Cody Rhodes Shows Off His Arrow Training on the Salmon Ladder

If Arrow contributes only one thing to popular culture during its run on The CW, that will likely be the popularization of the salmon ladder as part of Oliver’s training and exercise montages.

The exercise, in which you use core strength and momentum to move a bar up a series of vertical niches, isn’t new to Arrow; it’s been seen on shows like Sasuke and American Ninja Warrior, but Arrow has used it to effect as a training tool and also as an opportunity to show off Stephen Amell’s shirtless beach bod for years.

Now, guest star (and apparent Amell foe) Cody Rhodes is getting in on the fun, having posted a video to social media declaring himself “The Captain” (Amell’s self-given nickname) and showing off his skills on the salmon ladder.

You can check it out below.

When Rhodes’ casting was announced, fans generally assumed that he would play a villain-of-the-week considering his heel tendency in the WWE and his previous relationship with Amell, but they didn’t say anything about the character Rhodes would actually be coming to Star City to play.

Back when Cody Rhodes was known as WWE Superstar Stardust, his supervillain schtick attracted the attention of Stephen Amell, the star of The CW’s Arrow. The two fought in a highly-publicized WWE bout last year, with Amell coming out ahead.

The match was the culmination of weeks of trash-talk and back-and-forth between the two, starting on social media and spilling over into the WWE telecasts.

While it’s not clear yet who Rhodes will play, the odds are good that he will be a DC Comics supervillain. After all, it seems unlikely they would waste Rhodes’s build on a white-collar criminal, and Arrow in recent years has tended toward bringing in DC villains when they have a physical threat they want to pose to Oliver.

Arrow returns in October for a new season which will bring, among others, DC Comics supeheroes Vigilante and Wild Dog to the small screen for the first time in live action. The series is currently in production, along with The Flash, Supergirl, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, in Vancouver.