What 15 Years of Coaching Runners Taught Me About Cross Training
Most runners are leaving progress on the table without realizing it by underutilizing cross-training. If you’re constantly dealing with injuries, struggling to increase your mileage, or feeling stuck despite consistent effort, it’s likely not your effort that’s the issue; it’s how you’re structuring your training load.
There’s been a lot of noise lately around cross-training (and a lot of it coming from people chasing clicks and conversions in their Shopify store more than results and athlete safety), so I wanted to break this down properly. In this video, I explain how cross-training can dramatically increase your aerobic development without the added mechanical stress of running, how I used it to run 2:46 in the Mississauga Marathon in 2022 while hitting lifetime bests across multiple distances, and why this approach is becoming more common at both the elite and age group level.
I also walk through how to actually implement cross-training into your week—whether you’re injury-prone, trying to safely increase volume, or coming back from time off. We’ll cover why low-intensity cross-training is often more valuable than high-intensity, how to stack training hours without breaking down, and why this might be one of the most underused tools for long-term endurance development.
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Chapters:
00:00 - The Philosophy of Cross Training
03:10 - Benefits of Cross Training for Athletes
06:09 - Integrating Cross Training into Routines
09:12 - Cross Training for Injury Prevention and Recovery
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