This is episode 31 of the Dunk Talk Podcast, a topic show with me and Hunter Castona. I’m Dylan Haugen, and the timing of this one is no accident: fall basketball just started for me, twice a week, and my last three dunk sessions have been mediocre to bad. So the question on the table is the one every basketball and volleyball player who wants to dunk eventually asks: can you actually increase your vertical during your season? The honest answer is mostly no, and this episode is about why, what you can realistically hold onto, and the handful of things that protect you.
My in-season history, season by season
I’ve now been through enough basketball seasons with a meaningful vertical to see the pattern clearly:
- 5th-7th grade: basketball seemed to help my bounce, or at least never hurt it. I touched rim for the first time in 7th grade at 5’6”. More on why this works for young kids below.
- 8th grade: first dunk, then the season ate it. I rarely dunked all winter because I was simply too fatigued.
- 9th grade: vertical around 36.5-37. I hit my first Windmill in November right before the season, then didn’t hit another one until March. Five to six practices a week, heavy running, and the worst knee pain of my life. I did almost no isometrics because I didn’t understand them yet, and I took zero time off because basketball culture treats playing through pain as normal. I’m still paying interest on that season.
- Sophomore year: first Eastbay in October (vertical around 38-40), then the season started and the bounce vanished immediately. No second Eastbay until January or February. The thing that saved me was structure: Saturdays fully off, Sundays for dunking, and one feel-good lift a week.
- This calendar year: the control group. I cut AAU entirely, and from February until a few weeks ago I gained probably 3-4 inches of vertical and made every dunk in my bag more consistent. Then fall basketball started and the regression began on cue.
One important note on that sophomore season: I didn’t lift at all during it, which is why I survived. I was doing two of the three (basketball plus jumping). Adding the third would have broken something.
Hunter’s version: quitting basketball entirely
Hunter’s arc is the cleaner experiment. He stopped competitive basketball after his junior year of high school, played rec-center runs for a couple of years while his vertical was still modest, and then cut 5-on-5 out completely about two years ago when he committed to dunking. His words: he started gaining vertical within weeks of stopping. During his high school overlap years (functional training plus jumping plus basketball, no real lifting) his knee pain peaked at an 8 or 9 out of 10. He misses playing. He doesn’t miss what it did to his training.
The rule of thumb Hunter put on this episode is the most quotable thing in it: basketball, jumping, lifting: pick two. All three at once ends in injury or in being too fatigued to do any of them well. Nearly every serious dunker you can name either quit their sport or capped it at one run a week scheduled on their jump day. Isaiah Rivera plays pickup, but it lands on his weekly jump day, not on top of it.
Why young kids get away with it (and you won’t)
The reason basketball felt like it built my vertical in 6th grade is that the forces involved were tiny. A kid jumping 25 inches isn’t producing outputs anywhere near what his tendons can absorb, so daily basketball is just more practice jumping. The math flips as the vertical climbs. At 40-plus inches, every max jump is a meaningful withdrawal from the tendon bank, and a season of five practices a week plus games adds hundreds of ground contacts per day on top. The higher you jump, the more your season costs.
That’s also the answer to the “but Ja Morant windmilled every day in high school” objection people send me. Yes, freaks exist. Ja could windmill at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday because he’s genetically different, the same way Dillan McCarthy jumps seven days a week at a 47-inch floor and doesn’t break. Most of the dunk community, me and Hunter included, are average people who out-work the average person. Building your plan off the outliers is how you get hurt.
What you can actually do in-season
If your sport is the priority and you just want to protect (and slightly grow) your bounce, this is the playbook we’d run:
- Daily isometrics, non-negotiable. Leg extension holds, kettlebell isos, wall sits, Spanish-squat-style work for the patellar tendon, calf isos for the Achilles. If you’re playing through tendon pain without doing isos, you are not going to progress, and my 9th grade season is the cautionary tale. Search Isaiah Rivera’s isometrics videos if you need the exact menu.
- One lift a week, feel-good intensity. Slow squats, controlled tempo, nothing close to failure. The THP “feel-good lift” concept: maintain strength, leave the gym fresher than you arrived.
- One small jump exposure a week. Not a three-hour session. Pick a practice day, get a handful of real jumps in, keep the motor pattern alive. The muscle memory decays slower than you fear; the tendons recover slower than you hope.
- Schedule a true off day. My Saturday-zero rule during sophomore season is the single best in-season decision I’ve made. One day of literally nothing.
- Treat the off-season as the build. The window between your season ending and the next one starting is where vertical is actually gained. If AAU eats your summer, you don’t have an off-season, which is exactly why cutting AAU was the biggest training decision of my year. Whatever your sport’s calendar, find the 3-4 month gap and lift hard through it.
- Take time off seriously, including from the sport. Hunter’s big point: high schoolers understand their bodies better than ever but still don’t respect rest. An injury costs you the time off anyway, plus rehab, plus the ramp back. Telling your coach your knee needs a week is cheaper than all three.
The honest answer to the title question
Can you increase your vertical in-season? If you’re young and jumping under roughly 30 inches, yes, the season itself is training. If you’re jumping 35-plus and practicing five days a week, realistically no: the goal is to maintain, stay healthy, and bank your gains for the off-season. And if your true goal is 45 or 50 inches, at some point you face the same decision Hunter and I faced, because the schedule that gets you there doesn’t coexist with a full competitive season. That’s not a sad ending; it’s just a choice. I’m still playing high school basketball with my eyes open about the cost, and the day eventually came where I chose dunking.
For the bigger-picture version of how a full training year fits around a season, episode 23 breaks down my 37.5-to-41.5 year month by month. Comment on YouTube with your sport and schedule and we’ll keep doing these topic shows. Next episode is Donovan Hawkins on what being a pro dunker is actually like.