This is episode 34 of the Dunk Talk Podcast, and for once the guest is the co-host. I’m Dylan Haugen, and this episode is Hunter Castona’s full comeback story: a year of stacked injuries and training fatigue that flattened one of the most consistent dunkers I know, the deliberate strength bet he made in the middle of it, and the two sessions in the past two weeks that paid the whole thing off, including an Underboth and what might be the best session of his life. If you’re a dunker in a slump, this is the episode.
The injury stack, in order
Hunter walked the whole timeline, and it’s worth laying out because slumps rarely have one cause:
- November-December 2023: heel bone bruise. After one of his best solo sessions ever, Hunter bruised the heel of his plant foot, the one that strikes on the outside edge during his penultimate. Every step hurt, jumping was out for over a month, and when he returned he’d unconsciously retrained himself to plant toe-first to protect the heel. It took another month or two before a normal heel strike felt safe.
- Early 2024: the four-hour session. Back healthy, he ran a great trip to the UCF practice facility in Florida, then made the mistake that defined his spring: a four-hour solo dunk session. He felt fine until the final 15 minutes. Two or three weeks later his Achilles pain climbed to a 5-6 out of 10 and he went into load management for a month.
- Utah Dunk Camp: the breaking point. Monday he over-spent on Underboth attempts. Thursday morning he woke up with knee pain at a 5-6, Achilles at a 5-6, and back pain at a 4, on contest day. John Evans got the pain down with isometrics, Hunter ran an hour-long progressive warmup from a 7’6” rim up to 10’, competed pain-free, and then 30 minutes after the contest experienced the worst combined pain of his dunking life. (We covered pieces of this in the live Q&A episode; this is the full version.)
The strength bet
At Wisconsin Dunk Camp, jumping better but far from his peak, Hunter made the decision that shaped the next four months. He told Isaiah Rivera directly: I’ve been jumping my whole life, the jumps are banked, strength is my limiting factor, I want to get as strong as possible even if my jumping suffers. Isaiah’s prescription: go heavy in the weight room, and spend the fatigued months on low rims, where you can still take full-effort jumps, build trick-dunk technique, and have fun without grinding out bad reps on 10’.
So that’s what he did. The honest middle of this story is that it looked like nothing was working. There was a fun 9’9.75” session in Winona (first left-hand scoop of his life), and then a genuinely bad session when Josh and I visited Wisconsin, where he could barely get his legs through an Eastbay. Three weeks before we recorded, he had a 10’ session so rough he questioned the whole plan. From the outside, even I didn’t fully get it. We’d gone from trading session clips every Saturday night to him sending me footage that didn’t look like him. In hindsight the explanation is boring and complete: he was un-deloaded, mid-cycle, under more bar weight than he’d ever handled, and that’s precisely what mid-cycle jumping looks like.
The payoff: Underboth, then the best session of his life
Two weekends ago, still not deloaded, Hunter hit the Underboth at 9’9.25”, punched multiple Windmills, and landed a Dubble Up Elbow that only missed the hang. The following weekend was, by his own ranking, arguably his best higher-rim session ever: repeated consistency work on a short list of dunks, two of them converted, a third just missed, and the return of a dunk he hadn’t landed in six or seven months. He’s saving the footage for a YouTube video, so I’ll leave the details there, but I’ve seen the clips and I’ll say it plainly: this is the best Hunter has ever been, and he isn’t even fresh. Both breakthrough sessions were effectively solo. The plan from here is a steady climb: 9’10.5” next week, then back to the 9’11”-plus his gym maxes out at (the rims ratcheted loose and no longer reach a true 10’).
His own summary is the one worth quoting: the trend line matters more than any session. His plateau kept rising even while it felt like a plateau, and his worst sessions now are better than his average sessions a year ago. And, in his words, all glory to God; he’s grateful to be the dunker he is right now and treats the rest as out of his hands.
Was all that low-rim work good for him?
I pushed Hunter on whether the months of low-rim during the strength phase helped or built bad habits, and his answer was a fair yes-and-no. Yes: full-effort jumps stayed in the program, new dunks and new plants got reps that 10’ would never have allowed at that fatigue level, and the sessions stayed fun, which is what keeps a slump from becoming a quit. No: his gym’s rims swing backward as they lower, which moves the rim relative to the floor lines he uses to calibrate his approach, so some of his spacing reps were subtly off. Eastbay timing came back weird (Underboth currently feels better than Eastbay, which has never once been true for him). The lob timing is still hit or miss. Technique debt is real, and he’s paying it down on the climb back up.
My announcement: no basketball this season
Hunter insisted some of this episode be about me, so here’s the news I’ve only told a few people: I’m not playing high school basketball this season. Last weekend I dunked in Winona on Friday (jumping 42-43, above my official 41.5), played two basketball games Saturday, and came home frustrated in a way that finally clarified things. I take everything I do seriously, and you cannot be your best at basketball and dunking simultaneously; episode 31 was an entire show about why. I love dunking and the whole life around it, the sessions, the editing, the community, more than I love playing. So I’m putting my head down the way Hunter has. Maybe a Sunday rec league for fun, nothing that costs fatigue. The full reasoning got its own episode later: why I quit basketball to become a pro dunker.
The immediate evidence it’s the right call: this week, fresh on a deload, I had one of my best sessions ever. Eastbay behind-the-back, Dubble Up Scorpion, Inverted Scorpion over a person, and a Cuff Scorpion that mostly went down. New training cycle starts this week, and I’m joining an actual gym so I can finally push power cleans with real weight.
What to take from Hunter’s year
If you’re in the slump: name the causes (his were two overlapping ones, injury recovery then training fatigue, which made it feel endless), pick the long-term bet deliberately, protect the fun with low-rim work, and judge yourself on the trend line, not the session. The strength Hunter built in the invisible months is why the Underboth exists now. Slumps end; the work done inside them compounds.
Hunter posts as “huntercastona” on Instagram and the comeback sessions are landing on his YouTube soon. Next episode is Anthony Height, the 5’6” dunker with a claim to highest jumper in the world. Comment with any dunker you want us to interview next.