Throughout the summer and particularly in the past few weeks, Lakers Director of Athletic Performance Chip Schaefer has been among the members of L.A.’s training staff routinely working with various Lakers players. Many of L.A.’s younger guys - including Luke Walton, Josh Powell, Sasha Vujacic and Adam Morrison - have regularly been participating in strength and conditioning programs run by Schaefer.
Other players go through their own specific training regimen outside of the practice facility (i.e. Lamar Odom’s boxing routine), but Schaefer and the staff monitor what each and every guy is doing. Accordingly, Lakers.com headed over to the training room to get a player-by-player update from Schaefer:
KOBE BRYANT
Schaefer: One of the challenges that’s presented with an athlete like Kobe - who obviously is fully dedicated to his health and his well-being 365 days a year – are all the off-court obligations that need to be fulfilled in a limited amount of time. It’s non-stop. Therefore, it’s difficult for him to get the consistent training that he’d probably prefer to get if it weren’t for those obligations. That said, I don’t know anybody that does a better job of doing it all. The last couple of weeks Kobe has been coming in and coordinating workouts very, very early in the morning. I don’t know when he sleeps, but he likes to get his work done early. It’s been mostly on-court stuff, including a lot of flexibility stuff, here at the facility. As talented as he is, what really separates Kobe is that he continues to strive his on-court skill work, and he never gets tired of the fundamentals. There’s a reason why he is where he is.
ANDREW BYNUM
Schaefer: We do try and communicate with Andrew on almost a weekly basis. He did some international travel as well, but has created a base for himself to train in the offseason in Atlanta. He’s there right now, but we’re hoping to see him within a week or so. The reports that I have from Atlanta – I have a friend in the Hawks organization – are that he’s working hard and was just playing in their gym the other day. We’re hoping for big things for him this year.
PAU GASOL
Very late in the year, Pau made a comment to me that he’d done more weights (last year) than throughout his entire career combined. I laughed and said, ‘That means you’ve either really worked hard this year or it speaks to how little you did prior to this year,’ and we had a good time with that.
more on each player in the link.