Being one of the few NBA lovers I know, I was pretty excited to hear that they were ending the lockout and starting the NBA season on Christmas Day.  A lot of people I know could care less about the NBA, or they just don’t follow it until the playoffs begin.  Me, I love watching the game.  I like seeing some of the best athletes on the planet jump out of the gym and show such amazing speed and quickness that we could only dream of being that fast.

If you have been following my newsletters for quite some time, you know that I’m a Los Angeles Lakers fan.  I’ve been a  Lakers fan ever since I saw the Laker Girls.  Then I watched the team and realized that these guys were pretty good.  To kick off the celebration of the NBA starting soon, I thought I would go over Kobe Bryant’s workout routine.  I wanted to share this with you and show you what a professional basketball player does to stay in shape.

Like a lot of professional athletes out there, this routine was kind of hard to come by.  I couldn’t really find a lot of verifiable specifics for his workout.  What I did know is that he implemented a bunch of Olympic style movements into his routine.  In the early part of this century, I was training at the Columbus Weightlifting Club and their head club coach, Mark Canella, was telling me that his friend back in Los Angeles was Kobe’s trainer and had him doing a bunch of Olympic lifts to help with his speed, power, and explosiveness.

Now, there is no reason Mark would lie to me, so I assumed this to be true and it was verified to me by Men’s Fitness.  Kobe did an interview with them and stated in the off-season he did a lot of Olympic lifts such as snatches, cleans, high-pulls, Romanian deadlifts, and squats.  Combining this with sprints and suicides that he would run on the track helped him to get stronger and more explosive.  I love Olympic lifts.  I do combine them with some deadlifts with my athletes that I strength train, but I think that the Olympic lifts really tax the nervous system and develop a lot of the strength and fast twitch fibers you need for power, speed, and explosiveness.

There is also a Kobe Bryant workout circulating on the internet called the 6-6-6 routine.  Basically, this is short for 6 hours, 6 days a week, 6 months out of the year.  He does four or five lifts per workout, has three workouts, and does each workout twice a week to get his six workouts.  I never heard Kobe actually say he uses this 6-6-6 workout on Youtube or anything, so if you have please let me see it.  I don’t know if this workout is truly his because it isn’t as heavily Olympic based as his interview suggests.  Kobe’s seasons are actually longer than 6 months, so maybe it is designed for the regular season and then he adjusts for his post-season play.  Then does a lot of his Olympic work in the off-season.  That would make sense.

He did say though that he works out during the regular season, so we know that to be true.  This helps to build up his strength level as the season progresses.  Also, I watched a video of him working out with Team USA a few years back and he was doing dumbbell incline, dumbbell curl on a stability ball into a shoulder press, pull-ups, and a lat pulldown.  So, I know he does those exercises.

The biggest point Kobe made with his workout routine is consistency and intensity.  First, whatever workout routine you decide to do, you have to be consistent with.  It needs to be part of your daily routine.  If you don’t do that then it is all for not.  You can’t build strength if you are starting then stopping every few weeks.  The second is intensity.  You need to work at an intensity (smartly I might add) that pushes your body beyond its limits.  Push it to a point you never thought possible.  Then you will truly see gains.  Of course, all of that should be done under the supervision of a qualified conditioning specialist..ahem.

Finally, Kobe works a lot on his game, his shot, and basketball specific drills.  He has some mad skills otherwise he would be this workout stud who kind of plays basketball.  His extraordinary talent is enhanced by his workout routine.  So you might not have his talent, not yet at least, but you can definitely take away some of the key points: what he does for a workout, be consistent, and be intense.  Those things at the very least will allow you the best chance to succeed at basketball or any sport for that matter.

If you want to work hard on your speed program the way Kobe works on his, click here to read the Run Faster Method and invest in your speed development today!