As Hongkongers celebrated fencer Edgar Cheung Ka-long’s gold medal performance in the men’s foil at the Tokyo Olympics on Monday evening, William Lo Wing-kwan, the co-founder of Strive Fitness in Hong Kong, was feeling overwhelming respect for his 24-year-old friend. The Olympian had trained at the gym on his journey to the podium. While Strive Fitness in Wong Chuk Hang is mostly known as for training basketball players , as a strength and conditioning coach Lo has helped many fencers hone their fitness and strength, from children just starting out in the sport to high-level fencers. Cheung trained at Strive Fitness prior to the Tokyo 2020 Games , and Lo worked with him on overall strength and conditioning, on improving his mobility, agility and power, and on reducing his risk of injury. “Fencing is a unique sport. There’s lots of lunging, but it’s also ipsilateral, in that you use the same [side] hand and leg, which is not natural movement,” Lo says, unlike contralateral movements in which the opposite hand and leg move together. This ipsilateral movement produces imbalances in the body, Lo says, and this is more pronounced in those who, like Cheung, fence every day. Lo addresses the imbalances by having clients do exercises such as single-leg squats and single-arm movements. At the same time, the coach says fencers are no different from basketball players and rugby players in their need for strength and agility, albeit their specific requirements vary. Olympic hero Edgar Cheung’s fencing gold triggers euphoria in Hong Kong “Rugby is more about brute force, pure strength, whereas fencing is technique-based. How strong does a fencer need to be? How does he express that power? He needs endurance, but what kind of endurance?” Lo says. He gives the example of a weightlifter, who uses all of his or her strength to lift the weight in one go over a short period of time, and the other extreme, a marathoner who runs for hours. “Where on the spectrum does fencing fall? The average time of a match is not long, but each bout can be intense, and more towards the explosive side.” To improve fencers’ overall fitness, Lo has them do workouts such as sprints on a bicycle, climbing on walls, or battle-rope exercises that keep their heart rate up. You want a body like this? Top model shares diet, fitness and life tips Lo then focuses on everything from lunges to wrist movements. For example, strength training may involve the fencer holding up light weights as if holding up a foil or sabre; these are attached to a rubber band that Lo will pull to mimic the feeling of being in competition. He has the athletes lunge in unorthodox ways, too. “I may have them hold their arms up above their heads and have them lunge. This is not what they usually do in fencing, but it forces their bodies to use other joints to compensate for the arms not being available. “No lunge is the same, whether it’s defense or offence. I want their bodies to be completely robust,” Lo says, since in a fencing bout they may not be balanced all the time. Does Lo expect a sudden surge in young people wanting to take up fencing? He says it’s hard to say, but in the meantime he is thrilled for Cheung’s success and feels honoured to have played a small part in his victory. “I saw him every week, and then suddenly he’s a gold medallist. It’s unbelievable.”