Want to get fitter for HEMA, but aren't sure what your training should actually include?
Historical fencing demands more than just strength. Fencers need to accelerate, decelerate, change direction, produce force quickly, and repeat high-intensity efforts throughout training and competition.
HEMAFit is an online on-demand workout series focusing on strength and conditioning designed specifically for HEMA and historical fencing. Train at home with structured workouts that develop the physical qualities you actually use when you fence, without needing a full gym.
Why Strength & Conditioning Matters for HEMA
HEMA is foremost a skill-based sport. No amount of time in the gym replaces the work you do with sword in-hand. But fencing practice and physical preparation don't serve exactly the same purpose.
Technical training develops your ability to read an opponent, make decisions, control distance, and execute techniques under pressure. Strength and conditioning develops the physical capacity that allows you to keep doing those things effectively.
This becomes particularly relevant as the demands increase. Faster exchanges leave less time to produce force. Multiple training sessions a week challenges your ability to maintain movement quality when fatigue is present. Competitions can require repeated bouts across several hours, often with relatively little recovery between them, particularly for fencers who compete in multiple weapons.
Dedicated physical training allows you to progressively challenge qualities that can be difficult to develop through fencing alone. Instead of relying on sparring to provide an inconsistent training stimulus, strength and conditioning gives you a controlled way to build capacity over time while managing overall training load.
The goal is never to replace fencing with gym work. It's to give your fencing a bigger physical foundation to work from.
Strength: Strength training builds the foundation for generating force effectively for lunges, recoveries, and maintaining blade interactions in the bind.
Aerobic Conditioning: Fencers perform at high intensity in short bursts, but also have to sustain effort over many hours at long events. As a sport with complex energy demands, training must include a blend of both lower-intensity cardio and high-intensity intervals.
Explosive Power & Speed: The ability to accelerate, decelerate, change direction, and execute powerful lunges, ripostes, and retreats is essential at the top tiers of competition. Training this system includes plyometrics, speed drills, and reaction-based exercises to enhance rapid force production.
Mobility-Stability: Optimal movement requires a balance between flexibility and control. Things in this domain include drills for shoulder health, hip flexibility, and core stability to support efficient, injury-free movement.
What Should HEMA Fitness Training Include?
Fencing requires complex movement patterns and the ability move explosively, change directions quickly, and last through every fight. Strength & conditioning to improve fundamental skills and develop a broad athletic base can translate to huge performance gains on piste. With a fencer's needs in mind, every HEMAFit class helps fencers develop in these domains:
HEMAFit is specifically designed to give fencers a well-rounded conditioning routine that translates to performance in the ring while building the physical capacity to tolerate training and competition over the long term.
HEMAFit Membership
HEMAFit makes conditioning for historical fencing fun and straightforward:
Train On Your Schedule
Access class recordings when it fits your schedule
Simple Equipment
Classes are designed for simple at-home fitness with weights and mini resistance bands
All Levels Welcome
Learn as you go! No prior fitness or gym experience needed.
Community Forum
Ask questions, get advice, and discuss HEMA Fitness on the Sprezzatura Discord
Robust Video Library
50+ hours of recorded classes, with a variety of equipment options
Online Content
HEMAFit Members get exclusive access to the Sprezzatura Substack
Your Coach
Train with Liz Scott MD MSc CSCS
Liz is a professional strength & conditioning coach, sports medicine doctor, HEMA coach and competitive historical fencer in longsword, sabre, rapier, and armoured combat. Her approach combines contemporary sport science with firsthand experience training and teaching historical fencing to all ages and levels.
Her qualifications for athletic conditioning coaching include an MSc from Loughborough University in Strength & Conditioning and NSCA CSCS certification.
"Love the recording archive. It's a great option when I can't make it to HEMA class.
HEMA + Olympic Fencer