I Got Injured…so I tried LeBron James' $1.5M Longevity Routine

Summary

In a quest to recover from a lingering ankle injury, the creator decided to try out LeBron James' famously expensive $1.5 million longevity and fitness routine. The video details a month-long journey of following LeBron's pregame workouts, recovery protocols, and diet, which includes innovative therapies like red light and cryotherapy, compression suits, and even a hyperbaric chamber. As the video unfolds, the creator experiences firsthand the demands of such a rigorous regime, while also acknowledging the unexpected respect gained for LeBron's dedication to maintaining peak performance.

Highlights

• LeBron spends $1.5 million annually just to maintain peak physical condition. 🤑
• Following LeBron’s routine is tougher than it looks but incredibly rewarding. 🏆
• Cold plunges and band training challenge the body unexpectedly. ❄️
• There was unexpected success both on the court and in personal health. 🏀
• Proper sleep and nutrition play vital roles in athletic recovery. 😴
• LeBron's routine makes even skeptics respect his discipline and regimen. 🤯

Key Takeaways

• LeBron's routine is all about consistency, mobility, and smart recovery. 💪
• You don't need $1.5 million to benefit from these protocols; discipline is key! 💸
• Trying these routines offers newfound respect for LeBron's dedication and skill. 🏀
• Injury recovery taught that small investments in your body pay off big time. 🚀

Overview

The creator embarks on a month-long journey to heal a reoccurring ankle injury by mimicking LeBron James' legendary fitness regime. Despite the glamour surrounding LeBron’s million-dollar lifestyle, the creator finds that the core of LeBron's success lies in achievable yet challenging routines and discipline.

Initially a LeBron skeptic, the creator embraces the intense regimen that includes cold plunges, band workouts, and daily sleep rituals. Experiencing challenges like red light and cryotherapy, they find a new respect for LeBron’s commitment to excellence.

Concluding the experiment with a game of pickup basketball, the creator celebrates both injury recovery and a newfound appreciation for disciplined self-care. The journey highlights that with determination and consistency, one can achieve remarkable personal health milestones, even without the hefty price tag.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to LeBron James' Longevity Chapter Title: Introduction to LeBron James' Longevity Summary: This chapter explores the exceptional longevity of LeBron James in the NBA. Despite being one of the oldest players in the league, he continues to perform at an MVP level. LeBron's career is highlighted by his sustained excellence, having been considered the best player in the NBA for many years, dating back to 2005 and continuing strong in 2020. His remarkable performance is attributed to factors such as his reported $1.5 investment, which likely refers to his investment in personal care and fitness to maintain his athleticism.
• 01:00 - 05:30: Trying LeBron's Routine and Initial Challenges The chapter explores the routine LeBron James follows to maintain his body, which costs $1.5 million annually. The narrator, a 32-year-old who hasn't played basketball in over 5 months due to an ankle injury, decides to test this routine with the hope that it can bulletproof his body and help him return to the basketball court.
• 05:30 - 15:30: Recovery Protocols on a Budget LeBron follows a routine of taking a cold plunge before his workouts on every game day to get his body alert and ready for action. The cold plunge seems to be very effective as it helps him wake up and prepare mentally for the work ahead.
• 15:30 - 19:30: Playing Basketball Again This chapter delves into LeBron's pregame training regimen, focusing on unconventional, yet rigorous exercises aimed at priming his body for peak performance. The program includes an hour of bandit work and spot shooting, across 38 circuits. These exercises target the core and involve muscles that typical weight training might overlook, presenting a deceptive challenge.
• 19:30 - 30:30: Diet and Concluding Reflections In this chapter, the focus is on the difficulty of performing a warm-up exercise that involves shooting 10 makes from various spots around the basketball three-point line and closer inside. The narrative touches on the personal goal of restrengthening an ankle over a 30-day period, drawing inspiration from LeBron's practice routine. The conclusion seems to tie into broader themes of discipline, personal development, and reflection over time.

