Around the Sun

Analisse Rios Is Still Teaching—Now She's Building Elite Athletes

By Anthony Price 

Connecticut Sun Strength & Conditioning Coach Analisse Rios works with players. Photo: Stephen Joyner Jr.

---

---

Watching Analisse Rios lead the Connecticut Sun through a pregame warm-up is electric. On the floor at Mohegan Sun Arena ahead of the Los Angeles Sparks game on Thursday, July 24, she moved with energy—smiling, focused, and fully engaged as she worked one-on-one with players. 
 
Rios, a 5-foot-4 dynamo with relentless intensity, has been the Sun’s strength and conditioning coach since 2020. In 2023, it became her full-time position—one of only 13 like it in the entire WNBA. Her job: helping the team achieve peak performance through a demanding and carefully calibrated training regimen. 

It’s a role that fuses science, physical training and nutrition—a kind of human alchemy. For Rios, it is a harmonious confluence of sport, fitness, and education, all driven by her upbeat personality. “It’s just wild to me that this is my job, and this is what I do every day,” said Rios, who was once an elementary school teacher. 
 
Healing Bodies 
 
The Sun’s three-person performance staff consists of a director of health and performance, a strength and conditioning coach and an assistant athletic trainer. Injury prevention and rehabilitation are central to their work. 
 
This season, the performance team is doing yeoman’s work to keep the Sun on the court. In a league defined by its physicality, where players are constantly crashing to the hardwood like they’re getting paid a per diem per fall, injuries are inevitable.
 
“I love getting people involved in moving,” Rios said over the telephone between working out with players and attending the Sun’s practice. “Movement is medicine.” And her prescription? Always more movement.
 
The Sun have battled injuries this season. Star Marina Mabrey was excited to be back on the court against the Sparks after missing nine games due to an injury suffered on June 20 against the Dallas Wings. 

I love getting people involved in moving.

Strength & Conditioning coach Analisse Rios runs with Saniya Rivers. Photo: Stephen Joyner Jr.

---

---

Mabrey credited the Sun’s performance team with helping her get back on the court. “I’m always excited to get back out there to play the sport I love with my teammates,” she said, with a stoneface expression before the Sparks game. Her rehab schedule included two sessions a day. 
 
When rookie Aneesah Morrow was injured earlier in the season, she worked on conditioning and building muscles she didn’t typically use. “We stayed in the weight room,“ Morrow said of her time with Rios. “We stayed on the court doing extra conditioning.” 

For Morrow, the work went beyond reps and routines. “l feel like Analisse is a great spirit,” she said. “She was able to push me.” A sure sign that Rios has earned not just respect—but trust.

Weight Room
 
The weight room is where the Sun build the strength to withstand the grind of a 44-game season. Rios strives to get the team in the weight room for at least three 60-minute lifting sessions a week—a tough ask given the team’s hectic travel schedule. 
 
But for Rios, it’s not just about maintaining strength; she wants players to get stronger. “That helps in their power development and in the playoffs time, too,” she said. 
 
In the weight room, Rios teaches players how to build strength and then to use it on the court. “I love doing stuff where we are working on power development, and that means moving heavy weight, quickly, and being able to be explosive on that first step, being able to be explosive in the air,” she explained. 

l feel like Analisse is a great spirit.

Last season, she introduced the concept of micro lifting.  A micro lift is a 20-minute workout designed to fit even into game day routines. 
 
About three or four seasons ago, she began implementing game-day lifts. At the time, she didn’t have every player’s buy-in. But by the 2024 season, the entire roster was on board. 
 
“The idea behind a game day lift is that we are going to keep intense days, intense. Game days are already intense,” she said. “So we lift on those days, so then the following day can be a recovery day.” 
 
It may seem counterintuitive. “The average person thinks ‘Ah, I can’t lift on game days,’’’ Rios admitted. “But our players bought into it. They saw that it helped them and they actually felt better on the court when we had a game day lift.” . 

Tina Charles shoots. Photo: Stephen Joyner Jr.

Connecticut Sun before the game. Photo: Stephen Joyner Jr.

---

---

The Journey: Boliva  
 
Rios was born in the Andes Mountain region of La Paz, Bolivia—11,000 feet above sea level. The middle child with two brothers, she grew up in a family where movement was a way of life. Her parents, who still live in Bolivia, were active, and so were their kids. Her oldest brother lives in New York, and her younger brother recently moved to work in Spain.
 
From middle school through high school, Rios was always in motion, whether it was gymnastics, soccer, volleyball, basketball, or track. And she wasn’t just playing, she was excelling.

At just 16, when she was a sophomore in high school, Rios played for the Bolivian National Soccer Team. She traveled extensively, playing against top players, including Brazilian soccer legend Marta Vieira da Silva, widely known simply as Marta. 
 
Rios discovered Connecticut College online and contacted the women’s soccer coach at the time, Ken Kline. That message turned out to be a life-changing move. She enrolled, played on the soccer and track & field teams, and graduated in 2008 with a degree in human development and a certification in elementary education.
 
Her plan after graduation was to become a teacher, and she did just that for years in Connecticut classrooms. But eventually, she found herself missing the camaraderie of sport.  
 
To get her foot in the door, she volunteered to help Norm Riker, the Connecticut College women’s soccer coach. Her first task? Setting up soccer cones and hauling goals. But that small step would put her on the path to working with elite professional athletes. 
 
“Back then, I didn’t think that strength and conditioning was even an option for me,” she said. Today, she is training some of the world’s most elite women athletes. 

I didn’t think that strength and conditioning was even an option for me.

Olivia Nelson-Ododa battles inside. Photo: Stephen Joyner Jr.

​​Showing Up 

​The Sun lost their game to the Sparks, 101-86, falling to 3-20. But on Sunday, they bounced back in a big way—blowing out the Golden State Valkyries 95-64 at Mohegan Sun Arena, a reminder of the fight still burning in this team. 
 
Win or lose, Rios shows up—with energy, with purpose, and almost always with a smile. She is still teaching, just not in a classroom. Her lessons now are about strength, resilience and movement—delivered on the court, in the weight room, and wherever her players need her the most.
 
One win won’t shift her routine. Tomorrow, she’ll be back at it—coaching, lifting, teaching. Because for Rios, this isn’t just a job. It’s exactly where she’s meant to be.

​### 

Photos: Points N Snaps Photography 

---

---

Anthony Price is an entrepreneur, author and publisher of CT Hoops Magazine. Around the Sun is a weekly column about the Connecticut Sun.