This is episode 54 of the Dunk Talk Podcast (Hunter’s out; we both just got back from Florida). I’m Dylan Haugen, and Travis Reynolds is back with two major updates since his last appearance: he earned the WDA Black Band, and then a freak finger injury took his right hand away for seven weeks, which he converted into the most productive forced experiment of his career. The result is the topic in the title: why your off-hand deserves real training time, argued by a pro who just spent two months living with only his weak one.
The Black Band grind
Travis’s Black Band (the five-dunk gauntlet: 360 Eastbay, Eastbay off the backboard, 360 behind-the-back, Scorpion, Underboth, all in one session) took week after week of attempts, each session stalling on a different dunk, each miss triggering a technique review and an adjustment for the next attempt. The hardest, by his ranking: the 360 behind-the-back, technically brutal for a left-right jumper finishing right-handed, the dunk that left him “home free” multiple sessions and refused to drop. Second hardest: the off-the-backboard Eastbay, purely because he never does backboard passes. (We commiserated about the 360 behind-the-back specifically: both of us find it natural on 8’ and laughable at height. Something about that dunk eats your jump.)
His takeaway is the reason the band system matters beyond the merch: the chase engraved five elite dunks into permanent consistency and taught him a repeatable method for improving any dunk: film, find the specific fault, adjust one variable, retest. The band was the trophy; the process was the prize.
Kilganon in residence, and Ben’s two-hand reverse behind-the-back
Jordan Kilganon came down and stayed with the North Carolina crew before the injury, and the biggest beneficiary was Ben Hopkins, who improved dramatically with Kilganon watching every rep. The best coaching story of the episode, though, belongs to Travis: watching Ben struggle with the straight-on two-hand behind-the-back at the YMCA, Travis diagnosed the geometry (Ben’s Kilganon-style push gets under the ball, which fights a face-up finish) and suggested the reverse two-hand behind-the-back instead, where Ben’s natural motion only needs the second hand to join at the end. Ben made it on the second try. It’s one of the rarest dunks anyone posts, and it exists because a training partner saw the easier door. That’s the dunk-group thesis of this whole show in one anecdote.
(Production sidebar we couldn’t resist: handheld filming beats tripods for engagement, nobody knows exactly why but we both see it in the numbers, and the next best thing is keyframing your tripod footage, tutorial on my Haugen Media channel. Travis filmed Ben’s historic make while staring at the phone praying he was framing it right. The cameraman’s curse: you witness history through a six-inch screen.)
The freak finger injury (a push-off cautionary tale)
The injury is almost comedic in its irony: the no-props purist got hurt learning double-ups. Travis positioned his jumper too far from the rim, had to throw the finish hard toward the back iron, and the ball rattled out directly into his finger, bending it backward: damaged tissue and a joint slippage just short of a true dislocation. Seven weeks in a splint to let it heal straight (a reinforced version for dunking), then Amazon finger extension and flexion trainers to rebuild the tissue before return.
Travis’s relationship with push-offs is now officially cursed: his previous attempt, over Kilganon himself in Canada, went so wrong he quit them for a year, and his second attempt back broke his finger. The practical tip we extracted for everyone else: place your person closer than you think. On a push-off you travel up, not out; the instinct to give yourself room is exactly what forces the wild finishes that end in rattled-out balls and bent fingers. Don’t be like Travis. His words.
Seven weeks of left-hand bootcamp
Here’s where the episode earns its title. Rather than rest, Travis reframed: the goal is to be the best dunker possible, and if the right hand is gone, the left hand is the training surface. His starting gap was enormous, a Black Band right hand versus a left hand that struggled with one-handers from pure coordination deficit. The seven-week protocol:
- Low-rim nearly every day, exclusively left-handed, treating coordination itself as the trained quality.
- Lefty shooting form practice, on the logic that if you can’t control a basketball with the hand at all, you can’t learn dunks with it. (I’d add the civilian version: eat dinner with your left hand for a week and feel how foreign half your body is.)
- Lefty Scorpion training, deliberately chosen because controlling the ball behind your back, unseen, is the highest-coordination pattern available and unlocks whole families of dunks downstream.
The results: from inconsistent lefty Windmills to punching them, plus his first left-handed Eastbay. And the argument he made for why every aspiring pro should do this voluntarily is the one that reframed my own thinking: if you get booked for an event and your right hand breaks that week, what exactly is your plan? A professional needs a performable show in either hand. My current answer with my left is “a windmill, singular,” which is now on my list to fix. The secondary argument is creative: half of Kilganon’s famous hundred-dunk variety exists because both hands work. Your off-hand isn’t a backup; it’s an entire second bag you haven’t opened.
The takeaway
Injuries took different things from Travis over the years (his back changed how he lifts forever), and the pattern in how he responds is the actual lesson: every subtraction becomes a curriculum. The back injury taught him load management; the finger taught him ambidexterity; the Black Band grind taught him a universal improvement loop. If something takes your main tool away, train the other one. There’s always another one.
Travis is “Travis Dunks” on Instagram, now with two working hands and the hardware to prove it. Next episode is the full breakdown of the huge Florida session. Comment with the most embarrassing thing your off-hand can’t do; mine is apparently everything past a windmill.