I've recently turned 40, and after hitting my original goal of dunking again at age 38, I've updated my targets to (hopefully) keep progressing on my dunk journey.
Blog posts will highlight my progress towards my Dunking, Vertical Jump, and Weight goals, and I'll also add lots of other content around dunking, vertical jump training, and all things basketball.
Also on Twitter: @MidlifeVertical
I wasn't able to make it to my weekly basketball game this week, but I did take some video of vertical jump practice in my 10'3" basement.
I can almost get my entire palm to the ceiling now, which is MUCH better than this clip from Week 2 (mid-January) where I could only skim the ceiling with my fingertips:
Seeing my progress on video is exciting, and encouraging. I'm hoping to get some dunks on video by next week!
Some exciting news from last night's basketball game.
First, our team won (even though I missed basically every shot that I took).
Second, after the game, I DUNKED! (twice!)
Unfortunately, both of my dunks were before I'd started recording video clips... but I did have a witness from my basketball team see them.
DUNK ONE:
Standard Two-Foot Jump with One Hand. I'm still not very far over the rim, but the ball went in pretty cleanly.
DUNK TWO:
Bounce dunk, where a near-perfect toss made it a very easy finish. Approached from left to right, and the ball sat up perfectly just in front of the rim (almost a goaltend).
Also, I am jumping higher than any time this year. On my running vertical jump attempts, I managed to get my entire hand over the rim (to my wrist). With my hand measuring 8.5", I'm going to record this as hitting 10'8", which equals a 31" max vertical with my 8'1" reach.
Here is a new clip of my misses (taken AFTER I'd made the two dunks):
Tonight was the opposite of last week. Instead of having tons of energy after my weekly basketball game (which, we lost AGAIN, by the way), I was completely worn out and started to get cramps and other leg issues - likely from over-working my legs.
However, since I had my phone there with a camera this time, I still tried in a few dunk attempts.
Here are 3 videos:
1) 4 Dunks Attempts - the 4th one off a bounce almost went down:
2) Another Dunk Attempt that actually went down, but not cleanly:
3) Another dunk attempt - getting stuffed by the rim (this is how I felt on most of my attempts):
Clip #2 shows that even with some hurting legs, I'm still pretty close to my goal!
I'm only in Week 6, and I've only lost about 5-6 lbs of my 20 lb goal, so the journey continues.
I played another pretty bad basketball game tonight, but I had a bunch of energy left after the game, so I attempted several dunks.
Unfortunately, I forgot my phone/camera to take video... I'll have to try and describe how close I'm getting:
Running Vertical: I can still consistently get 2/3 of my 8.5" hand over the rim, which is about 10'6"-10'7" max vertical jump. I'm going to record this as 10'7", which gets me to a 30" running vertical.
Dunk Attempts:
I realized that with my large hands, and my ability to palm the ball, I may not need to get up as high as some other dunk trainers that I've studied on YouTube etc.
I got about 10 attempts over the rim, and squeezed a couple in! Still, none of these were clean dunks, so I can't say that I've reached my goal yet.
I'm learning more and more about jumping technique. My best dunk attempts were where I ran in from the left of the basket, took off in front of the basket, and then tried to get the ball over the right side of the rim with my right hand. I've noticed that I lose a LOT of momentum when I and holding the ball vs. jumping without the ball. I still need to work on my explosiveness both with and without the ball.
Overall, I'm really encouraged, and I'm feeling that a few more weeks of training (and some more weight loss) should get me to my goal!
To start my 5th week of my journey to dunk again at age 38, I recorded a few vertical jump tests in my basement. (I warmed up first with some running on the treadmill -- hence the sweat)
As a reminder, here was a clip of some jump tests in my basement from Week 2 (could touch fingertips to 10'3" ceiling with running jump):
A couple of firsts today... exciting to see some progress at the end of month one.
1) My first time touching the 10'3" ceiling from a standing start:
Based on this, I'm going to update my standing vertical to 10'3", which equals a 26" standing vertical with my 8'1" standing reach! (view the "Tracking My Progress" Page for details)
2) My first time touching 2 hands to the 10'3" ceiling:
