Kobe Bryant on Fitness Quotes

"I did a lot of track work. I did a lot of running. I did a lot of sprinting. I did a lot of agility work. Everything was done with a purpose."

"I would run until I was sick, then I would keep running. That's how you build endurance."

"If you want to be great in a particular area, you have to obsess over it. For me, that meant obsessing over my physical conditioning."

"The physical part of training is actually the easiest part. It's the mental part—the staying focused on the repetitive, mundane tasks—that is the challenge."

"The weight room was my sanctuary. It was where I built the armor I needed to survive the long NBA season."

"My diet was a weapon. I ate what I needed to fuel the machine, not what I wanted to taste."

"My routine was grueling. It was 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM, 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM, and 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Every single day."

"The repetition is what makes you great. Doing the same thing over and over until it's perfect."

"You can't achieve greatness without physical sacrifice. You have to push your body to places it doesn't want to go."

"I wasn't going to let anyone outwork me. I was going to make sure that if you were going to beat me, you were going to have to work harder than I was."

"You have to work hard in the dark to shine in the light."

"I would look at my physical limitations as puzzles to be solved. If my ankle was weak, I'd find ten ways to strengthen it."

"Conditioning is the one thing you can control. You might not have the most talent, but you can always be the most fit."

"The 666 program—six hours a day, six days a week, for six months—was the foundation of my physical dominance."

"If you're not training when everyone else is sleeping, you're not doing enough."

"I never wanted to be the guy who said 'I wish I had worked harder.' I wanted to leave it all on the floor."

"When we are saying this cannot be accomplished, this cannot be done, then we are short-changing ourselves. My brain, it cannot process failure."

"Your body can do a lot more than your mind lets you believe. You have to break that mental barrier."

"I treated every practice like it was Game 7. If you can't do it in the dark, you can't do it under the lights."

"I used to do toe-curls to strengthen my feet. No detail was too small for my fitness routine."

"You have to find the joy in the process of getting better. The sweat and the soreness are signs of progress."

"I never felt like I was working. I felt like I was playing. But the preparation was where the real game was won."

"You have to be willing to be bored with the basics. Mastery of fitness is mastery of the fundamentals."

"I didn't want to have any 'what ifs'. I wanted to know that I did everything I possibly could to be the best I could be."

"I made sure I was the first person in the gym and the last one to leave. That's how I built my confidence."

"I would do 1,000 shots a day. It wasn't just about the shot; it was about the conditioning required to take that many shots."

"The long-distance running wasn't for the cardio; it was for the mental discipline of not stopping when your mind tells you to."

"I hated to lose more than I loved to win. That's why I stayed in the gym until my legs felt like lead."

"If you start at 4 AM, and you do two hours of work, then you come back at 10 AM and do two more, then at 3 PM and do two more, then at 7 PM and do two more—you have done more work than anybody else."

"Recovery is just as important as the workout itself. If you don't recover, you can't perform at the highest level the next day."

"I leaned into the discomfort. I wanted to feel the burn because I knew that's where the growth was."

"Pain is just a message. You have to decide if you're going to listen to it or keep moving forward."

"When you have an injury, you don't just wait for it to heal. You work on everything else that isn't broken."