This is episode 67 of the Dunk Talk Podcast, and our most popular guest is back with the biggest number this show has ever hosted. I’m Dylan Haugen, with Hunter Castona, and Dillan McCarthy, the self-described and now community-ratified “alien,” has officially tested a 50-inch vertical at 19 years old: roughly the sixth human ever verified, and the youngest by years. When we interviewed him nine months ago he was at 49, jumping seven days a week with self-invented training we explicitly told you not to copy. The story of what changed between 49 and 50 is, satisfyingly, partly the story of him finally training intelligently, and partly the story of him remaining gloriously incomprehensible.
The recap, for the unfamiliar
The short version from episode 30: volleyball kid from New York (never one game of organized basketball), 4’10” in seventh grade, got into dunking at 12 watching Kilganon, broke his kneecap clean in half in eighth grade after a week of 500-pound leg presses at 90 pounds bodyweight, rebuilt from a 2-inch vertical via seated calf raises at his school desk, first dunk at 16 at 5’6”, and then the regime that made him famous: 300-plus max-effort jumps a day, every day (one recorded day hit 427; one week hit roughly 1,300), alongside 27 exercises a day at four sets of 12-20 reps, including 225x20x4 ass-to-grass elevated-heel squats. He once did so many barbell reps that blood came out of his arms, a sentence I am quoting and not elaborating on. Injuries through all of it: essentially none.
The funniest THP signing in history
What changed everything was the best cold-DM ever sent: THP guarantees six inches of vertical in six months or free training, so Dillan, sitting on a 49, messaged Austin Burke to inform him that he’d be collecting a 55-inch vertical for free. Austin found this funny enough to hand over John Evans’ phone number. John’s reaction to Dillan’s training history was, per Dillan, speechlessness: in a career of coaching every kind of athlete, he had never seen volume like it. To John’s great credit, the onboarding wasn’t “throw it all out”: two weeks of observation, a month of testing exercise responses, then a gradual transition, respecting that this body had adapted to loads that would hospitalize the rest of us.
The new shape of his training: lower reps, heavier weight, real explosive work, actual deloads, sprint training, one knee iso from John, and jumping cut from seven days a week to one or two (still five-hour sessions of 200-400 jumps with 40-second rests, because the alien remains the alien). The results: an ATG squat now at 405 for 2, dramatically better jump and lift technique, a longer penultimate, learned breathing mechanics, and a body that feels “wired” instead of fatigued. Cleans lag at 185, sabotaged by an anatomical quirk: unusually long forearms that torque his wrists in the catch, a disadvantage that extends, cruelly, to his favorite dunk, the Elbow (Travis Reynolds’ stubby forearms making elbows easy is the exact inverse). Knee pain since we last spoke: twice, gone by the next morning, both times.
The other unlock: Facebook Marketplace and a weighted ball
The skill-side change is my favorite detail. Last episode, Dillan had no low rim and essentially no hand-speed practice. The fix: free hoops off Facebook Marketplace. His backyard currently holds six hoops (peak inventory: ten); he lowers and destroys them with weighted-ball low-rim work, and when one dies, he gets another free one. Daily weighted-ball control work, including in his bedroom against the wall, transformed his hand speed and ball control, exactly the gap we flagged nine months ago. The man took our one criticism and solved it for zero dollars.
The 50, jump by jump
The test-day protocol is a study in accidental professionalism. His prior session had been a flat-tire day (could barely Windmill), so he took two full weeks off jumping, at the start of a deload, the closest thing to a taper he’s ever run. Diet locked for days: nothing processed, carbs the day before, grapes in the morning, a banana three hours out, water and a Body Armor. Cold gym, never broke a sweat. Roughly 20 jumps in, the 50 went up clean. He then spent the next 30 jumps hunting 50.5 and 51, came agonizingly close to the 51, and shut it down at about 50 total jumps, which for Dillan constitutes restraint. He’s also now training the right-left plant alongside his natural one, because apparently one world-class plant wasn’t enough inventory.
The meta-question Hunter and I keep circling: is his durability the result of the insane workload (a tendon base built by years of daily volume) or pure genetic lottery? Dillan’s own answer is honest: no clue. He tried his old program on a friend; the friend did not become an alien. As we said in the genetics episode: study the outliers, don’t copy them. He is the outlier other outliers point at.
What 50 at 19 means
Some context for the number: the verified 50 club is a handful of humans, mostly mid-to-late twenties at the time of testing (Isaiah at 24-25, Dak, Espinosa at 20). Dillan is 19, roughly one year into intelligent training, with his first contest behind him (he now accepts the title “professional dunker,” reluctantly), an Eastbay Elbow off the lob in progress, and a bag that grows weekly now that the hand-speed work exists. The 51 he nearly touched on test day is not a ceiling; it’s a scheduling question. The world record conversation now includes a teenager from New York who trains in a backyard full of free hoops, and honestly, the sport is better for it.
Dillan posts as himself on Instagram (still under-posting relative to 3,000-clip archives; still our ongoing campaign to fix that). Watch the 50 test footage and pay attention to how casual it looks; that’s the scary part. Next episode: pro dunkers react to the 2026 NBA dunk contest and the new Mac McClung dunks. See you there.