This is episode 3 of the Dunk Talk Podcast and the first guest interview on the show. I’m Dylan Haugen, and the guest is Hunter Castona, a 21-year-old dunker from Wisconsin and probably my closest friend in the dunk community. We’ve had three sessions together in the year leading up to this recording, including the one in October 2023 where he hit his first Underboth and I hit my first Eastbay in the same hour. Hunter went from Windmills to Underboth in roughly twelve months, gained 10+ inches of vertical on THP, and is one of the cleanest case studies in the sport right now of what consistency on a real program actually does to a dunker’s ceiling.
How we actually met
My first memory of Hunter was watching him on TikTok. That was the only platform he was on at the time. He was doing some one-handers, some two-handers, some Windmills. The video I specifically remember was him hitting his first 360. He commented on some of my videos, we kept in touch, and eventually he reached out on Instagram and asked if he should start a dunking account there. I told him yes. He pulled the trigger. From that point his progression has been kind of ridiculous.
Low rim as a kid, exactly the same playbook
Hunter’s origin story is almost identical to mine. He played football, baseball, and got into basketball in third or fourth grade. By fifth grade he was in love with the sport. Whatever free time he had outside of school went into low rim with friends. He didn’t know professional dunking was a thing at the time. He was just having fun. He credits a lot of his in-game dunking ability later in high school to those low-rim games with friends, which is exactly the case I made for it in episode 1. If you don’t have experience dunking in any kind of pickup game, there’s no way you’re dunking in a real one.
Both of us also pushed back on the idea that low-rim is a waste of time for kids. A lot of parents tell their kids to play on 10′ only because “you’ve got to practice game shots.” The reality: most of those kids aren’t making the NBA, and they’re going to fall out of love with the sport faster if they never get to just have fun. Between 10 and 13 you can build the actual jumping technique, the dunking technique, and the volume of reps without getting knee pain. That window is the most beneficial thing a young dunker can do for themselves.
First dunk at 15, then a one-foot to two-foot switch
Hunter got his first dunk in eighth grade or freshman year, at 15. He doesn’t remember his exact height that day, somewhere between 5’9” and 5’11”. He was a one-foot jumper at the time and we estimated his vertical at the time was in the high-20s to maybe 30 inches. He had a long reach so the math is a little fuzzy, but it wasn’t a high jump. He just had the technique dialed.
What’s interesting is that he switched from one-foot to two-foot within six months to a year of his first dunk. He was doing a lot of functional / balance work plus plyometrics at the time, and that’s how he taught himself how to absorb force and land cleanly off two. It also helped manage his early knee pain, which he didn’t really know how to treat back then. (His original protocol was lying on his knees bending backwards. Did not work.) If anyone reading this is dealing with knee pain right now, the actual answer is to identify what kind of knee pain you have and run the isometric that matches it.
High school basketball through junior year, first Windmill
Hunter played basketball and AAU through high school. Junior year was his last high school season. He hit his first Windmill that year, around 6’ tall. Senior year he was around 6’1” but didn’t change his training because he was in season the whole year. He was getting rim-grazers, not consistently dunking, basically going through what every basketball-season dunker goes through (which I broke down in my own first-Eastbay episode: cardio fries the CNS and tanks the vertical).
Once he stopped playing basketball after senior year, he was at a YMCA-type gym called Princeton Club every single day for two or three years. He was hooping for a couple runs and then in between games trying every dunk he could. That’s where his actual bag started showing up. He didn’t have a deep understanding of the sport at that point. It was one-handers, two-handers, reverses, the Windmill, and a lot of lobs to himself.
Late 2022: THP, but not consistently at first
Hunter started on THP in September or October of 2022. He was on the program (not the full coaching service). Right around the same time he had to fly to Atlanta for sinus surgery, which knocked him out for three weeks. Before the surgery he was doing the program inconsistently. For roughly the first three to four months on THP he saw zero gains in vertical. Knee pain didn’t change. Nothing happened.
The moment that flipped was when he locked in on consistency. Once he was hitting every session, missing one or two lifts every couple of months at most, he started seeing real movement. Within three weeks of doing it properly he was already noticing progress. From there it’s a different curve.
