This is episode 53 of the Dunk Talk Podcast, just me and Finn Addy, recorded right after he hit his first Underboth in the best session of his life. I’m Dylan Haugen, fresh off my own first Underboth, which means the podcast’s hosts-and-friends Underboth club gained two members in a month. The session footage is on Finn’s YouTube and we filmed a separate reaction to it; this episode is the story underneath: a knee that exploded in Vegas, the rehab that followed, and the body-composition experiment that has him at his strongest ever.
Vegas: six jumps, then nothing
Finn came into the Vegas mega-session in the form of his life. The week prior he’d had what was then his best session ever on 9’9.5”: cuff Windmill Honey Dip (no hang), 360 Eastbay, everything clean. In Vegas his two-foot warmups felt the best they ever had. Then, a few jumps into the one-foot work, his knee, in his words, exploded. The trigger wasn’t even the obvious culprit; the pain started on his first Zeani Windmill attempt (he made the second one anyway, because Finn) and after roughly six total one-foot jumps the session was over. The gym’s close wall didn’t help either; one-footers carry so much horizontal speed that Finn was bailing into the padding on every landing while Hyrum Fechser planted a foot on the wall itself.
The frustrating postscript: at a recent session the same flare started, Finn paused five minutes, ran two sets of isometrics (single-leg wall sit plus an adductor iso), and finished the session fine. Kilganon had suggested on the Jump Master X podcast that Vegas might have been salvageable with a re-warmup, and Finn now half-agrees. Patella tendon, no warning, no prior pain. Knees keep their own counsel.
The rehab ladder (and the slow leg extension discovery)
Finn’s comeback protocol is a textbook example of graded return: one full week off jumping (his first in a year), a week of isos and slow work, short two-foot-only sessions, then two-foot sessions with five one-foot jumps, then ten, then full one-foot sessions, stopping any day the knee spoke up, which early on meant about five jumps. Strength training continued throughout, weights still climbing.
The discovery he wants everyone to steal: slow leg extensions, three seconds up and four down, three or four sets at the end of every workout. He rates them above isometrics for his knee pain and says they’re never leaving his program. I’ve started both slow and iso leg extensions recently and concur. We also compared notes on the squat-depth struggle: Finn’s full squats triggered actual sciatica (numbness down one side) when he started JMX, so Kilganon cut them entirely; my half squats are the honest ceiling too, and we both treat the famous butt-wink clips of ourselves with the dignity they deserve, which is none. For one-foot specialists especially, the deep squat is optional equipment.
The melancholy adult-dunker observation of the episode came from Finn: when he jumped lower, he dunked three times a week with zero warmup forever. Now that he’s past 40 inches off one foot, he gets one session a week and a knee with opinions. Being good at dunking means doing the things you don’t want to do, including, as we both agreed, the strangest part of the sport: the six days of disciplined laziness between Saturdays.
The Underboth, and 175 pounds of evidence
The comeback peaked at the session this episode is named for: Finn’s first Underboth, inside his new best-session-ever (go watch it; the reaction video is up too). The context that makes it more impressive: he weighed in at 175 pounds, up 15 from his Dunk Camp weight of 160, and is jumping his best ever at the heavier weight. His explanation is unglamorous and correct: dramatically better sleep and better eating turned his strength work into actual muscle at a rate he’d never experienced. The plan from here mirrors what I did last year but smarter: cut roughly 10 pounds before Dunk Camp, spread over two or three months instead of the too-fast one-month cut he did last year. Bulk through the building season, arrive lean, jump out of the gym. (He thinks I should run the same play up to 175; I think he could carry 185.)
The 51.5 controversy and the records race
We couldn’t resist the news cycle: a dunker known as Tai posted a claimed 51.5-inch vertical, which would beat the world record by a full inch, at 5’4” with a 7’11” reach. Our position is measured skepticism, not hate: we want the reach measurement and the test on video, the way Isaiah Espinosa’s 50 was verified, and a PR that jumps the entire field by an inch deserves flight-time analysis from the THP guys before it enters the books. Meanwhile the legitimate record chase is heating up: Isaiah Rivera is leaner than ever and sprinting, Espinosa is right behind him, and the two of them testing together, with that competitive dynamic, might produce two records in one afternoon. We’ll know more after Florida on Friday.
Basketball, briefly, one more time
The episode’s detour validated everything from episode 38 from a second voice: Finn’s college basketball season shredded his vertical, and his Eastbay disappeared from Dunk Camp 2022 until he quit, exactly mirroring my own four-to-five-month Eastbay drought after my October 2023 first. We both still touch rec-league ball one day a week for friends and clip-farming (Finn wanted a windmill poster; Finn got a windmill poster), and neither of us is going back beyond that.
Goals for the rest of the year
Finn’s list: test 45 off one foot at Dunk Camp (an 11’10” touch), with maybe 43 off two; the 360 behind-the-back, which is all he currently thinks about; the double Eastbay, J Rich entry, which looked impossible to him until Southerland’s version rearranged his brain (9’9” target); the J Rich behind-the-back nobody has done; and, courtesy of a Kilganon suggestion, a 540 off one foot, a dunk with nearly no living practitioners. His rim-height philosophy remains charmingly binary: he dunks on 8’ or below, or 9’10.5” and above, and treats the middle heights as a spin-timing corruption zone.
Two Underboths in the friend group in a month; the band chase continues for both of us. Finn is “1FootDisciple” on Instagram and his YouTube long-form era is officially underway, to our delight. Next episode: why your off-hand matters more than you think, with Travis Reynolds. Comment with your prediction for the Isaiah-versus-Espinosa record race.