High Schooler Tried Kobe Bryant’s Intense Workout and Diet Plan for the Summer!

By: Evan Ashman

Introduction

I’m not the best basketball player at my school, and during the past summers I’ve always struggled with what to do to try and improve my abilities for the upcoming season. I’ve gotten up thousands of shots, played pickup at my local gym, and played against my friends all of which have all helped me improve, but haven’t been a planned daily routine. My goal for this summer was to build muscle while continuing to get better at the game of basketball. To gain inspiration for my summer workouts, I decided to look up workouts of NBA athletes that play the same position as me, shooting guards and shooting forwards (or the 2 and the 3 as some like to call it). I wanted to try Kobe’s workout and diet plan because he is known to be one of the hardest workers in NBA history and has had tremendous success in his career.

Background: Energy Systems of our Body

First a little background! Our bodies rely on an important molecule, adenosine triphosphate, (ATP) to fuel chemical reactions which power all of our movements. Depending on how quickly we want to move. One way ATP can be broken down is through an enzyme called ATPase into adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and in that instance, energy is released for the body to use. However, our ATP stores are limited due to the amount cells can store. When it is time to make more, there are three mechanisms in place to regenerate new ATP: ATP-PC, lactic acid, and aerobic systems.

First, the ATP-PC (phosphocreatine) system is our short term, high intensity fuel source. We only have about 8 -10 seconds of this type of energy stored up, and it’s used when doing super high intensity exercises such as sprinting. Next, we have the lactic acid system, which takes energy from glycogen to produce ATP relatively fast. It’s still a limited energy system as it only provides 1–3 minutes of energy for our body. This energy system is used for moderate to high intensity exercise and is used mainly for exercise that has varying intervals of intensity, such as football. The only downside to this is that it produces lactic acid as a waste product, which can lead to a need to stop playing or working out if lactic acid builds up. Lastly, we have our aerobic system, which is our long term energy system. This system gets its energy from fat and glycogen, and can produce an unlimited amount of ATP in a slow amount of time. It’s used when doing long, slow exercises such as yoga, and can provide up to 2 hours of steady energy production. It does produce CO2 and H2O, but that doesn’t really affect our muscles/bodies like lactic acid.

Ways of Working Out

There are a variety of ways that you can workout. You can do endurance training, strength training, and static training. I focused on strength training during my time working out, but there are different ways to do it which use different techniques, such as just simple strength building or hypertrophy. Hypertrophy refers to the actual increase of volume of muscles, so making them look bigger, whereas strength refers to the maximum amount of force that the muscle can produce, which is what a lot of the world’s strongest men focus on.

A Look at Our Muscles

When looking at our muscles, they look like fibrous strands and within those strands, they actually have different fibers, such as thin fiber, actin, thick fiber, and myosin. Muscle contractions are triggered by the brain via an electrical impulse that originates from the nervous system called an action potential. There are four steps to this theory called the Sliding Filament Theory of Muscle Contraction. First detachment, where ATP binds to one of the myosin heads, causing it to detach. Next, during hydrolysis where the ATP is split into ADP and a Phosphate, causing the myosin heads to be ready to bind. Those myosin heads now bind with the actin in the step called the “Cross Bridge.” Finally, the binded ADP + Phosphate detach, causing the myosin head to forcefully return to its starting position, doing what’s called a “Power Stroke.” This process continues until the body stops moving and muscles stop contracting.

Additionally, our body has two different types of muscle fibers: slow-twitch muscle fibers (Type 1 muscle fibers), and fast-twitch muscle fibers (Type 2 muscle fibers). Slow-twitch fibers are used to power muscles first, before fast-twitch fibers are used. Type 1 fibers use energy slowly so they can work for a long time without using up their energy. They are usually used for low intensity activities, such as walking. Also, slow-twitch fibers tend to have more blood vessels in them than fast-twitch fibers because they need a constant flow of oxygen so they are able to function for long periods of time. Because of this, slow-twitch fibers look darker because of their constant blood supply. On the other hand, fast-twitch fibers are used for sudden bursts, or sharp, powerful movements. They are used for short periods of time before they fatigue and need rest, and they use a lot of energy, very quickly. Fast-twitch muscles have an energy system that doesn’t need oxygen, called an anaerobic energy system. Because of this, fast-twitch fibers don’t have as much blood flow, and will thus look lighter than the slow-twitch fibers. For basketball players, fast-twitch muscle fibers are the most important because in basketball, you’re constantly moving in different directions and changing speed, which is exactly what your fast-twitch muscles are used for. It’s also possible to convert slow-twitch fibers into fast-twitch fibers. This can be done multiple ways. You can do plyometric exercises and olympic training such as: vertical jumps, power cleans, etc.. Also you can do simple exercises such as squats, deadlifts, or bench presses, but with a focus on either heavy weight and slow movement, or light weight and fast movement. So with the workouts I was doing, as you will see next, I was developing my fast-twitch muscles.

Diagram for the Sliding Filament Theory of Muscle Contraction

Another diagram for Sliding Filament Theory of Muscle Contraction

Total weight lifted workout progression and difficulty of workouts (according to me)

Kobe Bryant’s workout plan while he was in the NBA is the one I followed.

Kobe Bryant

During his time in the NBA, Kobe Bryant was one of the hardest workers and he adhered to a strict workout and diet regimen. He did what he called “666” workouts where he would workout for 6 months, 6 days a week, for 6 hours a day. This consisted of 2 hours of basketball skills, 2 hours of weightlifting, and then 2 hours of cardio. Obviously, that is his job so he can put in that amount of time, but I had a lot of other things to do during the summer so I condensed it down into a 1 1/2 to 2 hour workout. I did 30 minutes of basketball skills, whether it be dribbling or shooting or whatever, then I did 1 hr — 1 1/2 hrs of weightlifting, and around 15 minutes of hard cardio. While doing this I also maintained Kobe’s diet, which was basically a paleo diet focused on high protein and low carb. On average during the summer, I consumed around 1800 calories a day, just under the daily 2000 recommended for the standard adult while also consuming 93 g of protein each day. I have pasted a sample diet plan so you can see what my weekly diet looked like.

An example of my diet plan for one of the weeks.

Daily Protein and Caloric Intake.

Change in Workouts

I followed this regimen for about a month and a half until my school’s basketball workouts started. Our basketball program has been blessed with one of the best trainers in our county who makes sure that we put in the work during the summer while other players are lounging around. He is very motivated as we were ranked number 3 in our county. His workouts are tough and consist of skill workouts, conditioning, and lifting (ish) workouts. We workout 3–4 times a week and usually the workouts in the beginning of the week are skill workouts that include dribbling, and working on our shooting and getting to the basket. Usually one time in the week, he’ll have us go outside to our field and do conditioning and sled pushes to workout our legs and condition our bodies. During this, he’ll also have us do dynamic band workouts to work muscles such as our shoulders which we need for shooting. Then on Fridays, our last workout of the week, we normally do an open gym type of workout, where we just play against each other. So although I wasn’t lifting per se, I was still working out muscles needed for basketball, such as your shoulders, chest, and legs.

Conclusion

Overall, I think the workouts made me stronger and were a great way for me to get ready for the upcoming season. Looking back, I don’t know how effective the diet was, as Kobe wanted to be as light as possible, so he ate low caloric foods. But, for a growing teen who needs as many calories and grams of protein as possible, this type of diet is not the best. But like I stated before, I felt stronger after the workouts and can say that this summer was one of the most productive ones I’ve had in awhile.

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