This is the most underrated point on training programs in general. I’ve been on three or four myself. Every one of them was solid, every one of them I eventually drifted off because nobody was holding me accountable, and I’d substitute exercises I “liked better” even though the people writing the program were obviously smarter than me. The fix isn’t a better program. The fix is accountability. Hunter’s case is the cleanest version of that I’ve seen.
Posting on TikTok was its own accountability mechanism
I asked Hunter whether putting his progress on TikTok made him more motivated to actually train. He said yes, immediately. The community holds you accountable. Comments started showing up on his stuff (“your progress is going crazy”), people started tracking his arc, and that became its own pressure to keep showing up to sessions. There’s a guy who was following him early on, lost track of him for a while, and came back with “dude what happened to you, you’re jumping out of the gym now.” That feedback loop matters more than people credit.
First Eastbay in May 2023, then Dunk Camp Utah
Hunter’s first Eastbay landed in late May 2023, about a month before The Dunk Camp. At camp he hit three or four more. He went into camp with no idea what to expect because he’d never tested his vertical before in his life. Day one of camp he tested 37.5″ in the air. That was the first real number he had.
Day one was the pro session. Hunter tried to jump in with the pros, hit a Windmill, attempted an Eastbay, and pulled himself out after that because he was second-guessing whether he was good enough to be over there. The funny part is that he’s 6’1”, was the tallest guy on the 9′ court where everyone was hanging out, and casually hit a Windmill with his head at or above the rim. I literally shoved him off the 9′ court and told him to go dunk with the pros because he was making the rest of the dunkers on the low court look bad.
9′ contest, Kilganon’s advice, and a clean Inverted Scorpion
The Thursday 9′ Dunk Contest at Dunk Camp 2023 had four finalists. Three of the four were from Wisconsin and didn’t know each other going in (Hunter, JJ, CJ). That trio not knowing each other before camp is part of what kicked off the Wisconsin Dunkers as a crew (Jeffrey joined later). The contest also drove me to start Minnesota Dunk Squad within a couple days of Hunter’s.
Before his round in the contest, Hunter went to Jordan Kilganon for advice on what to attempt. (Kilganon’s own GOAT-case episode is here: how Jordan Kilganon became the greatest dunker of all time.) Hunter asked Jordan if he should try a handoff Eastbay-elbow. Jordan asked if he’d ever done it before. Hunter said no. Jordan: “if you’re trying something for the first time in a contest, that’s probably not a great idea.” Hunter then asked about the Inverted Scorpion. Jordan said he could, that it looked like he was getting consistent with it, but didn’t sound especially confident.
Hunter hit the Inverted Scorpion clean. Jordan wasn’t even there when it happened. As soon as Jordan came back to the venue, Hunter sprinted over to show him the video.
The 19-session dunk streak
After camp, Hunter heard John (from THP) say that dunkers should try a new dunk every session to make their bodies uncomfortable. So he started keeping a streak: every session, he had to land at least one new dunk. He kept it going for 19 sessions in a row. Some sessions had one new dunk. The highest count he hit in a single session was six new dunks. That stretch is where most of his bag was actually built.
It also ended for a specific reason. He got burnt out in early 2024 and stopped editing footage for a month. He kept recording sessions but didn’t post or edit anything. Took the Instagram time limit down to one minute a day. Coming back from that month off, he had one of his best sessions in a long time. The burnout is real and the time off helped more than he expected.
September 2023: the closest miss at NSC
Hunter came down to Minnesota in September 2023 for our second session together. It was at a gym I hadn’t dunked at before, the National Sports Center. We loved it on the first try and have been back countless times since. That session was probably my best one to date at the time. I back-rimmed an Eastbay three or four times. Hunter back-rimmed an Underboth. Two huge misses, both of us locked in. The detail that mattered later: he back-rimmed his Underboth that day, and I back-rimmed my Eastbay. Hold onto that.
October 21, 2023: the day Hunter hit Underboth
One month later, October 21, 2023, Hunter came back to Minnesota. We rented out NSC again. Gideon and Jason came too. I hit a clean 360 Windmill. Literally the next jump after my 360 Windmill, Hunter killed an Underboth. First time he ever made it. Probably his best dunk ever, period. He had back-rimmed it a month earlier in this same gym and made it this time. After he hit his Underboth, the adrenaline took me straight into trying my Eastbay. He hit his, I hit mine, and the rest of that session was new dunks for both of us (my first Dubble Up, Dubble Up Windmill, Reverse Windmill, a whole bag dropped in a few hours).
