JUNE 2016 MUSCLE & FITNESS 63performance
strength-and-conditioning coach
Dave Tuinauvai aspired to become
one of Australia’s top professional
rugby players. Like many of the
Polynesian athletes he coaches
today, the then 19-year-old
Tuinauvai, of Tongan descent, was
big, strong, fast and agile. With
his physical strengths, many fans
considered him a future footy
standout. Rugby officials were
similarly impressed. A week before
Tuinauvai was to tour Sydney as the
Victorian under-20 captain in 2002
he received a career-defining call- a request to play in his club’s first-
grade team. Against his parents’
protestations, the opportunistic
number eight accepted the
challenge. However, 30 minutes
into the game he’d hoped would
impress senior coaches and
selectors, Tuinauvai was carried
from the field with a fractured
tibia and fibula, his international
rugby dreams in tatters and his
sporting future in doubt. Two
months in hospital and 12 months of
rehab – during which a despondent
Tuinauvai slowly regained his
ability to walk and run – solidified
the prodigious teen’s drive to
achieve full fitness. But instead of
pursuing footy fame and fortune,
Tuinauvai would use his physical
transformation and training
background to inspire others.
“I had to learn how to walk and run
again and that was my drive to get
back into it,” he says. “But this time I
was focused on training other people,
to bring out the best in aspiring and
established elite athletes.”
Now 32, the specialist trainer –
who runs Conquest Fitness Sports
Centre in Mount Waverly, Victoria,
and who also is a fitness advisor
to the University of Hawaii – has
assisted a long list of notable Aussie
athletes to achieve spectacular
sporting success. Melbourne Storm
winger Mahe Fonua, former-
AFL-star-turned-NFL-contender
Scott Harding and boxing legend
Sam Soliman all credit Tuinauvai
for elevating their performance.S
From left to
right: Elyse
Penaluna
(basketball);
Tali Amosa
(American
football); David
Tu i n a u v a i ; G J
Amosa (rugby;
and Eneasi
Kavapalu
(American
football).