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CHRIS LEE MAY train some of the biggest names in running, but his career started in the pool. Before he was head strength trainer for Tinman Elite running team in Boulder, Colorado, US (see RW July 2020) – counting among his athletes Olympic-hopeful triathlete Morgan Pearson; Reed Fischer, who ran this year’s Houston Half Marathon in 1:01:37; and long-distance runner Laura Thweatt, who placed fifth at the 2016 US Olympic trials– he was a collegiate swimmer at Montclair State University in New Jersey, specialising in the breaststroke.
‘I was getting incredibly strong for a swimmer, yet none of my times were improving,’ he says. ‘I sat back one day at the end of my collegiate career and realised that we never worked on mobility.’ That’s a problem, Lee says, ‘because if you increase your force output with strength training but your range of motion or stride length decreases or stays the same, then you’re not moving forward’. In effect, you are wasting your strength.
But if he wasn’t moving forward in the pool as fast as he would have liked, Lee was certainly making progress on his CV. Shortly after college, he became the head swimming coach at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where he put this epiphany into action and had his athletes work on their mobility before they hit the pool, every single practice. The result: ‘In the three years I worked for the university, we won three national club titles and broke 19 school records.’ So it makes sense that he would apply the same method to his own training programmes when he started competing •
in triathlons, after a friend encouraged him to sign up for one during his senior year. He focused on strength and mobility work, not just putting in time in the pool, on the bike and on the track. But if Lee was a natural cyclist and a seasoned swimmer, running was his clear weakness. ‘It felt awful when I first started,’ he says.
Still, Lee knew how to train, if not run, and he dived into the biomechanics of running much like he had done years before with swimming. ‘If you’re an inefficient swimmer, you drown,’ he says. But lots of people make do with inefficient running at first, only to learn they’re holding themselves back. ‘Running is much more technical than people think,’ says Lee. ‘Learning how to go slow and be efficient, not just powerful, was a slow learning curve for me.’
But learn he did. ‘I talked to and studied many running experts and trained with great runners to better understand what makes them so good,’ he says. ‘Then I mobilised my restricted areas, such as my hips, and strengthened my hip and posterior line stabilisers.’
Little did he know that this – plus his degree in exercise science – would set him up for a career training some of the best runners in the US. Lee first started working with middle-distance runner and Tinman athlete Drew Hunter, and his roster expanded from there: Sam Parsons, Reed Fischer… ‘Then, they signed me on full-time working with the team.’
Now, each athlete goes through a rigorous assessment when they start working with Lee: ‘I run them through a series of exercises – squats, lunges, things that show me a lot – then, we move on to smaller movements that test alignment and hip flexion, like high knees.’ Coupled with a running-gait analysis, via slo-mo video, and a fiveyear injury history, Lee puts together a four-week plan targeting weaknesses and preventing the most likely injuries, continually revamping it every month based on their progress.
‘Some of the changes are pretty incredible,’ he says, using the single-leg step-down as an example. ‘Some athletes will literally fall over at first, but four weeks later, they’re not wobbling at all.’ The most common review from his athletes: I feel smoother when I run.
You can, too, with the three crucial principles Lee brings to his training plans:
Strength + mobility = better running / And by ‘better’, we mean more powerful (thanks to strength), with a longer stride (thanks to mobility). Strength without proper mobility propels your body up in the air, not stretching forward, thereby wasting your energy, says Lee. Mobility without strength isn’t so great, either: ‘This can lead to injury because the body can’t handle the impact, leading to overuse injuries that could completely derail your running.’ (Lee likes to incorporate some light plyometrics and muscular strengthening into his training plans.) He sees Usain Bolt as the ideal example of strength and mobility combined: ‘He puts out a ton of power and he’s literally flying forward.’
An order of operations / If you’re new to running or weight lifting, strength-train after your runs so you don’t tire your legs out before you hit the pavement. But more-experienced athletes can lift first to prime the muscles they need to move well. Either way, resistance training should be a major priority, which is why his cross-training plan includes a mix of plyometric strength workouts (featuring exercises such as split jumps and single-leg hops) and classic stability work (with exercises such as squats and single-leg dead lifts), three times a week, at about 20 minutes a session.
A focus on rest / ‘Proper recovery is the difference between an Olympic competitor and someone who’s not quite at that level,’ says Lee, noting that you should take an impromptu day off if you’re experiencing any symptoms of overtraining – extreme soreness or fatigue, an injury or poor sleep – even if the programme suggests otherwise. ‘Missing a few workouts is not a big deal,’ he says. Just hop into the next one and don’t overthink it. If your symptoms are mild, feel free to skip the cross-training and just log an easy run (less than 40 minutes, at a conversational pace).
To avoid the rest days’ lazy reputation, Lee thinks of them as ‘gain days’, because that’s when the gains happen. ‘Anything you do to stimulate circulation and give your brain a rest, like yoga, is amazing.’
THAT’S THE OVERALL approach Lee took when developing the 30-day cross-training challenge on the next page. Each week, you’ll do one mobility workout and three strength-training sessions, plus three to five runs, depending on how you’re feeling (read: recovering). If it seems like a lot of work to cross-train and run on the same day, remember: the cross-training workout is less than 20 minutes, you can take an easy or rest day whenever you’re feeling low on energy and there’s a larger purpose. ‘Cross-training allows you to address your weaknesses, increase your power and reduce your risk of injury,’ says Lee. And of course, each week will become progressively harder to build on all those gains. ‘Consistent practice pays off,’ Lee promises.