Josh Ruble

Josh Ruble is a six foot dunker from the St. Louis area who turned a football strength base into one of the fastest two-year progressions the show has covered. His first memory of watching anyone dunk is Isaiah Rivera in his driveway, jumping over his siblings. He picked up his first weight right after eighth grade at five foot seven and 115 pounds, and by episode 4 he was six foot and 190. His all-time lifts include a 405 back squat, a 455 deadlift and a 260 power clean, and every one of those numbers went up once he started training for dunking rather than for size; when he started he could only clean 205 with, in his words, really bad form.

His first dunk came at fifteen, off one foot with one hand, only seven or eight months after he first grabbed the rim. What he did not have was sessions. His dad would not let him lower the rim at home, so he would drop it while his dad was at work and raise it back before he got home. He did not hit a windmill until his senior year, straight onto a ten foot rim. His first real session, two years before episode 4, was his phone propped on a chair with a backpack behind it, filmed on Snapchat. All he could do that day was a one-hander, a two-hander and a reverse.

From there he added twenty or more new dunks: double ups, the J-Rich, the Eastbay, the behind the back, and an Eastbay with his off hand. He started with THP in April 2022, took a burnout break he calls his worst mistake of the whole stretch, and went back. His best session came on a family trip to Orange County, where he asked Billy of Dunkademics for the address of the nine foot nine rim. Josh hit a right-hand Eastbay first try, a left-hand Eastbay second try and the behind the back on his third, plus a double up over his own brother.

The sessions he runs at home are the other half of the story. He got access to his old high school, a small Catholic school where his mom coaches and his sister still goes, and the athletic director put the bleachers down for them; twelve people were tagged in the video and family sat in the stands. He has since dunked with Hunter Castona and Donovan Hawkins, which he called the most fun he had ever had dunking, and he filmed Donovan’s My Jump 2 height check, the 0.968 second flight time John Evans reviewed and called fifty inches or better.

He came back for episode 22 to break down Donovan’s summer and his own week at the Wisconsin Dunk Camp, where his goal was a 44 inch running vertical and, more than that, a pain-free week, which he calls the most underrated thing in the sport. In the contest he opened safe with backboard lobs, windmills and reverse pumps, saved the Eastbays and behind the backs, and came close to landing an Eastbay in the final. Long term he wants a 48 inch vertical, which at six foot puts his head at the rim, and the elbow dunk, which he has grabbed the rim with twice. He studies Travis Reynolds for his shorter penultimate step; Travis’s page was the first dunk account he ever followed, and the reason he made one of his own.