NBA star LeBron James is a basketball legend with several records under his belt. And yet (by competitive athlete standards) it is actually a thing of the past. Take a closer look at which training the 34-year-old owes his consistently reliable performance to. However, a well-maintained basketball court plays an important part; Check out the latest basketball equipment at bballworld.com/chain-basketball-net.
LeBron James has been training with Mike Mancias for 16 years now – and actually not as advanced as you might expect. The fitness expert recently revealed this to “Men’s Health”. In other words: What applies to NBA player LeBron James can also be implemented quite well for your training! “You have to remember that the simplest routines and exercises are the most beneficial,” says Mancias. The important thing is to concentrate on the intensity and correct movement execution. Then you will see results quickly.
According to Mancias, a significant part of the training begins many hours in advance: the evening before, more precisely at dinner. James is eating a nutritious meal, and getting enough sleep afterwards is important for him. The next morning, he put on a protein shake with a foam roller half an hour before warming up. And then, he goes with the pace!
Exercise 1: Spiderman Walk
It starts with a set (10 to 12 repetitions) Spiderman Walk, often also called the Lizard Crawl, an exercise in the Animal Moves category. In particular, the triceps and core muscles are trained. FITBOOK has had personal trainer Erik Jäger explain to you in more detail how the Spiderman Walk works and what you should pay attention to.
Exercise 2: Versa-Climber
Now it’s time to turn to the Versa-Climber, a fitness device that can be used to perform climbing movements and thus an effective whole-body workout. Then you are finally warmed up. LeBron does three sets of 30 seconds each, with a 15 to 20 second break in between.
Exercise 3: rowing horizontally
Rowing is known to be very effective, and so is the horizontal variant, which mainly targets the arms, back, torso and shoulder muscles. You lie on your back and grab a barbell a little wider than shoulder width, with the backs of your hands facing your body. Tense muscles, especially in the torso and upper leg area. Now pull your shoulder blades together and then pull them forward to the barbell. The body must always form a straight line and be controlled and slowly removed again. LeBron James does three sets of eight to ten repetitions each.
Exercise 4: Landmine Press
A barbell is leaned against so that it cannot slip – for example in the corner of a room. Then the weight has to be lifted upwards or forwards, depending on which part is to be challenged. It is always important to have a tense torso and that the elbows are not pushed through. Always lower the dumbbell slowly and in a controlled manner. Here not only muscles but also joints are trained, and this reduces the risk of injury during strength training. Three sets of eight to ten repetitions on each side.
Exercise 5: lunges with twist
Lunge steps not only go forwards, but also backwards and to the side, and thus train the leg muscles much more comprehensively as well as the core. James does the 360-degree variant in three sets with each leg.
Exercise 6: Pulling the cable sideways
Here you mainly train the lateral abdominal muscles. Please ensure that your back is straight during the entire exercise – otherwise there is a risk of injury – and that you do the movement without taking any momentum. This makes training safer and more effective.
Avoid the most common mistakes in workout
Diet, sleep, and genes all influence training progress
Training success generally depends on a large number of factors. For example, in addition to the right diet and enough sleep, there are also genetic factors to be mentioned. The training itself is of course also a decisive factor – and this is where the rabbit is in the pepper for many.
Super compensation and accommodation
To understand why the training of many advanced learners no longer works so well, one has to look at two classic schemes from biology.
On the one hand, there is what is known as super-compensation. It explains the process of adapting the training. In summary, one could say that a training stimulus tires the muscle or the entire system and the body reacts with improvements (training adaptations). So we gradually get better and better through regular training.
The other biological theory is what is known as accommodation (from Latin: accommodare – to adapt). Rather, it describes the phenomenon of long-term adaptation. This means that the muscles, the cardiovascular system, etc. adapt effectively to a given load. But what then? And here I see a fundamental problem.
Typical mistake: no new training stimuli
Many exercisers have had good results with a certain type of training and have sworn by it ever since. But as soon as the body has adapted to this type of training, the stimulus is no longer a major challenge. This means that the effectiveness of the training decreases – and there is no progress. First you try to increase the training weight further. Up to a certain point, that is certainly possible. But at the latest when no more big jumps are possible, stagnation waits! The enemy of every advanced!
Now you are probably wondering how you can avoid this stagnation … quite simply: through variety!
You can only make progress if you change your training permanently
Change your exercise routine regularly so that your body never gets too used to it and use it to force it to develop further. Whether this is done using intelligent periodization or whether you simply change the order or selection of the exercises is secondary. The main thing is that you change your training regularly!
Incidentally, this does not only apply to muscle training in the gym. All hobby runners should follow this statement: Don’t just run the same distance in the same time. This can be very relaxing for the head, but if you want to improve, change the pace, the distance or add a few intervals.
