WNBA star Jewell Loyd doesn’t cut any corners when it comes to her workouts. Loyd, 30, shared a video of herself working out in the gym in black sweatpants and a purple shirt, sparring and flexing her biceps. “Back with my guy!!! @foxholecoach #5amclub,” she captioned the high-energy post. Loyd was dubbed the “Gold Mamba” by Kobe Bryant himself—here’s how Loyd is continuing on his work, and what her own training looks like.
Loyd starts the day with meditation and taking her dogs for a one-mile walk. “When it comes to breakfast, I do not hold back,” she told Women’s Health. “I love breakfast, and unless I’m just having a smoothie, I go all out. I love pancakes and waffles, and if it’s game day, I add bacon and eggs. I’ll never skip breakfast. Post-breakfast, I get training. Sometimes I’ll lift weights in the morning, but usually, it’s basketball first to just kind of get my body moving. If I’m starting with lifting, I try to get a nice sweat and get tempos in my lifts, but it doesn’t take me super long to get warm. I always focus most on my shoulders.”
Loyd has developed an appreciation for pickleball, and even takes part in tournaments. “I start with basketball workouts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,” she told Women’s Health. “On Tuesdays and Thursdays, it’s pickleball, and that’s a two-hour workout of technique stuff. Lately, I’ve been playing pickleball every day, getting ready for a tournament. My body’s been adjusting to a different sport, but it’s been fun. I grew up playing tennis, so I’m used to the spinning motions, but there really are different muscles being used compared to basketball.”
Dubbed “Gold Mamba” by Kobe Bryant himself, Loyd created the Gold Mamba Workout to help aspiring ballers in his honor. “Kobe had a lot of information and, in his latest years after he retired, he did a great job of giving that information to the next generation of athletes, regardless of the sport they were in,” Loyd told Business Insider. “For me, understanding that and knowing that I have information, I want to do as much as I can to give that back to the next generation.”
Loyd tries to practice good sleep habits. “I’m fairly consistent, but depending on my workout schedule, my sleep fluctuates a little bit,” she told Women’s Health. “I obviously sleep better when I don’t have to wake up for that 5:00 lift. But sometimes even when I don’t have to get up that early my sleep is still off because maybe I played an extra game of pick-up the day before or did something else and didn’t recover enough.”
Loyd says the 94FEETOFGAMEAPP allows Kobe’s legacy to be passed down and appreciated even by people who couldn’t afford one-on-one training. “This app allows people who really don’t have resources or don’t have a personal trainer to get professional training and advice — the real stuff and not just stuff from some people who don’t know anything about the league,” Loyd told Business Insider. “They’re getting real access to Phil [Handy]— who’s been in the league and has trained everyone from Kobe to Kawhi [Leonard] to Kyrie [Irving] — and real information, which is hard to get sometimes, especially for females. So allowing them to have that all in one place in an app is pretty amazing.”