I hadn’t hit an Eastbay in a while.
So when I hit two of them in one session, it felt like something was finally clicking again. I’d had a low-rim session a few days before, and I went into this one super hyped to take some of those same dunks back up to 10 feet. I was due for an Eastbay, and I got two. That alone would have made the session worth it.
But the part that stuck with me wasn’t just the dunks. It was why they happened.
Why this session jumped out from the rest
The biggest difference between this session and the other ones I’d had recently was simple: I weighed less.
For a while I’d been sitting around 167 to 168 pounds. That’s not overweight for me, and I want to be clear about that. I was basically just experimenting with my weight, seeing what I jumped like closer to 170 and what I jumped like closer to 160. I wanted real feedback, not a guess.
The answer showed up in the air. Lighter felt better. Getting two Eastbays back, plus how close I got to a couple of bigger dunks, told me the lower weight was doing something. If you want the bigger picture on how I track all of this, I broke it down in my vertical and training.
Cutting weight for Dunk Camp
Once I saw the difference, I made a decision. For Dunk Camp, I’m going to try to be around 160.
At the time of this session I was around 162 to 163. So I’d already lost a bit. The goal was to get down to about 159 before Camp. I still had quite a bit of time, so I wasn’t stressing about it. It honestly doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme. I just would rather be a little bit lighter for Camp.
The physics of it is pretty straightforward. Less weight to move means more of my jump goes into getting up instead of fighting gravity. When you’re trying to peak for the biggest event of the year, those few pounds can be the difference between barely missing a dunk and putting it down clean. That’s the same reason I treat dunking like a full-body workout, because the whole system has to move together.
The crazy part: I wasn’t even de-loaded yet
Here’s what made this session feel so promising. I hit those two Eastbays while still fatigued.
I wasn’t de-loaded yet. So technically this was a tired session, full legs, no real rest behind it. And I still got up. That’s the kind of thing that gets me excited, because it tells me the ceiling is higher than what I was showing on that day.
The de-load was starting right after this. And once that kicks in, every session until Camp should be better. I’ll be fresher, my legs will have their pop back, and I’ll be jumping higher. So whatever I did fatigued, I should be able to top it once I’m rested. If you’ve never thought about how rest fits into a training block, I get into the periodization side of it in game dunks versus session dunks.
How close I got
Beyond the two Eastbays, I was close to some dunks I really wanted.
I got super close to a behind the back and a 360 Eastbay on that same day. Close enough that I could feel them coming. My hope was that some of those could go down in the upcoming weeks. Doing it while fatigued and at a weight I was still trimming made it feel like the timing was lining up perfectly for Camp.
If you want to know why the Eastbay matters so much to me in the first place, I told the whole story in landing my first Eastbay.
One catch before Camp
There was one unfortunate part of the plan.
I wasn’t going to get a real indoor session until Camp. I was traveling a bit, so I’d mostly be on outdoor courts and stuff. Not ideal when you’re trying to peak, but I wasn’t worried about it. We’d still get jumps in. We’d still get good reps in. Sometimes the best thing you can do during a de-load is exactly that, keep things light and let the freshness build.
So the next big thing was Dunk Camp in Utah, and I was fully locked in on preparing for it. The plan was simple: stay light, ride the de-load, keep getting reps wherever I could, and then go kill it at Camp and PR on vertical.
Two Eastbays back, a behind the back and a 360 Eastbay knocking on the door, all of it on tired legs and a body I was still trimming down. If that’s where I was before the rest even started, I liked my odds for Utah.
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