Former Los Angeles Lakers head coach Byron Scott has described Kobe Bryant’s demanding training schedule, explaining how the NBA legend used multiple daily workouts to gain an advantage over other players.
Scott, who played alongside Bryant early in his career and later coached him in Los Angeles, ranked the five-time NBA champion among the hardest-working athletes he had ever encountered.
“There’s three people in my lifetime that I admired on how hard they worked: Jerry Rice, Walter Payton, Kobe Bryant. His was legendary. Kobe, as far as he never worked out just once a day. He would get up at 4 in the morning, or he’d say, ‘Meet me at the gym at 4 in the morning,’ and he would work out for two, three hours lifting because he knew he had to get stronger, had to get bigger.”
According to Scott, Bryant’s early morning weightlifting sessions were only the beginning of his daily routine.
He would return to the gym to work on his shooting before participating in regular team practices.
“Then he would go eat breakfast, and then he’d come back and he’d make 500 shots, so he’d be there another two hours. Then he’d get ready for practice. He’d go through a two-and-a-half-hour, three-hour practice like it’s nothing. Then he’d go have lunch, chill out for another hour, then he’d come back at night and work out again.”
Scott explained that Bryant had a specific reason for maintaining such a demanding schedule.
Rather than focusing only on immediate improvements, he believed that consistently training more often than his competitors would create a substantial advantage over several years.
“And it was crazy to me because his method of it was scientific. He was like, ‘B, if I work out three times a day and all these other guys who are so-called great players work out just for practice, they just work out that one time a day, over a five-year period they can’t catch me. I’ve worked out that much. I’ve worked on my body, I’ve worked on my footwork, I’ve worked on my shot, so five, ten years from now they can’t catch me. They’re that far behind.’”
The former Lakers coach admitted that he had followed a demanding training routine during his own playing career but had never approached it with the same long-term calculations as Bryant.
“I never thought about it until he explained it to me. I was a guy that in the summertime, go to the gym, lift weights, go to the track, run for two hours, then go play – and that’s equivalent to three times a day. But I never thought of it or put it in the type of method that he was talking about.”
Scott was particularly impressed that Bryant had developed this approach at a young age.
He believed the Lakers star understood how additional training sessions could accumulate into a major advantage over players with similar talent.
“I just thought it was ironic that a young man got it that quickly. He understood that if I worked out harder and longer and more than the guy who’s supposed to be on my level, sooner or later he won’t be on my level anymore. Kobe was extremely intelligent. He just said, ‘Scientifically, if I do this, you can’t catch me.’ And he was right. It worked.”
