UrbanUpdate

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Not so long ago, I played the worst basketball game of my life. I missed layups, turned over the ball, allowed my opponent free reign to the hoop. It was dark. As I slumped on the sidelines after the game, I realized how far I’d fallen from my prime a decade ago. Back then, I could dunk; now, at 33, I could barely curl my fingers over the rim. My game had regressed to hovering around the arc jacking threes. The last time I dunked a basketball, Michael Jordan was a Washington Wizard and people still listened to Coldplay.

I was never a good dunker; I never even dunked in a game. But the older I got, the fact that I couldn’t even come close to dunking seemed to represent everything I’d lost. The night of that disastrous game, I wondered what I could do—if anything—to get some of it back, to recapture some of the athleticism of my youth.

I gave myself ten weeks to dunk again. It wasn’t going to be easy: I figured I’d need to add five or six inches to my vertical in order to dunk a regulation basketball. I was in half-decent shape, and at six-foot-three, I had height on my side. But I had a few things other than age working against me—namely feet that had flattened over the years to canoe paddles, and an ankle injury I’d never properly rehabbed.

I scoured the Internet looking for guidance. There are dozens of sites promising a path to dunking, most of them coded at the dawn of the Web. It was daunting finding one that seemed legit. I ended up paying $67 for the Jump Manual, an online program offered by Jacob Heller, a trainer with a 42-inch vertical who counts NBA players among his clients, according to his website. Next, I ordered a pair of Strength Shoes. You’ll remember these if you’re a basketball player of a certain age—the ridiculous-looking training kicks popular in the ’90s, with a platform under the toe that places your bodyweight on the balls of your feet.

My quest to dunk started poorly. The main problem was that I could only do about half of the very long list of ercises the Jump Manual instructed at the crowded and inadequate YMCA near my place. The basketball court—the only space big enough to do some of the drills—was always occupied with classes. The Strength Shoes, meanwhile, were so absurd that I was too embarrassed to wear them in front of other gym-goers. I used them only a handful of times, in an empty stairwell on the top floor of the gym.

I decided to see a personal trainer to develop a program that a) worked, and b) didn’t get me laughed out the Y. After some Googling, I came across David Janik, a former Division I football player at North Carolina State who advertised sports-specific training on his site.

I met Janik at Velocity Sports Performance in Manhattan, where he trains clients. Janik was so handsome and well built he looked like an X-Men character. We talked about my athletic background and what I needed to do in order to dunk in ten weeks. He assigned me a three-days-a-week program that would improve my explosiveness and overall leg strength and told me to check back in three weeks to adjust it. "If you follow the program and your intensity level is high," he said, "I guarantee you’ll dunk again."

the program went like this

Ten minutes of dynamic stretching and light track running

Twenty minutes of plyometric training, including broad jumps, one-foot jumps, box jumps, depth jumps (jumping off a bench, and immediately springing off the floor), and full squat jumps. The first week I performed the ercises at 60 percent max effort, the second week 70 percent, and so on.

Leg weights: three sets of 10 reps of squats, deadlifts, and Bulgarian split squats. All performed with correct form. If my form slipped, I lowered the weight.

Core ercises (i.e. medicine ball twists, leg lifts, etc.)

A minimum of ten minutes of static stretching at the end of the workout. When I was finished, I drank a protein shake mid with glutamine powder, which helps with muscle recovery.

I followed the routine Mondays and Fridays. On Wednesdays, I did the same plyometric drills but swapped leg weights with upper-body training (push press, pull ups, and push ups). On off days I rested or played basketball, and I tried to stretch and ice my knees and ankles daily.

I worked out hard and noticed benefits after just a few weeks. By the next time I saw Janik, I’d put a couple inches on my vertical. For the following cycle, I increased the weight on the squats, deadlifts, and split squats, and dropped the reps by two. Two weeks later, I added weight and dropped reps again.

Janik was available by text whenever I needed him, like my very own dunk training app. The important thing, he said, was to work out hard and smart. When my knees or back were sore, he advised lowering the weight for a few sessions and eliminating depth jumps. "Listen to your body," he told me. And I did: I took a day off here or there if I needed it; I added more weight when I felt good. When, after five weeks, I started to worry that I wasn’t going to dunk again, he kept me motivated. "Leg strength is the key. Squat deep. Ass to grass," he told me, unsympathetic to the known fact that squats are fucking terrible.

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Later that week, I tried to dunk for the first time. The ball flew wildly out of my hand as I approached the bucket, but I had a surprising amount of height on my jump. A few days later, I tried with a mini-ball. It couldn’t quite squeeze it over the rim, but I was close.

One morning a week later, the gym at the Y was empty. I picked up the same mini-ball and unsuccessfully tried to throw it down. I found the more relad I was, the higher I could jump. So I loosened my shoulders, took a depth breath, and approached the rim. I held the ball for a beat longer this time, and easily popped it over the rim. It felt incredible. I did it a few more times, each easier than the last, pulling down on the rim with unnecessary force for maximum satisfaction. But as exhilarating as it was to dunk again, I was only using a mini-ball—I hadn’t completely reached my goal.

At pickup the next night, buoyed by the previous day’s accomplishment, I found a regulation ball that had good grip, one I could palm, and in between games, when no one was looking, I dunked for the first time in eleven years. If some dunks are described as thunderous, this one could be best described as a gentle fart in the breeze. But a dunk’s a dunk—and I had dunked.

I continued to follow the program for the next few weeks, and I was dunking fairly regularly. I got a friend to film me, and then bored everyone I knew by showing them the video for weeks on end, like a proud father of my own dunk. Each one was the same: I could only do it after a couple days’ rest, and only with a ball I could palm. I approached from the left, jumped off two feet, and dunked with my right hand. There would be no cocked-back, in-your-face, two-handed throw downs; no acrobatic Russell Westbrook highlight reel slams.

But whatever. I was 33 and I could dunk again, and it was magical. More importantly, I felt younger. And that, ultimately, was the whole point.

Mitch Moxley writes about style, culture, adventure, and more for publications like GQ, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine. He also runs a Substack newsletter called Front of Book. Back in the day, he wrote a feature for GQ about attending the North Korean film festival, which was featured in... Read moreInstagramRelated Stories for GQBasketballGQ SportsBasketball