Kobe Bryant reacts during the press conference of his Mamba Mentality Tour with Nike at Shangri-La at the Fort in Taguig City. Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net
“IF YOU want to do exceptional things, you have to train exceptionally.”
Kobe Bryant, the NBA legend, wasn’t talking to a bunch of aspiring basketball stars on a Saturday morning at Kerry Sports Gym in Shangri-La at the Fort.
Instead, he was preparing full-time sports journalists to experience what it’s like to go through his workouts, which has now been institutionalized by Nike through his Kobe Academy.
Kobe, who retired after a 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers last April, earned a reputation as a perfectionist on all things basketball. The competitiveness, the relentless work he puts in training, the 4 a.m. workouts are stuff of legend.
“You can do a lot of things when you start training at 4 a.m.,” he said. “I’m just letting you experience what it’s like in my workouts.”
A few minutes earlier, Kobe showed up at the locker room much to the surprise of the media participants. There was silence for a split second as we tried to wrap our head around the idea of a basketball great exchanging high fives with us.
“I’m here to make you understand that the process of getting better isn’t always easy,” Kobe said.
Assisted by basketball coach Xavy Nunag, Kobe put us through his warm-up. He said his warm-ups last for 20 minutes, but he reduced it to eight for the mostly overweight scribes.
The media participants were expecting the worst, but Kobe’s presence was enough motivation for us to at the very least, survive. But the sprints, slides and back-pedaling with your hands up zapped the energy out of us.
Then came one of the Kobe 8 workouts that included eight sprints to the length of the court, eight pushups, eight mountain climbers and eight crunches.
But knowing how demanding Kobe was even from his teammates, no one dared to take it easy as we paced ourselves to finish the task.
“If everyone can do what you can do then its not worth it,” he said. “It’s like writing a story. When you write your stories, it has to be the best story that you can write.”
Much like Kobe, the basketball player, Kobe, the mentor, brings the same passion and single-mindedness to be better.
That’s the Mamba Mentality.