That session is also the reason Hunter’s arc from rim-grazing to Underboth got its own episode later: from rim grazing to hitting Underboth.
Eastbay off the backboard, Pump off the backboard
The arc after October 2023 is Hunter unlocking a long list of advanced dunks. The Eastbay off the backboard is the standout. He tried it for the first time, back-rimmed it five times in a row, then hit five of them. Something flipped after a non-dunk thing in his personal life lit a fire under him, and two weeks later he was landing dunks he had never attempted before. He also hit a Pump off the backboard around the same stretch. The Windmill off the backboard, the One-Hand Reverse Windmill, a long list of new dunks in a short window.
March 2024: Florida with Isaiah, John, and the THP crew
In early March 2024 Hunter went down to Florida to dunk with Dom (who was rehabbing his quad after tearing it in a contest). John from THP invited him into the actual sessions with Isaiah Rivera, Austin, Nathan, and RJ. The session was at UCF’s practice facility on an official 10′ rim. I wasn’t there. The rest of the crew was fatigued from their training cycle. Hunter wasn’t. That gap made him look really good on camera.
Hunter hit the best Eastbay he’d ever landed on a real 10′ rim, first try, early in the session. Isaiah’s response, recorded in his own video later, was “first Eastbay of the session.” Then Isaiah, who was still warming up and not jumping at his ceiling, casually walked into a 360 Eastbay right after Hunter’s, then said “I can’t let the young buck show me up.” That moment alone is worth the trip.
Hunter then went for an Underboth, back-rimmed one and front-rimmed one. Isaiah told him afterward: “if you would have hit that, I would’ve had to one-up you again. You can have it.”
The other moment from Florida that stuck with Hunter: John asked Isaiah on camera what Hunter’s vertical could realistically be if he hit certain weight room numbers (a 315 squat, a 225 power clean, somewhere in that range). Isaiah said 50. Hunter has been doing this consistently for about a year and a half. Hearing the highest-jumping person on the planet float a 50″ ceiling for him is the kind of input that resets your training.
Achilles flare-up and load management
The week after Florida, Hunter had a four-hour 10′ session. Then his Achilles started giving him pain he’d never had before. It climbed from a one-out-of-ten to a five-out-of-ten over a few weeks. He had a session where he could barely get the ball above the rim on an Eastbay attempt. CJ Champion had recently torn his Achilles, so Hunter pulled the plug immediately rather than push through.
Load management for him has been slow eccentric calf raises, a lot of calf isometrics, and slow re-entry. He came back with a 9′ session that felt clean, then a 9’6” session that felt really good. Most recently he went to Missouri to dunk with Donovan Hawkins and Josh Ruble. He hit a between-the-legs there for the first time in a long stretch, plus close attempts at Underboth, off-the-backboard variations, and a few of his best dunks back. Recovery is moving in the right direction.
Goals heading into Dunk Camp 2024
Hunter’s vertical goal heading into Dunk Camp this summer is over 40″. The internal stretch goal is 45. The real goal is to win the contest, because the Dunk Camp 9′ contest winner gets invited to a FIBA 3×3 contest, and a FIBA-scale event is one of his top targets right now. The competition this year will include Mason. Hunter’s plan: dunk Monday and Thursday at camp, rest Tuesday and Wednesday, leave the gas in the tank for the contest. He’s also gunning for an Underboth off the backboard, which he’s only seriously attempted once or twice. With camp adrenaline, anything is in play.
Where to find Hunter
Hunter is “hunter.dunks” on TikTok and Instagram and “Hunter Dunks” (no period) on YouTube. He’s trying to post on YouTube more consistently when he has bigger sessions, and is on TikTok and Instagram basically daily.
Next episode of the show is with Josh Ruble, the dunker Hunter was just in Missouri with. Josh’s arc this year has been crazy. Go check that one out: how Josh Ruble gained 8 inches of vertical and added 20+ new dunks. Hunter will be back on the show often. We’re also rolling out interviews with most of the people who showed up in this episode, including Donovan Hawkins. If there’s someone specific you want me to interview, leave it in the YouTube comments.