#’The Titan Games’: Hannah Teter on The Rock Recruiting Her for Season 2

Preview Art Streiber/NBC

Extreme sports competition The Titan Games has upped the ante with its fun Season 2 twist: After a pair of super-fit contestants go head-to-head in a series of brutal physical tests, the victor must run the obstacle course known as Mount Olympus against a professional athlete to claim the Titan title.

In the July 13 episode, kicking off the East division, that pro is Olympic gold-medal snowboarder Hannah Teter, who admits she was “intimidated” when exec producer Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson came calling.

“I’d seen the show and it’s on another level. The girls are buff, huge mega-monsters. I thought, ‘Can I even handle this?'” she says. “It was crunch time.”

Her legs were in shape from snowboarding, so she focused on building upper-body strength (the 200-lb. ball-and-chain won’t drag itself!) and ran sprints up mountains while visualizing speeding through a course.

At the Titan Arena, “It was harder [than the Olympics], because you get dropped in with no practice,” says Teter, marveling at the number of bruises she earned. “I didn’t want to let a legend like The Rock down. To have someone so high caliber pick you, you feel some responsibility to kick ass.”

The Titan Games, Mondays, 8/7c, NBC