This is episode 9 of the Dunk Talk Podcast, no guest, just me walking through the entire 12 months of training I’ve done since the last Dunk Camp. I’m Dylan Haugen. I’m flying out for Dunk Camp 2024 in three days, completely unloaded, and the timeline from June 2023 to right now is honestly wild to summarize in one sitting. This is the full deload, from the camp I won the 9′ contest at last year all the way to the elbow-on-rim height check I hit two days ago.
June 2023: Dunk Camp Utah, 37.5″ vertical, and the 9′ contest win
At Dunk Camp 2023 I was on a structured jump program and I was doing okay but not following it perfectly. The bigger issue going in was AAU. I was playing summer club basketball multiple times a week with games every weekend, which destroys vertical for anyone who’s already past the beginner phase. (Basketball helps your vertical if you’re just starting out and need stimulus. Once you have a real vertical, the cardio load fries your CNS and the dunk numbers drop.)
I tested 37.5″ that camp. My standing reach had grown more than my vertical did from the year before. I touched 11′. I hit Windmills on 9’11” and 9’10.5”, all my regular dunks, and won the 9′ contest with an Inverted Scorpion first try. The year before I’d lost the 8′ contest, so the win on 9′ was a real before-and-after marker. The full breakdown of the Eastbay arc that led into that camp is in episode 2.
July 2023: founding Minnesota Dunk Squad
Coming back from camp I was motivated to train but still buried in AAU. The big thing I did in July was start Minnesota Dunk Squad. The original five was Jason, Justin, J-Rob, Gideon, and me. Since then we’ve added Johan, Rich, Will, and a bunch of other guys. The group sessions immediately changed how I jumped. First few sessions I was barely doing one-handers and two-handers. As the volume of group sessions stacked up, I went from being one of the worst in the group to one of the best.
The pattern I keep coming back to: I jump my worst alone, my best with people better than me. The friendly competition unlocks something my solo sessions can’t. Will, Gideon, and Hunter are the dunkers I jump my best with because they’re consistently above me.
August through October 2023: low rim, Boston with Artem, the September NSC session
From August to November I was low-rimming a ton because I hadn’t been able to during basketball season. My hand speed today is the best it’s ever been and it traces back to this stretch. I also flew to Boston in August on a family vacation, had a session with Artem (an extremely good dunker who’s often missed in the US dunk conversation), and got the jumping in even though I couldn’t train properly during the trip.
The September session at the National Sports Center with Hunter Castona was my best session at the time. He’s from Wisconsin, was already the best dunker I’d done a session with outside of Dunk Camp, and we both lit up. I hit four new dunks. I jumped my highest ever. I got insanely close to my first Eastbay, back-rimmed it three or four times. After the session Hunter and I started planning the next one, which would land on October 21, 2023.
October 21, 2023: the first Eastbay and the JumpX switch
October 21st was two days before my 16th birthday. Hunter came back to Minnesota, we rented NSC again, and brought Gideon and J-Rob. I hit my second 360 Windmill. The next jump, Hunter hit his first Underboth. Then I committed to my Eastbay, back-rimmed a few, and punched it. First Eastbay, plus my first Dubble Up, my first Dubble Up Windmill, my first Reverse Pump, and a few others I can’t remember on the same day. Still my best dunk session ever and still one of the best moments in my entire dunking career.
Right after that session, Tom Barnes and Austin Young started recruiting me for their jump program. I hopped on JumpX, and that’s been my training home since.
November and December 2023: basketball season destroyed everything
October was my last good session for a long stretch. High school basketball tryouts hit at the end of November: four days in a row, mornings before school and afternoons after, every day. Then the season started. Practice five days a week, games one to two more, plus running, plus more running. December was the worst jumping month of my entire dunking career.
I figured out one workaround: Monday-Friday basketball, Saturday rest, Sunday jump. The Sunday sessions were never great but they kept me from completely losing the bag.
January and February 2024: getting it back
January 2nd was my second Eastbay. I hadn’t felt close to one in months and then it just landed. Late January I had a session at the gym where I felt like I was jumping at 39″ or 40″ out of nowhere. Best jumping day of the year to date. I hit my best Reverse Pump, an insane one-hander, and felt like I was at a different vertical entirely.
February with Gideon was my best session of the entire year (or at least the year up to that point). I hit a Dubble Up Eastbay that I’d only learned two weeks before. (I haven’t hit it again since.) Best 360 Windmill, all my best dunks, all in one day. This was around when basketball season was wrapping up and my body was finally adapting to the load. I finished the basketball season with five in-game dunks, which was way more than I’d ever had in a season.
March 2024: third Eastbay, Dominican Republic, third Hunter session
March 2nd was my first session after basketball season. Group session at The Lab with most of Minnesota Dunk Squad. Hit all my regular dunks plus my fourth Eastbay. Will (Over Skill Training) was at this one and was the first time I’d ever seen him dunk in person. He’s ridiculous.
