Most people think dunking is all legs. It isn’t.
This one had three parts: a dunk session, a full workout, and a weekly Q&A. It was the start of a new training cycle, my last one before I shifted into prep for Dunk Camp, so I went after some real numbers in the gym and then answered training questions afterward. Here’s the breakdown.
The Session: Running the 9-Foot Dunk Levels
For the session I ran the 9-foot dunk levels from Dunk Camp. Think of them like karate belts, except for dunks, working from the easy ones up to the hard ones. I’d only done it one other time, and this round was a lot easier than the last, which is a simple way to see progress without needing to test anything.
The Workout: A Power Clean PR and Finally Fixing My Squat
After isos, a dynamic warmup, and sprints, I went to power cleans. My old one-rep PR was 185, and I’d recently hit it for two. This time I sent it for three and got it, so that was a new three-rep PR at 185. I took a ton of rest between reps to get there, but it counts.
Then half squats, and this is the lift I’m most proud of. For the last three or four sessions I’d done almost nothing but work on my form, because I’d been putting too much stress on my back and my knees were hurting. I had to figure out my depth and where I was hinging before I touched real weight. This day I finally felt comfortable enough to load it, working from 165 up to 275 for three. That’s 50 pounds more than I’d done in a long time, and for the first time in a while the squat itself felt hard, instead of my form being the hard part. With my proportions I can’t go bottomless without hinging, so I’m honest that it’s a half squat, but the progress was real.
I finished with hamstrings, single-leg calf raises, and core. My home setup is rough, so I subbed where I had to, like sit-ups in place of a machine I didn’t have. If you want to see a full leg day start to finish, I broke one down in my first filmed vertical jump workout.
Why Core and Upper Body Matter More Than People Think
While I rested through my core circuit, I dropped some knowledge that took me a long time to figure out. Core plays a huge role in jumping, especially on trick dunks. On an Eastbay you’re catching the ball and pulling it through, on a behind the back you’re rotating, on an Underboth you’re compressing. All of that is core.
The proof showed up after my long outdoor sessions. On days I jumped for three or four hours, the most sore thing the next day was rarely just my legs. It was my core, my upper back, my wrists, and my calves. Dunking uses your entire body, which means you can’t only train legs a couple times a week and expect to fly. Upper body helps too, mostly for hand speed. Tom Barnes has huge arms and some of the fastest hands on Eastbays and behind the back dunks I’ve seen. You don’t need bodybuilder size, but if you skip core and upper body entirely, you won’t be the best in the world. That’s exactly why guys like Isaiah Rivera and Jordan Kilganon train them.
Q&A: Rim Height, Box Jumps, and Measuring Vert Honestly
What’s the difference between a 9’10” rim and a 10-foot rim? The boring answer is two inches. The real answer is that if you don’t measure the rim, you have no baseline. If you’re dunking on a 9’9″ rim and don’t know it, you might think you’re having an insane day when the rim is just low, or beat yourself up on a bad day when the rim is high. Take a tape measure to the floor and find out. I dunk on 9’10” a lot on purpose, because at 16 it’s more useful for me to drill dunks slightly lower and transfer them up once I gain a couple inches.
Someone said they had a higher vertical than me because they jumped onto a 48-inch box. Jumping onto a box is not your vertical. I hop onto a 60-inch box pretty easily, and I obviously don’t have a 60-inch vert. The highest jumper in the world has around a 50-inch vertical and jumps onto a box over 70 inches. A box jump lets you tuck your knees up to you. A vertical is simply how high you can touch, minus your standing reach. Don’t confuse the two.
What’s my standing reach? It’s 7’10.5″. I get comments from people my height claiming a 7’4″ reach, and usually that’s a measuring problem, not short arms. Reach all the way up and lower your opposite shoulder. When John Evans measures my reach, he pushes my arm until I genuinely can’t go higher. If you cheat your reach, you get nothing out of it, because the day you test at a real event the number won’t hold up. Being honest with your measurements is the same idea behind the dunker spreadsheet, where real numbers only mean something if everyone measures the same way.
I answer questions like these every week. In another edition I covered my real vertical and how I actually train, so if you’re working on your own jumping, this is the kind of stuff I like to clear up so the work you put in actually counts.
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