What was Kobe Bryant's diet and workout routine?

Kobe Bryant was one of the most beloved and decorated basketball players ever to step foot on the court. His illustrious career saw him spearhead the dominant LA Lakers, winning the NBA a whopping five times.

Bryant set the bar far too high when it came down to training and nutrition. He was level-headed and precise in his preparation and never got sloppy. He paid incredible attention to what he ate and how he trained, and it certainly showed. Bryant was consistently amongst the best performers on the court, winning the MVP award in 2008. We'll dive further into this piece to examine how the basketball trained and ate at the height of his career.

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Kobe Bryant's Diet and Workout Routine

Kobe Bryant was always the hardest worker in the room and did not let his technical gifts get the best of him. Instead, he capitalized on them and worked even harder to build a great physique and endurance.

Bryant stands very tall, at 198cm, that's around 6'6". Obviously, at that height, he would have to work harder to combat his accelerated metabolism and pack on some mass so that he might not be so lean. He weighed around 212 pounds (96 kgs).

In fact, Bryant's training style was so popular that it became associated with him. He swore by the 666 routine, which requires one to train for 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 6 months, forming the number 666.

As for his workout routine, Kobe Bryant split his 6 hours into three training blocks. The first two were dedicated to basketball skill training, and the following two were spent in the gym, lifting weights or doing some track work and cardio outdoors.

For his weightlifting workouts, Bryant reportedly favored Olympic-styled weightlifting. This consisted of exercises like:

• Power clean
• Deadlifts
• Romanian Deadlifts
• Back squats

Compound lifts like the ones mentioned above help build strength, muscle, speed, and endurance, all essential qualities for a stellar basketball player. For cardio, he enjoyed jogging and doing high-intensity sprints.

Being 6'6" begs the question — how much do you need to eat to stay at your current weight? For Kobe Bryant, that meant eating a lot of food to maintain his weight of 212 pounds. But what exactly did he eat? Luckily for us, Gary Vitti, the ex-Lakers trainer, had the answer. Bryant had these as his go-to foods:

• Pasture-fed beef, chicken, and eggs
• Free-range chicken
• Butter
• Milk
• Green veggies
• Olive Oil
• Nuts
• No sugar or junk food

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Conclusion

Kobe Bryant is an inspiration to us all. He set the bar both on and off the court, and in doing so, he paved the way for the younger generation of basketball starlets to come in and grow, taking a page or two out of his book. If not for the great tragedy that took him so abruptly, we might have just had one of the greatest sporting icons to pass the torch.