<em>The Boys</em> Actor Karen Fukuhara Loves a Leg Day
The 34-year-old is a force in the gym.
Reported by Women's Health Magazine.
Playing a superhuman assassin on one of prestige TV's most physically demanding shows means Karen Fukuhara's gym sessions have to actually mean something. The The Boys star — who portrays Kimiko Miyashiro, a character built on speed, raw strength, and low, predatory movement — trains like her role depends on it. Because it does.
It wasn't always this intuitive. According to Women's Health Magazine, Fukuhara first started going to the gym post-college to keep a friend company, but the experience felt more alienating than empowering. "It was just really overwhelming to me," she says — unfamiliar machines, unspoken rules, no real direction. The turning point came while preparing for Suicide Squad, when working with a dedicated trainer rewired how she thought about movement entirely. "He taught me how to train smarter, not harder," she explains — a shift that took her from lost in the weight room to walking in with a plan she actually looks forward to executing.
The Workout Itself
Fukuhara's leg day is structured and intentional: heaviest lifts first, lighter unilateral work to finish, four sets of 10 reps per move (or to failure when the load is serious). She opens with barbell glute bridges — foundational for the stunt work her role demands — and supersets them with seated cable rows to counteract the forward-shoulder posture that desk culture quietly wrecks. "My posture is always going forward," she says, "so I like to offset that by working the back muscles." Landmine deadlifts replace conventional ones after a back injury; she finds she can load more and go longer with the variation. Single-leg deficit glute bridges round out the lower body, targeting a muscle group she admits she struggles to isolate as a self-described quad-dominant athlete.
The session closes with what Fukuhara calls the "arm blast" — bicep curls, tricep kickbacks, and rear delt flies in rapid succession — before finishing flat on the floor with weighted straight-leg raises for core work. "I like it because I'm allowed to be lying down," she jokes. It's the kind of humor that makes an otherwise elite-level routine feel genuinely human.
Whether you're training for a role or just trying to move better in real life, Fukuhara's approach is a solid argument for learning the why behind every exercise before you add more weight to the bar.
Read the original at Women's Health Magazine.