I Got Injured…so I tried LeBron James' $1.5M Longevity Routine Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 LeBron James does not age. At least that's what it seems like. LeBron, [Applause] there's nobody who has been as good as long. By 2005, Brown was the best player in the NBA. Yeah. In 2020, he was still the best player in the NBA. Despite being the oldest player in the league, he is still playing at an MVP level. And that's thanks to the reported $1.5
• 00:30 - 01:00 million he spends every year just taking care of his body. Me, on the other hand, I'm 32 and haven't played basketball in over 5 months due to a reoccurring ankle injury. So, I want to see if LeBron's $ 1.5 million routine can bulletproof my body and help get me back on the court. [Music]
• 01:00 - 01:30 So, LeBron starts every game day with a cold plunge before his workouts. This helps get his body up and alert and awake. I think it's working because holy, I am awake. I am awake. Ready to get to work. To get started, I'm going
• 01:30 - 02:00 to be going through LeBron's pregame training protocols that starts with 1 hour of bandit work and spot shooting. This consists of 38 circuits designed to fire up his core while activating various supporting muscles that might not get hit with traditional weight training. And while these drills look a little bit odd, they're definitely a challenge. This is sneaky harder than it looks, which feels strange to say as
• 02:00 - 02:30 it's like the world's smallest band doing the goofiest looking exercise. But the hardest part of this warm-up had to be the shooting. Oh gosh. LeBron aims for 10 makes from multiple spots around the three-point line and inside. And while this might take me a while, let me explain how I'm going to be testing my progress over these next 30 days. My number one priority is restrengthening my ankle to hopefully
• 02:30 - 03:00 prevent any more injuries and get back to playing basketball. And my second goal is to see if just practicing like LeBron can actually make me a more skilled player at shooting and attacking the basket when I finally get back to playing, but I probably shouldn't get ahead of myself. LeBron, it's like 10 makes in like less than a minute. It took me over 6 minutes. all these like banded things. Like it feels goofy, but it's like more
• 03:00 - 03:30 tiring than I expected. I can barely get the ball to the hoop. And the fact that he does this before practice is very, very impressive. LeBron time. And after 2 hours on the court, I had only made it through the first half of LeBron's day. I am tired. Time for strength training. [Music]
• 03:30 - 04:00 our training has changed and evolved in order for him to continue to play at a high level. You know, the the bench press and the squats, you know, that that that's that's still important, but uh now it's all the supplemental things that you do. So now now we focus on on mobility, core work and strength, uh single leg hopping, uh a bunch of eccentric work, you know, we call them the difference makers. it it's all these fine-tuning uh exercises that you have to do to maintain if you want to continue doing this for a while. This is Mike Mancius, LeBron's trainer. This is
• 04:00 - 04:30 my great trainer coaching. And Mike just published a book detailing how anyone can take the pillars of LeBron's longevity plan and apply them to their own life. And after one day of doing it, bro, I am tired. And all I did today was do LeBron's pregame training and I didn't even play the game. To be able to do this for 22 years
• 04:30 - 05:00 consistently, like dude, the discipline is insane. And I'm saying this as a longtime LeBron James hater. Yeah, bit of an confession here, but as a lifelong Raptors fan, I can't think of another person who has caused me more pain than LeBron James. I have watched him eviscerate and humiliate my team year after year after year. There was a point
• 05:00 - 05:30 in time where everyone referred to the city of Toronto as LeBronto. All that to say, I do not have the best history with LeBron, but I I can give credit where credit is due. like the man is a machine with taking care of his body and yeah, tomorrow I'm going to find out what he does to keep it going. So, in the meantime, I'm getting some sleep. LeBron's most expensive protocols are wrapped up in his recovery. So, I
• 05:30 - 06:00 want to see if I can try all of them with a budget of $500. Starting today with red light and cryotherapy. While the studies into red light therapy are still pretty mixed, LeBron uses the procedure to promote cellular activity and enhance his recovery. All that from standing near a toasty red light. It's very warm in here and I have to rotate in 5 [Music] minutes. I kind of feel like a
• 06:00 - 06:30 rotisserie chicken. [Music] It's warm. Like really warm. And when my 20 minutes of red light were up, it was time for me to move from the fire into the freezer. You said this is like 3 minutes. Yeah, it's 3 minutes. 3 minutes. All right. I'm going to have a conversation with you and I'll talk to you and move around the room. Cold therapy seems to be the go-to for any athlete trying to reduce
