A Question Every Young Dunker Asks
Episode 31 of the Dunk Talk Podcast tackles one of the most common questions in the dunking community: can you actually increase your vertical jump while playing a sport in-season? I (Dylan Haugen) and co-host Hunter Castona drew from our own real experiences as high school basketball players who were also actively pursuing dunking to give the most honest answer possible. This was another one of our filler episodes between guest interviews, but the topic is so relevant to our audience that it ended up being one of the most practical episodes we have recorded.
Our Personal Experiences With In-Season Vertical Loss
I started the episode by being completely transparent about what happened to my vertical during basketball seasons. In eighth grade when I got my first dunk, my bounce went down significantly during the season because I was just dead from the workload. I would occasionally get one in a game when I felt good, but most of the time I was too fatigued to perform at my best. By ninth grade my vertical was around 36 and a half to 37 inches, and I hit my first windmill right before the season started in November. Then I did not windmill again until about March because the basketball season completely sapped my explosiveness. Playing five to six days a week at high intensity with all that running just took away my bounce.
Hunter had a similar experience. The pattern we both noticed was consistent: vertical goes up in the offseason when you are focused on training, then drops during the season when basketball demands take over. The higher our verticals got in the offseason, the more noticeable the in-season decline became because we had more to lose. This is not unique to us. Almost every basketball-playing dunker goes through this cycle, and understanding it is the first step toward managing it.
Why Your Vertical Drops In-Season
We broke down the three main types of load that affect your vertical: lifting, jumping or dunking, and sport practice or games. In the offseason, most dunkers are doing lifting and jumping, which is two out of three. That is manageable and allows for recovery and adaptation. But when you add basketball practice and games on top of that, you are now trying to handle all three simultaneously. The total load on your body exceeds what it can recover from, and your vertical suffers as a result.
I mentioned that during one basketball season I did not lift at all, and even without the lifting component my vertical still declined just from the combination of jumping during games and the intensity of practice. Imagine if I had been lifting on top of that. The load would have been even higher and the decline probably worse. Hunter brought up the example of Dillan McCarthy from our previous episode, who was trying to do both basketball and dunk training simultaneously and saw similar effects. The takeaway is that your body has a finite capacity for recovery, and basketball eats into that capacity whether you want it to or not.
Practical Strategies for Maintaining and Even Gaining In-Season
The real value of this episode was in the specific strategies we discussed for managing your vertical during the season. The first and most important recommendation was to reduce your lifting volume and frequency significantly. Instead of training with the same intensity you use in the offseason, scale back to maintenance-level work that keeps your strength from declining without adding excessive fatigue. Two lifting sessions per week with lower volume is generally enough to hold onto your gains.
The second strategy was incorporating isometrics. We talked extensively about how isometric exercises like wall sits and other holds can maintain and even build strength without the recovery cost of traditional lifting. Isaiah Rivera is a big advocate for isometrics, and we recommended looking up his content on the subject. The key detail with isometrics is that you generally need about six hours between sets for proper recovery. If you want to be really diligent about it, you can do them three times a day: once when you wake up, once around lunchtime, and once before bed. Doing about five reps each time keeps the stimulus consistent without adding fatigue.
Updates From the Show
Before diving into the main topic, we gave some updates on what had been happening since the last episode. The Isaiah Rivera and Dillan McCarthy episodes had both done really well on YouTube, with Isaiah’s passing a thousand views on an hour-long video which was exciting. I had also recently traveled to Wisconsin to dunk with Hunter, which did not go perfectly since I ended up hurting my abdomen, but I still managed to hit one new dunk during the trip. The week after was mostly recovery, barely dunking because of the sprained or pulled abdomen. These kinds of real updates are important because they show that even the people making content about dunking deal with setbacks and injuries just like everyone else.
Managing Expectations and Playing the Long Game
We were honest about the fact that for most athletes, the realistic goal during a basketball season is to maintain your vertical rather than increase it. If you can come out of a season at the same level you went in, that is a genuine win because it means you will be starting from a higher baseline when you get back to focused offseason training. The athletes who lose significant vertical during the season often spend the first few weeks of the offseason just getting back to where they were, which wastes valuable training time.
That said, it is possible to gain vertical in-season if you are smart about it. The athletes who pull this off tend to be the ones who minimize unnecessary fatigue during practice, prioritize sleep and nutrition, use isometrics instead of heavy lifting, and are very intentional about when and how much they dunk outside of games. It requires discipline and self-awareness, but it is not impossible. The biggest mistake young dunkers make is trying to train the same way in-season as they do in the offseason and wondering why they feel terrible and their numbers drop. Watch the full episode above for all the details and specific protocols we recommend.