles are applied both in business, poker, management, warfare and several other areas today. Anyway; the ninjas seems to have used similar methods as spying (information gathering) and efficient guerrilla warfare. Many seem to think ninjas were great in combat, and loved to fight. It is true ninjas were efficient fighters, and knew how to disable someone from fighting them quickly. But they would easily be outnumbered and destroyed (killed?) by the enemy if they fought large open battles; hence they used information and small battles to achieve their objectives. It is only in movies one person can beat the crap out of ten or more enemies alone. In reality it is impossible to win battles unless you utilize information and strategies to win smaller fights.
I have assembled some thoughts what I think a modern, urban ninja would have to learn. My thoughts quickly became; ohh boy; it was easy back then! Of course it is not true as the historical ninja were risking their own life, while today we don’t use martial arts and knowledge for survival today. The main skills I concluded a modern ninja would need to possess are: running skills (endurance and speed), climbing, martial arts, computer skills, technological knowledge and magic/illusion. I will get to each of them in some more details.

To achieve great running skills, the urban ninja, would most likely have to exercise 3-4 days a week. And don’t misunderstand me; I do not encourage to be jogging 30-60 minutes each of the exercises, just to be jogging. But you have to be serious about it as well; and it’s really not so much, if you spend about 30-60 minutes in each of the exercises you will only be using 2-4 hours each week running. I think to achieve both speed and endurance you will have to find great exercise schedules for 5k or 10k running. Great schedules will give you a variation of running including normal jogging, and include exercises as interval, fartslek (Swedish “running game” used by runners) and hill running (great way to exercise the stomach muscles as well) to improve our speed work. Most of these exercises can be completed within 30 minutes, as we are not trying to run as much as possible, but to exercise efficient while we are exercising. I would only recommend using one day for running a bit longer (8-10k) to improve the endurance. When
you are getting comfortable with your speed and endurance you might look for people or clubs in the local area having free running or parkour. Either of them includes more “fun” while running, as your goal will be to focus on passing obstacles/objects as efficient as possible.

Most places have local clubs doing mountain or wall climbing, you don’t have to master it perfectly, so 1-2 exercises each week is enough. You are only there to learn to climb and use your arms/body efficient while climbing. Remember to practice in safe environments with safety equipment. Our goal is not to climb Mount Everest alone.

A good exercise to become a urban ninja might to running in the darkness of the night from point A to point B (maybe some location you found close by with Google Earth) and leave a yellow note it on the target (point B), and run home again (point A). The secret would of course be to stay in the shadows, and unnoticed by other people (and security cameras of course). It might help to walk the path in day light first to learn where you find security cameras and so on (do not break in any place; this is only about public video cameras that might be placed in the city)

If you already know martial arts you can continue to improve your skills, as all martial arts will train you in self defence. Yes; we are only using martial arts for self defence; we are no actively looking for any fights to improve our skills. If you ever need martial arts I would recommend to disable the attacker as quickly and possible and run to safety. If it’s serious you might have to call the police for assistance or reporting a criminal activity. Do never start a fight, or fight for fun.

If you have never practiced martial arts I would recommend to learn efficient fighting as kick boxing, krav maga or similar. The reason is simple; the urban ninja should not waste all their time to become a martial arts hero; you are only to acquire skills to defend yourself in situation where there is no option but fighting. Karate, taekwondo and many of the other fighting skills focus much of their training to style, and repeating actions, while kick boxing focus most of the time to actually learn fighting. Of course you can learn karate or other sports if you wish to learn some specific martial arts, but for most people it’s enough learning kick boxing (at least less time to learn fighting, less time to practice being fancy).

In these modern days there is not much use spying on people. Most of our personal information, information about others, and locations are most easily gathered through computers and internet. You can practice simple skills as internet searches to find information about a particular person, maybe getting his address, email and phone number. If you gather information about locations, as an address you might use this information with Google earth to learn even more.

The urban ninja need to master computers and technology.

I would also recommend you learn some Linux skills. I know most of you probably use MS Windows or Mac OSX. And that’s fine; you can keep using your favourite operating system (OS). I still would recommend you to install a dual boot system where you use both your proffered OS and Linux. To be honest; I find Linux offering great software, and I find MS Windows offering great, and using bit of both systems helps me to do most tasks without having to buy expensive solutions for everything I do.

Anyway; the main thought behind installing a dual boot system is to understand hard drive partitioning, and encrypting/decrypting partitions, so you are able to secure your personal data. I still haven’t found any great solution to help me encrypt partitions and secure files in MS Windows for free, and I prefer securing personal or work related files. I am sorry if this got a bit too technical, a partitioning a hard drive is to divide the hard drive space to separate “areas” (one area for windows, one for Linux, and one for securing files). Encryption is to make readable unreadable unless you have the key to unlock the data. Decryption is of course to make unreadable data readable again, using your key.

While you are learning to use Linux I would recommend learning and understanding (practice) basic administrative tasks as creating and deleting users, creating groups and sharing files. It might also be notable to learn to read some log files, in particular logs reporting security flaws and attempts of intrusion to your system. You might try learning to run server/client as ftp server client/server locally, or setting up an http server, and reading logs of yourself accessing the server through client software.

I know much of these Linux skills sound nerdy; but it is a fact that few people understand how client/server software communicate. They also have little or no experience securing person or company data. I am sure if I found a hard drive belonging to a company I would most likely be able to read most of the data, and if they deleted it I would most likely be able to restore some of the files. You should not be a victim of others finding your personal data.

If you are a really hardcore geek (Like me? but again; I wouldn't have played with these things if it wasn't a part of my education), you might also find it interesting to learn electronics and microprocessors. You can easily make a simple alarm system using a PIC microcontroller, combined with some external electronics (IR sensor and stuff). Do not try this unless you know computers and some basic electronics; it’s fun, but difficult to work with assembly language and soldering electronics.

The magicians/illusionist is not only trained in performing a trick, but to understand and use human psychology to their advantage. To successfully make someone believe you are using real “magic” you have to understand how to take away their attention from your cheating and only see your result. It requires you to know how people are looking at you, where they are looking, and if you are able to shield your secret performance.

It might sound stupid to lean magic; but it might bring you a lot of fun too. You can use simple card or coin magic to amaze children, or you can use Kevin James’ floating rose to charm a lady (maybe boys could be charmed by girls too). I am sure some of you remember how David Copperfield put fire to napkin rose and suddenly had a live rose to give the female spectator.

You should also keep in mind to understand magic might not only help you deceive others when needed, but it will also make you more aware of pocket picketing. They make use principals of magic/illusions in their performance of theft.


The best way of learning magic is to get DVD’s or books, and lots of practicing with children, friends or girlfriend/boyfriend.

The slight of hand is important to be a successful urban ninja.

As ninjas are highly efficient it might be wise to study the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule saying 20% of the effort is creating the result. How to remove the 80% waste of your time might be worth learning to make yourself more efficient. I would maybe recommend learning project management methodologies and try to plan desire result, and monitor your own execution of tasks to remove waste of time.

Enjoy your pursuit of becoming an urban ninja!