• 06:30 - 07:00 inflammation and muscle soreness. That is shocking. And cryotherapy allows you to reap those benefits in just three minutes by making your body really freaking cold. It just increasingly gets cold with every buff. Stay mindful of your chin a little. You don't want to breathe that. My bad. My bad. My bad. And while the cold was shocking, that brings your total state to 15015. So was the [Music] price. That was crazy. I feel like my
• 07:00 - 07:30 whole body currently is tingling except for my head which feels like it's like warm. It feels like I'm about to like break out in a sweat but like just here and then everything else is just like tingling like pins and needles kind of tingling doing the the red light therapy and I feel like the whole time I was like is this doing anything? With the cryo, it would just like puff these little like gaseous cold bursts at you and
• 07:30 - 08:00 you'd just be like increasingly shocked. Like cold cold like and it just kept doing that for the full 3 minutes. So that was 150 bucks too. 150 bones for that. 150 bucks to roleplay a rotisserie chicken. Huh, dude. I want to go nap. I love to sleep. I have to get my eight hours of sleep. 8 hours plus. I think that's the best way to re-energize your
• 08:00 - 08:30 body, re-energize your mind, re-energize your spirit, re-energize everything. And in addition to getting 8 hours of sleep at night, LeBron also loves taking naps. That was awesome. I totally understand why LeBron prioritizes getting like a 90minute nap in addition to his 8 hours of sleep because yeah, I feel great right now. I'm ready to get
• 08:30 - 09:00 to work. With LeBron's protocols in place, my plan is to continue doing LeBron's pregame workout and strength training routine every other day. And in addition to this, each week I'm going to try to add a new recovery protocol that LeBron uses. Very strange feeling. I'm just like slowly inflating. Starting with the compression suit. Honestly, it feels really nice. Just like pressure
• 09:00 - 09:30 everywhere basically. My nose is kind of itchy. Oh my gosh. Bless. Thank you. Thank you. [Music] I've always wanted to be as great as I could be cuz I knew I had the gifts. But in order for me to actually fulfill what I think I can become, I have to be able to tap into the process of how I treat
• 09:30 - 10:00 my body, how I how I do things, how the hours that I put into it in order to be the best I can be. That is why you're able to succeed. tingles, man. Whole body tingles. And with the time I was investing into my ankle stability and strengthening, I was feeling more confident moving and maneuvering on the court each week. For
• 10:00 - 10:30 the first time in a very long time, I'm going to play not not full-on pickup, but just a game of one-on-one with Brendan. I'm excited, but I'm also kind of nervous. I just don't want to get injured, but I'm ready to play. And while we find out how my ankle holds up, I want to talk about the sponsor of this video, Transparent Labs. When you are pushing your body for basketball or strength training, you want to pay as much attention to what you are putting into your body as what
• 10:30 - 11:00 you're trying to get out. This is why LeBron builds his diet around whole foods and actively avoids added sugars or artificial sweeteners. And this is why I get my protein from Transparent Labs. All their products are third party tested, so you know exactly what you're putting into your body with no artificial sweeteners and no unwanted chemicals. So, before meeting up with Brendan for our game today, I actually had some of Transparent Lab's vanilla protein. And while I'm currently losing,
• 11:00 - 11:30 my body feels pretty good. Transparent Labs has 14 flavors of protein that you can choose from. Though my personal favorites are their chocolate and oatmeal cookie flavors, and if you use our code goal guys at checkout, that'll get you 10% off with any purchase. So, use our link in the description. Give Transparent Labs a try today. And now, back to the game. Seeing as it was my first time playing in 5 months, I definitely started off
• 11:30 - 12:00 pretty slow. But soon enough, I felt like I was getting back into it and not worrying about my ankle. And next thing I knew, not only was I winning, but I had one point left to win the game. [Music] That felt pretty good. Not not perfect, but pretty good. I definitely still was
• 12:00 - 12:30 aware of my ankle, especially those like first few plays, just like very hesitant, but damn, I really missed playing ball. Lots of progress still to be made to feel like fully comfortable. But this was a good start. This is a really good start. And on another positive note, I touched the rim for the first time ever today. which may not seem like much, but for me that's cause for celebration. For LeBron's diet, the goal is to prioritize
