This is episode 44 of the Dunk Talk Podcast: the year-end accounting. I’m Dylan Haugen, with Hunter Castona, and we closed out 2024 the way every dunker should: full review of the year that was, top-five dunks and lifts, and goals for 2025 stated publicly so the internet can hold us to them. Steal the format for your own training; writing it down works.
My 2024: the first real training year
2024 was the first year of my life with structured jump training all the way through, and I didn’t miss a day outside basketball season. The arc: basketball ended in February, every lift started climbing, knee pain faded, and I peaked for Utah Dunk Camp in June, where I tested 41.5 inches with no caffeine (11’4” touch on a 7’10.5” reach) and hit three Eastbays the same morning. Wisconsin camp a month later brought my first behind-the-back, my first Hide-and-Seek, and the 9’ contest win. The Winona Elbow at 9’9.75”, quitting basketball, my first contest win, and a fall of grinding toward the Underboth rounded it out.
Top five dunks of my year: the Hide-and-Seek (number one, no contest), behind-the-back at 9’11.5”, Dubble Up Eastbay at 9’11.5”, Dubble Up Scorpion, and a dunk I invented: the Inverted Scorpion push-off over a person. Best lifts: 315 half squat, 365×3 quarter squat, 205 power clean (up from 185), 205×2 hang clean, and casual 300 deadlifts when the mood struck.
Hunter’s 2024: brilliance between flare-ups
Hunter’s year was the harder story we’ve been documenting all season: every two or three months, a peak followed by a flare (Achilles, knee, back, all hovering at four or five out of ten around the camps), load management, rebuild, repeat. The peaks were genuinely elite: the Florida trip with Isaiah, Dom, John, Austin, Nathan, and RJ, where he hit his best-ever Eastbay on a true 10’; the Missouri session with Josh and Donovan in front of a crowd; and above all the Wisconsin camp Thursday show in his hometown, friends and family watching, where he hit fifteen-plus dunk variations on a 9’11” rim with one of the highest warmup jumps of his life. Then the fall strength cycle (high volume and high intensity alternating since August) buried his jumping again, with two glorious exceptions: the fortnight where he hit three Underboths in two weeks, plus an Eastbay off the backboard and a Dubble Up Elbow.
Hunter’s top dunks: the Underboths, Eastbay off the backboard, behind-the-back, the 360 Change-Up (a dunk almost nobody does), the left-hand 360 Scoop at Winona, and the left-right Eastbay, hit during a three-month off-plant experiment, a dunk he was closer to than his natural-plant version at the time, which still breaks my brain. Lifts: power clean 155 to 205 in roughly three months once his technique clicked (and a near-make at 205 again this week after months stuck), squat 275×3, seated calf raises around 385-395 equivalent on the Smith machine, standing calf 335×3, every accessory climbing while the main lifts wait for the taper. When this cycle finally ends, the rebound should be violent, in the good way.
My 2025 goals
Dunks: the Underboth, not just once but semi-consistently, call it ten makes on the year. A legit Honey Dip above 9’10.5” (targeting the first one in Vegas next week). Inverted Scorpion between-the-legs off the backboard. 360 Eastbay. 360 Lost-and-Found and 360 Reverse Hide-and-Seek, both more about perfect technique than jump height. The Dubble Up Underboth, which is somehow my single worst dunk: most low-rim dunks I solve in an hour, and I’ve put five fruitless hours into this one. A 540. Eastbay Scorpion. Inverter J Rich. Black Band is the stretch goal I’m saying quietly because it might be unrealistic, with 360 behind-the-back as the hardest missing piece.
Lifts: 255 power clean (I’m near 220 now, so even 235 keeps me happy), 405 deadlift, four plates on the half squat, and a genuine experiment with deep squatting, which my long femurs and brick ankles have never permitted; current deep-squat max is 135 with form that hurt everything. No weight goal on that one, just competence.
Hunter’s 2025 goals
Dunks: Underboth consistency. Fixing the 360 family, his admitted weakness: 360 Reverse Windmill off the lob consistent (his favorite low-rim dunk), then 360 Eastbay and 360 behind-the-back, which double as the Black Band requirements; he’s already hit three Black Band dunks, so the band is a live possibility. Eastbay Scorpion, which he has back-rimmed roughly fifteen times and which owes him money at this point. One-hand Scorpion off the backboard. Windmill off the backboard (top-rimmed and back-rimmed three or four times) and Windmill off the wall, ideally the legendary LA Fitness wall. An Elbow on 9’11”, the dunk that produces the funniest gap in the sport: Finn regularly asks Hunter how a man can hit five Underboths and not put his arm in a 9’9” rim. The Dubble Up Underboth scares him and he’s doing it anyway. Underboth off the backboard is the moonshot.
The pattern worth copying
Two things made this exercise worth publishing. First, the contrast between our years proves the point from Hunter’s comeback episode: the trend line beats the timeline. My smooth year and his jagged one both ended higher than they started. Second, goals with numbers and dunk names attached get hit; vague ones don’t. Isaiah’s impossible-goals list from 2016 had every box checked; Finn read his 2025 list off his phone last episode. Write yours down. Post it somewhere people will see. Report back in December.
Vegas is in a week, and it’s the first checkpoint for half of what we just promised. Comment with your own 2025 dunk goals; we read all of them. Next episode: breaking down the biggest myths in dunking and jump training.