The week after I went to the Dominican Republic on a family vacation. No training. Two sessions on a bad court in 95-degree heat. They were fine but I lost a week of progress. The reset wasn’t the worst thing because I came back hungry and locked back into lifting properly.
March 30th was the third Hunter session, this time with Gideon, Sage, and J-Rob. Hit all my regular dunks and my fifth Eastbay. Not my best session ever, but solid.
April 2024: heavy lifting, caffeine, the Winona trip
April was the heaviest lifting block I’d done in a long time. My squat form had been hinging at the back, so I rebuilt it from 225 up. By mid-April I had a 300×3 half-squat. Power clean was up to 185×3.
I tried caffeine for the first time mid-April. About 200 mg from an energy drink. Best jumping day to date. Hit my best 360 Eastbay attempt, my first off-dribble Windmill, got really close to a between-the-legs off the backboard, super close to a slingshot behind-the-back. The vertical felt absurd. I decided not to take caffeine every weekend because the diminishing returns are real and I’d rather save it for camp or contests.
Late April I drove 2.5 hours to Winona to dunk with Will again plus a bunch of the Winona Dunk Squad. The rims were a soft 9’10”, which felt insane after months on 9’10.5” and 10′. I hit my best Eastbay on that rim. (I don’t count it because the rim was 9’10”. That’s the honesty rule. The best dunk I would have officially logged that day was a slingshot on the same rim, same caveat.) I also smacked my wrist on an off-lob 360 between-the-legs attempt and got eerily close to an Underboth.
May 2024: T-Dub session, mini cut
In May I started messaging with T-Dub. He’s the most influential dunker in the sport, the inventor of the Dubble Up, and he lives 45 minutes from me in Minnesota. I’d met him at Dunk Camp 2022 and hadn’t seen him since. Eventually our schedules lined up enough for him to invite me out to a court he was going to. I drove the 45 minutes (had to). We played 21 and some 3v3 / 4v4 pickup, then got into dunks at the end. I wasn’t on a jump day, so I hit some one-handers, a two-hander, and a Cuff Windmill. T-Dub hit his first dunk in over a year. Gideon was there too and went off. He’ll be at Dunk Camp this year, so I’ll get to see him again.
Late May I talked to Tom and Austin about a mini cut. I’ve been 166-168 most of my dunking career, never with body fat (six-pack the whole time), but I wanted to see what 160 felt like. Started June 1. By the recording I was 161-162. Plan was to be 159-160 for camp.
June 2024: unloading, the elbow-on-rim session
I started unloading in the weight room early June. Same lifts, way less volume. Where I’d been hitting 6×3 back squat I went down to 2×3 or 3×3 at similar weights. Every session in June has been one of my best.
June 8 at The Lab with Henry and J-Rob was the first one. I hit a Reverse Pump Windmill, then said out loud I needed to hit an Eastbay because it had been about a month. First Eastbay attempt of the session, punched it. Hit a second Eastbay later in the session, which was the first time I’d ever doubled up Eastbays in one day. Off-dribble Windmill on top of that, plus my best behind-the-back attempt to date and a clean 360 between-the-legs attempt.
Two days ago was my best jumping day ever. I’m holding the full list because the session video will drop on my main channel this Saturday, but I’ll tell you what landed and what I touched. I put my elbow on the rim. Reverse Pump landed. Off-dribble Windmill landed (best one I’ve ever done). Eastbay landed. I was probably jumping 42–43″. That number alone is what I needed to know going into camp.
Goals for Dunk Camp 2024
I leave Saturday. The plan is three rest days before day one (Monday). Goals:
- Vertical: 43″. Anything over 40″ will make me happy. Putting elbow on rim requires touching around 11’4”–11’5”, which from a 6’0” standing reach is right at 43″.
- Dunks to land: Eastbay (locked-in goal), behind-the-back Eastbay, off-dribble Eastbay, Scorpion, Inverted Scorpion if I’m feeling it. Underboth is unrealistic on day one but it’s on the want list.
- 10′ contest: I’m entering Thursday’s 10′ contest. I’m not entering the 9′ contest because I won it last year. I won’t be the favorite. Mason Baker is in, Hunter is in, and probably more freaks I haven’t heard about yet. Going for it anyway. (I have no doubt I could win a low-rim contest. Not being cocky, that’s just where my low-rim is right now.)
- Sessions with the pros: Day one if I can squeeze in.
The takeaway from 12 months of this
The biggest thing I’d tell any dunker reading this: the delayed-gratification side of vertical training is real. There were full months this year where my sessions weren’t great and the lifting was buried in volume that wasn’t paying back immediately. The June sessions only make sense because of the heavy April loading. The April loading only made sense because of the basketball-season grind that came before it. If you’re in a slump on your sessions but you’ve been training hard, the slump might be the deposit.
Next episode of the show will be the recap of the actual Utah Dunk Camp 2024 experience. The full vertical journey across two camps (37.5 → 41.5) is in this episode too. Subscribe on Spotify or Apple and on the YouTube channel for the camp videos. I’m flying out Saturday.