• 12:30 - 13:00 protein, complex carbohydrates, and fats. And the reason you see a bit higher carbs and fats in his diet is because LeBron tries to prioritize his energy reserves. So, if LeBron is gearing up to put a beat down on your favorite team, the carbohydrates in his diet will be the first to convert into energy, fueling his first and second quarters. Meanwhile, the proteins and fats in his diet will take longer to break down through the third and fourth quarter. So, LeBron has all the energy he needs to break your heart.
• 13:00 - 13:30 [Applause] Good night, Cleveland. That is for you. [Music] So, today I've made a chicken salad with a low-fat mayo as well as some roasted vegetables. And while LeBron is able to hire a personal chef to handle his nutrition, I'm able to meal prep this for a total cost of 355 per meal, which means I'm still on budget to try one of
• 13:30 - 14:00 LeBron's most expensive therapies, the hyperaric chamber. And not going to lie, on first glance, this is one of the most insane looking things I have ever seen. And I am not the only one who thinks that. So the hyper bear chamber is crazy to me. like ah it's giving coffin. I don't like it. And while I'm going to be hanging out in this futuristic looking coffin for the next 60 minutes, I should probably
• 14:00 - 14:30 explain what this is supposed to do. Hyperbaric chamber therapy involves filling a compressed space with air until it reaches up to three times the normal atmosphere, placing your body under pressure as if you were swimming deeper and deeper into the ocean. My ears keep popping. It's just like every 30 seconds. Pop, pop, pop. At the same time, you are breathing in 100% pure oxygen, delivering a high concentration of oxygen quickly and
• 14:30 - 15:00 deeply into the body, promoting overall recovery. And after an hour in the chamber, I can honestly say this was like no other experience I have ever tried. Was it crazy? Yeah. Wo. It feels like I like woke up from a nap, but I didn't nap. Wow. It's like Yeah, it's weird. And with my total cost of the hyperbaric chamber coming out to
• 15:00 - 15:30 $157.50, that takes my total spending on the LeBron protocols up to $36,265, which is actually well under my $500 budget. The good news is that even if you don't have any money to spend on these LeBron protocols, the most important thing I've taken away from this is looking at LeBron's consistency, his daily mobility and strength work, his prioritizing of his sleep, warming up pregame, icing after games, like all these little things that you can do for
• 15:30 - 16:00 pretty much no money. As far as all the protocols that do have a price tag attached to them, I think the ones that I would recommend as best bang for your buck would be the Normatch air compression suit and the hot and cold tubs, which both of these are the ones that I felt the best afterwards, but also total for them came to $55 Canadian. But to put my body to the ultimate test, I want to see how these protocols serve me in a game of pickup. And this is going to be my first time
• 16:00 - 16:30 playing pickup basketball in 6 months. So, I'm really curious to see how my ankle holds up and how rusty I am. Come on, guys. While I was able to get back to decent shooting averages just by myself practicing, when it comes to a game, there is still a long way to go. But as far as the mobility, activation, core work that I did throughout this process, I actually think that's paying off
• 16:30 - 17:00 as I felt actually pretty good attacking the basket and guarding players that are bigger than And more important than any of that is the fact that I was able to play for a solid 2 hours injuryfree, feeling good, and not worrying about my ankle. And as far as my status as a LeBron hater goes, uh, let's just say trying his protocols has given me an immense
• 17:00 - 17:30 amount of respect for how hard and consistently he has worked to be the best. And what he is doing is truly, truly remarkable. The NBA's alltime scoring record now belongs to LeBron James. Be around for, you know, hopefully 10 10 to 15 years. But I think you're only going to get out of the game as much as you put into it. And uh that's the thing that you guys don't
• 17:30 - 18:00 see. That comes from practice. Getting better and better every single day, every single year. It's all about eating right, staying healthy, both physically, mentally, and doing the right things off and on the court. the first father-son duo to play together. Work is always going to pay off, you know, and uh when you shortcut the process, it'll catch up to you. It's over. It's over. I want it to be great. I want it to be great. And you can't be great if you don't if you don't punch your clock in. So, I'm going just try to do the best I can. And uh I think I'm going to do a real a real good
• 18:00 - 18:30 job.