Fencing Strength
Giulia Rizzi is the 2024 Olympic gold medalist in individual epee. Her pre-competition fencing strength and conditioning programme offers a clear illustration of how elite fencers approach physical preparation — and a direct counter to the persistent myth that weight training makes fencers slower, bulkier, or less mobile.
The Central Lesson
Lifting weights does not make an athlete a bodybuilder or a powerlifter. Getting gradually stronger in the four fundamental movement patterns — squatting, pushing, hinging, and pulling — makes athletes better at their sport. Improved range of motion, greater force production, and enhanced physical resilience are the outcomes of intelligent strength training. These are not incidental benefits. They are the point.
Rizzi’s training illustrates this. She is not training to build mass. She is training to be a more capable, more durable, more explosive athlete.
The Programme Structure
Rizzi’s pre-Doha Grand Prix programme is low volume and high intensity — the appropriate structure for the final weeks before a major competition. Building work capacity happens months before. This phase sharpens what has already been built.
A1 — Seated Dumbbell Vertical Jump
4 sets × 3–4 reps at high speed with light weight
The session opens with the power movement. This is correct sequencing. Power output requires a fresh nervous system. Starting a session with heavy strength work and then attempting power development is counterproductive — fatigue degrades the rate of force development that power training is trying to build.
The seated position removes the countermovement and forces the athlete to generate force from a static start — a more demanding expression of explosive power.
B1 — Quarter Pin Squats
2 sets × 6 reps at high speed, moderate weight
Quarter squats from pins develop explosive hip extension through a partial range — the range most relevant to the initial drive phase of a lunge or attack. The speed intent is critical here: this is not a strength exercise performed quickly, it is a power exercise.
C1 — Barbell Overhead Press
2 sets × 3–6 reps at heavy weight (8/10 RPE)
The overhead press is the strength movement of the session. Heavy, compound, and requiring full body stability to execute correctly. Upper body pressing strength underpins everything from the guard position to the ability to control the weapon under fatigue.
D1 — Rack Pulls
2 sets × 6 reps at high speed, moderate weight
Rack pulls develop explosive hip extension from the posterior chain — hamstrings, glutes, and lower back. The speed intent, again, is what distinguishes this from a conventional strength movement.
E1 — Single Arm Dumbbell Row
2 sets × 8 reps at moderate-heavy weight
Unilateral pulling work closes the session. The single arm row develops the posterior shoulder and back musculature that balances the pressing and overhead work earlier in the session.
A Note on Warm-Up Sets
The working sets listed above are true working sets. For heavier compound movements like the overhead press, three to four progressive warm-up sets are needed before reaching working weight. Jumping straight to heavy load without adequate preparation increases injury risk and reduces performance in the working sets.
Why This Matters for Competitive Fencers
Rizzi’s programme is not complicated. It is disciplined: four movement patterns, a clear power-to-strength progression within the session, appropriate loading for the phase of the training year, and no unnecessary complexity.
Fencers who train this way — not trying to build size, not chasing variety for its own sake, but systematically getting stronger in the movements that underpin athletic performance — will see it translate on the strip. The evidence is in the results. The Olympic gold medal did not come from bouting alone.
Related: Four Training Lessons from the World’s #1 Ranked Epee Fencer — Sera Song applies the same four movement patterns with the same power-first sequencing. Contrast Training: How an Olympic Fencer Builds Explosive Power — Guillaume Bianchi’s power training method that builds on top of the strength base Rizzi’s programme develops.
All four movement patterns in Rizzi’s programme — power, squat, press, hinge, pull — are the same foundation the fencing training programs at Fencing Strength are built on. 12 weeks, 3 days per week, structured for competitive fencers.