Nightwing Hero Training

Nightwing is flipping onto the scene!

We’re gonna shine the spotlight on Dick Grayson! We’ll be going over the former Robin’s physical abilities, & his build. Then we’re going to talk about what routine you could follow in real life to get as close to him as possible.

Don’t care who the routine is based on? You just want it? Well, here you go! Be mindful that this routine is best suited for intermediates & advanced trainees. Nightwing Training

Instructions on how to save the routine are included inside! This should last you 8 weeks.

Who Is Nightwing?

Robin’s Training

Richard Grayson, aka Nightwing, trained under the one and only Batman. With that training, Nightwing became one of the best combatants in the DC universe however, before being taken under Batman’s cape Dick already was a one-of-a-kind athlete. 

He worked with his family as a trapeze artist, and at only 12 years old, he was one of four people in the world who were capable of doing a quadruple flip. So let’s get into the nitty-gritty of what he’s capable of and see what we can take from that.

It’s difficult to talk about Nightwing’s build because different artists have different interpretations. But we’re gonna do it anyway.

Nightwing typically is anywhere from 5’10-6ft tall, and 175 lbs, depending on who is writing him.

In general, Nightwing has a muscular build, with a low amount of body fat. As far as comics go, he’s typically drawn smaller than Batman.

In some cases, Nightwing’s build is entirely attainable. As seen here. 

In others, he’s a hulk of a man who belongs on a bodybuilding stage. Most of the time, when this is the case, it’s when he’s wearing the Batsuit.

Athletic Ability: 

Nightwing is capable of many feats that in our world, would be considered superhuman.

With his insane speed and agility, he’s able to move fast enough to dodge a lot, and I do mean a lot, of bullets.

He’s able to fight multiple opponents at once. He’s accurately able to throw weapons while he’s in mid-air. 

We see him using parkour to bounce from multi-story buildings to get to ground level as if it were a simple staircase.

Combat Training:

His combat resume is ridiculous. Nightwing is a master of many different fighting styles, but we're going to focus on his main choices. He’s consistently shown using Escrima to beat enemies into the ground. He kicks a LOT. Some sources seem to attribute this to Savate, a French kickboxing martial art. But in my opinion, most of his kicks look like taekwondo to me. Simply put,  if it’s flashy and involves jumping, he probably does it. He likes to fight with flash and finesse. However, he’s not opposed to a brutal beatdown if he’s in the mood for it.

The Routine:

Let’s see how we can transfer some of the skills that Nightwing has to real life.

 Nightwing has a gymnastics background. You could start gymnastics when you are 5 years old, and you'll be pretty solid by the time you are in your twenties. If you don't have a time machine then that’s not an option for you. If you can find an adult gymnastics class that's going to put you on the fast track to developing this skill set. Add in a martial art and you’ll be 80% of the way there. 

If you have to learn these things yourself, your best bet is going to be training with calisthenics, preferably with an emphasis on gymnastics rings. As for finding a martial art, Taekwondo matches Dick’s fighting style very well, though Kickboxing with some Judo on the side would also work. To simplify things, I’m going to use MMA as a placeholder for whatever martial art we actually end up choosing.

Along with strength training, and martial arts, you’re going to want to look into something called Tricking. Simply put, tricking can be thought of as a mix of taekwondo and gymnastics tied together in a loose style. This loose style allows for a unique expression of your individuality.

So what workout routine do I think you could do to recreate Nightwing’s style?

I’d suggest that we go with a Push, Pull, Legs routine. I picked this split for a few different reasons. Other splits would call for fewer training days, but I believe that those training sessions may take too long to complete and could lead to a level of soreness that may impact the other skills.

I feel that PPL allows for quicker sessions, and focuses the soreness and fatigue in specific areas that we can then work around. 

However, I’d schedule it as,  Legs, Push, Pull, rest.

Here is my proposed schedule:

There is a lot going on here. To fairly match up with what Nightwing would do, we have to cram a lot of training into a week. It’s almost like you have to be a billionaire with a lot of free time to complete something like this. However, I do believe this is a solid routine that most people could run if they had the time. To make this work, you’re going to want to pick your priority.

For example, if tricking is the priority, then we want to make sure that the effort we put into the gym is on the lower end. We’d also make sure that our MMA training is only twice a week, and that it mostly consists of technical training. This would allow us to have longer tricking sessions.

Now maybe we will keep tricking as our main priority for 8 weeks. After making significant progress, we can change our priority to MMA. We’re still keeping our gym training relatively easy, but now we’re also dialing back the time spent tricking. This will allow us to either go harder at MMA, add in that third MMA day, or both. And so forth and so on.

That’s a very rough idea of how to periodize something like this. Of course, we’d also be mindful of things like keeping our martial arts training focused on punches, if they fall on a leg day. That’s how we can work around soreness as well.

Thinking of Nightwing, with his gymnast background may cause us to believe that this will be a pure bodyweight-only routine. That’s not the case. The routine absolutely includes weights.

Nightwing does use weights for certain exercises, like his biceps and legs. This is in line with how actual gymnasts train. It’s a misconception that gymnasts train exclusively with bodyweight exercises. Why would you leave such a good training tool on the table just to be a purist who performs worse than someone who uses all of the tools available? 

You can also see that I've included jogging two maybe three times a week. This is heavily dependent on what you want to do.

If your MMA class is heavy on cardio, then you may not need the third day of jogging. If you allow your martial arts class to make up some of your cardio training, and if you allow some of that sparring to make up some of your cardio training, and if cardio isn't the most important thing to you, then you can get away with jogging twice a week. 

Here’s the Nightwing Training routine! Be mindful that this routine is best suited for intermediates & advanced trainees. You can expect this routine to last you about 8 weeks.