Millions around the world aspire to make it to the NBA one day, but very few of them actually see that dream become reality. It’s extremely difficult to be one of those 450 men who are on NBA rosters during the season. It takes years of blood, sweat, and tears to make it that far, and former NBA player Joe Alexander recently shared the insane workout plan he had to follow to get to the league on Instagram.
“I played in the NBA, and I’m going to tell you my exact workout hours from when I was a teenager, from 12 years old until 21 years old,” Alexander said. “I got drafted when I was 21. I played 15 years professional, most of it overseas, and these are the hours as a teenager that it took to make it.”
Alexander did make it clear he wasn’t a teenage prodigy. He didn’t have college scholarships coming his way and had to work a bit harder than the average NBA player. Alexander also hilariously pointed out that he is White, which made things just that little bit more difficult.
“When I was 10 years old, I set a workout quota for every day, working out two and a half hours a day,” Alexander said. “I wasn’t able to do it every day. I did it like four, maybe five days a week. I was 10 years old. By 12 years old, though, I was totally dialed in. I ramped those hours up to three hours a day with a ball in my hand.
“So either shooting or dribbling, and then 30 minutes of plyometrics plus 30 minutes of strength training,” Alexander stated. “And most of my strength training at the time was just body weight work at home. Now, from 12 years old until 21 years old, I never missed a single day of workouts. It was an eight-year span of totally obsessive, neurotic, autistic work.
“And not only did I never miss a single day of workouts, but I never missed my workout quotas,” Alexander continued. “I was obsessed with going to the NBA. By 13 years old, I increased my workload to one hour of strength and conditioning work every day, plus one hour of plyometric work. And this is really what saved me, what allowed me to go pro, the plyometrics, the speed, the agility, the quick feet.
“Because as a teenager, I was not super athletic, couldn’t jump super high,” Alexander added. “But after doing one hour of plyometrics every day, I had a 42-inch vertical. I was a world-class sprinter. I had what I believe was the quickest first step in the world, is what allowed me to become a pro player. And then I was also doing three hours of ball work every single day, 365 days a year, no days off for eight straight years.”
Alexander then added about half an hour of rehab activities, such as mobility stretching, into his workout. His work hours per day ended up being between five and a half to six hours. The three hours he spent with the ball were the minimum that he had to hit, and he’d sometimes go over it.
Alexander also revealed that the time he spent playing 5-on-5 basketball didn’t count towards his individual workout time. As for team practice, only half of it was included.
“If our team worked out for two hours, I only counted one hour towards my workout time,” Alexander said. “That continued in college. We did like three-hour workouts. I only took an hour and a half of that for my own personal workout time. Now, all this work, I could have done it more efficiently when I was a teenager. And the drills that I was doing were not the best.
“I mean, now I know better drills because I played 15 years professional, but at the time, the drills were not what’s important because the basketball skills are not the priority,” Alexander continued. “The priority is building a lifestyle where you fit this volume of work in, because later you’ll meet good coaches who can teach you which work you should be doing, which drills you should be doing.
“But if you don’t already have the habits and lifestyle to accommodate the volume that you need, then everything they teach you won’t matter because you won’t have the hours or the discipline to put it all into effect to put in that work,” Alexander added. “So yeah, that’s what allowed me to play pro for 15 years.”
So, how long did Alexander play in the NBA after putting in all this work? Just two seasons. The Milwaukee Bucks selected him with the eighth pick in the 2008 NBA Draft, but he didn’t make much of an impression as a rookie.
The Bucks traded Alexander to the Chicago Bulls in February 2010, and he became a free agent after playing just eight games for his new team. He’d be signed by the New Orleans Pelicans that offseason, but was waived months later.
The rest of Alexander’s professional career would be spent almost entirely overseas. He had some stints in the G League and was even signed by the Golden State Warriors briefly in 2013, but never played in the NBA again.
In all, Alexander averaged 4.2 points, 1.8 rebounds, 0.7 assists, 0.2 steals, and 0.4 blocks per game in the NBA. While you wouldn’t call that impressive, the 39-year-old defied the odds by even making it that far.
According to NCAA Research, 0.03% of high school players and 1.2% of college players end up being drafted by an NBA team. That’s how difficult it is. Alexander has also explained how just working hard isn’t enough to get to the NBA. He shared that the key is to attack the meta of basketball itself.
