I landed my second-ever Dubble Up Eastbay.
That alone made this one of my favorite sessions, but it almost didn’t happen at all. We started at a different gym, and the floor there nearly shut us down before we even got going. This session was with Minnesota Dunk Squad member Rich, filmed by his cousin Sam, and by the end of it I had a new Eastbay PR and a milestone dunk I’d only ever landed once before.
The First Gym Floor Almost Ruined It
We’d been at the first gym just a couple days earlier, on a Wednesday. This time the floor was a problem. It was too humid in there, so the floor got all whack, and we couldn’t even wipe it down to fix it.
I went up for one jump and basically had to bail into a little air dunk because I was slipping. It wasn’t completely terrible, but it was bad enough that I didn’t trust it. When you’re trying to jump as high as you can and load into a takeoff, a slick floor is exactly how you roll an ankle or worse.
So we made the call. I wasn’t trying to get injured for the sake of one session, and we packed up and went to a different gym instead.
Why I’d Rather Move Than Risk It
Here’s the lesson I keep relearning: a bad floor isn’t worth it. There’s always going to be the temptation to just send it anyway because you drove out, you’re warmed up, and you want to dunk. But one slip on a wet floor can cost you weeks or months.
If you’ve got the option to move to a safer surface, take it every time. I’ve already learned what an injury taught me about training smarter, and protecting your body is the whole point of being able to keep dunking. Moving gyms cost us a little time. A blown ankle would have cost the rest of the summer.
If you dunk in Minnesota and want to know where the good surfaces are, I keep a running list of the best Minnesota gyms for sessions.
The New Gym Felt Right Away
The second gym was a totally different feel. The floor held, my takeoffs felt solid, and I could finally commit to my jumps.
Rich and I kept a simple rhythm going. Every time we dunked, we’d wait about 45 seconds before jumping again. That rest matters more than people think. When you’re chasing your biggest dunks, you need your legs fresh for each attempt, not gassed from going back to back. Rich is a seriously good dunker, and he warms up with that same patience before he ramps up.
We got a lot of good dunks in, plus a reverse I’ll happily take even if it wasn’t exactly what I drew up. A few attempts I asked Sam to cut, because not everything makes the highlight reel. That’s just sessions. You miss, you reset, you go again.
PRing My Eastbay on 9’11.5″
The big one was my Eastbay. I PR’d it, technically on a rim set at 9’11.5″.
An Eastbay is a between-the-legs dunk, where the ball goes through your legs in the air before you finish it. It’s one of the dunks I’m proudest of, since I landed my first one not that long ago. If you want the full story on that, I wrote about landing my first Eastbay and the years it took to get there. Pushing the height up to 9’11.5″ felt like real progress on a dunk I’ve worked at for a long time.
My Second-Ever Dubble Up Eastbay
Then it was Dubble Up time. That’s the one I’d been waiting for all session.
A Dubble Up is a tougher version of a regular dunk. Instead of just holding the ball through the motion, you tap the ball up to yourself first while you’re already in the air, then catch it and finish. So a Dubble Up Eastbay means I tossed the ball up to myself, grabbed it, put it between my legs, and dunked, all on the same jump. If that sounds like a lot of moving parts in a fraction of a second, it is. If you want the cleaner breakdown of these terms, I keep a dunk terminology guide for exactly this.
I got close on an early try and at least got it under my legs, which felt encouraging even though it didn’t go down. Then I put it together. Second-ever Dubble Up Eastbay, in the bag. The first one I ever landed was a moment, and getting a second proves the first wasn’t a fluke.
A Session Worth Remembering
By the time we wrapped, I was wiped. I got to a point where I was too tired to push off the floor anymore, which is usually how you know you left it all out there.
This was a really good session with Rich, and a huge thanks to Sam for coming out and filming the whole thing. An Eastbay PR on 9’11.5″, my second Dubble Up Eastbay, and a stack of other good dunks made it more than worth the gym switch. There’s a real difference between game dunks and the stuff we chase in a session like this, and if you’re curious about that split I broke down game dunks versus session dunks in its own post.
Rich and I are going to be running a lot more sessions at this new gym, because it’s been great so far. The biggest takeaway, though, is the simplest one. Don’t dunk on a bad floor when you can move to a better one. Protect yourself first, and the milestones will keep coming.
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