By the time Tim Morehouse won the Olympic silver medal in the Men’s Saber Team event at the 2008 Games in Beijing (his first Olympics), he was nearing 30 years old. He’d been fencing since he was 13, having started out in the sport at Riverdale Country School, an independent school in New York City. But Morehouse believes that fencing shouldn’t be a sport practiced exclusively by the wealthy. “I would say that it was fencing that turned me on to my potential,” he says. To help others realize theirs, Morehouse has parlayed his Olympic success into Fencing in the Schools, an organization that aims to teach fencing to under-privileged kids. “I believe success is a process that involves setting goals, and not just failing, but learning through those failures. Those are the values that we want to instill in kids.”
As an athlete, Morehouse has never felt better. The two-time national champion still hits the fencing piste hard. “When you’re training for the Olympics, it’s a full-time job,” he says.
The focus on fencing training isn’t to build muscle but agility. “You need to have explosive legs that are flexible,” Morehouse says. “We do a lot of ladder drills—a combination of that with Olympic lifting as well—and sprints. I think people don’t realize how athletic fencing is. One of the reasons that the U.S. team has gone from nowhere to one of the top teams is that we are now training more professionally.”
Morehouse’s Agility Routine
Morehouse does three sets and 10 reps of these unique agility-increasing moves.
1. Slide Board
Wear a harness and connect it to the cables of a pulley machine. Stand on a slide board and use your legs to push away from the machine.
2. Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Stand in a lateral lunge with the foot of the bent leg on a board. Turn your pelvis to the side of the leg on the board and your torso the other way.
3. Low Squat to Explosive Lunge
While “bouncing” at the bottom of a squat, explode into a lunge, and then explode back into bouncing at the bottom of a squat.
