LeBron’s Personal Trainer Breaks Down A Typical King James Workout For Core Strength And Mobility

LeBron James

Getty Image / Jevone Moore/Icon Sportswire


I don’t think it’s unfair to call LeBron James the best athlete in the world. Personally, I’d go with someone like Kylian Mbappé or Cristiano Ronaldo but LeBron James has as much claim to the title of ‘World’s Best Athlete’ as any other elite athlete on the planet.

Obviously, LeBron was born with immense potential but it’s what he has done with that potential that has taken him from ‘high school phenom’ to the G.O.A.T. conversation. Nobody in their right mind has ever questioned the work ethic and commitment to excellence of LeBron James. Sure, he might’ve had momentary lapses throughout his career. Phoning it in for a few minutes at a time. But the man is a BEAST in his pursuit of greatness.

Mike Mancias has been training LeBron James for sixteen years and he recently got with the YouTube team from Men’s Health to break down what a typical workout might look like for King James and the exercises he focuses on for warming up, mobility, core strength, and more.

Here, he demonstrates some of the common exercises LeBron goes through and explains the process and purpose of each. I’ve got a full-text breakdown of the workout he goes through below as well.

As he tells it, the preparation always starts the night before with proper sleep and a nutritious dinner. That’s followed by a pre-workout shake on the way to the gym prior to the workout.

Once there, they start each workout with around 10 minutes of foam rolling the entire body to get the muscles prepared for movement. Then he has LeBron go through the ‘Spider-Man Crawl’ which is a great hip opener and ideal for extending the range of movement in preparation for activity.

Next is the total body cardiovascular warmup using the Versaclimber machine. James will do 3 sets of 30-seconds on this machine to get warmed up. Personally, I hate this machine but only because of how hard it makes me work so I fully get why it’s great but I never look forward to the Versaclimber. If you don’t have this machine at home he says you can do Bear Crawls instead.

After that, they move onto Strength Training. They’ll use the barbell for Inverted Rows to target the Back, Core, and Glutes. They’ll do this for 3 sets of 8-10 reps. Up second in the strength training circuit is the Landmine Rotational Press for 3 sets of 8-12 reps per side.

This is a total body movement that engages all the major muscles. This is a great exercise for creating that ‘explosion’ LeBron has to get above the rim.

Moving on, they do the Multi-Planar Lunge third and they’ll do this for 3 sets of 3 rounds per side which is all about creating those muscles necessary for a change of direction on the court. Those are followed by Lateral Chops on the Cables for 3 sets of 10 reps per side. Anyone who has spent time in the gym already knows this one. They focus on rotating the torso and not just the arms with each ‘chop’.

For Recovery, they focus on 3 key components: Nutrition, Mobility, and Cryotherapy.

And that’s how the KING’s special sauce gets made. Now all anyone needs to do is repeat this every day for the rest of their lives and they’ll be in great shape. Simple, right?