Did you ever wish to have the strength and agility of Kimiko from The Boys? Lucky for you, Karen Fukuhara has spilled her workout for this role.

Fukuhara sat down with Women's Health magazine to share everything that keeps her fit to play the notoriously strong Kimiko Miyashiro on Amazon Prime Video's hit TV series, The Boys.

"I come in with a plan, and I enjoy my me-time in the gym," Fukuhara told the magazine.

But the flexibility and strength you see Fukahara display on the show weren't always there. In fact, the action star struggled with everything the first time she stepped into a gym. She didn't know anything about the proper gym etiquette or where any of the machines were.

Now, Karen walks into the gym confidently and navigates everything like she was born doing this. Here is everything she does in the gym that helps Kimiko defeat the bad guys in the series. 

As soon as she enters the gym, Karen begins her training with weightlifting, starting with the heaviest weights, then gradually moving to lighter weights and unilateral moves.

She typically does 4 sets of 10 reps for each exercise, and aims to reach failure with heavy ones. Her first exercise is the barbell glute bridges, and according to her, the exercise is good for her stunt work and Kimiko's low-to-the-ground 'wolf-like' movements.

A superset of the seated cable rows follows the glute bridges. The actor says activities like sitting in one place with a laptop or scrolling on the phone for long results in shoulders drooping forward. So the cable rows help correct the posture by working the back muscles. Up next are the landmine deadlifts. She switched to this exercise after hurting her back from doing the regular deadlifts.

To improve hip mobility and balance, she performs the single-leg deficit glute bridges. She then ends her workout with something she calls an 'arm blast,' which is basically a super-set of bicep curls, tricep kickbacks, and rear delt flys, with weighted straight-leg raises for the core. She says, 'I like it because I’m allowed to be lying down.'

But this isn't the first role she has trained hard for.

How Karen Fukuhara Became Katana

The Japanese American shot to fame by playing the DC character Katana. The role required someone who could speak English and Japanese and convincingly perform martial arts and sword combat. And this is where her years of “combat memory” training came to play.

Talking to Vogue, this is what she said:

“Yes, it had been years; I lost a lot of the right kind of muscles. David [Ayer] really focused on the actors doing their own stunts because he wanted to create reality, and that’s the best way to do it. So we had a month and a half of preproduction [to train].”

During her audition, Fukuhara impressed the makers with her dialogue delivery, martial arts skills, and sword fighting. She was selected, and before filming began, she had to go through a training process to prepare for her role, which included practising:

• Sword fighting
• Martial arts drills
• Strength and conditioning training
• Stunt choreography

Her role was eventually well-received by the critics and audience alike, hence paving the way for more opportunities.

What are your thoughts on Fukuhara’s workout?

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Written by

Ruwa Javed

Edited by

Zaid Quraishi