Week 1 and Intro

Hey All,

Okay, so after seeing a few you tube and blog diaries of others trying to dunk, I was motivated to start a blog for my own journey, logging all my progress towards my first ever dunk. Yep, that's the goal!

I haven't measured my vertical just yet but I do have some lifting stats as I have already been doing some strength training.

Bench 5RM:250
Squat 3RM:275
Dead lift 5RM:330

My Stats

Age:35
Height: 5'9"
Weight 173lbs.

Background

Played basketball in high school and did the strength shoes a couple of times during this period.  The best I was able to do was dunk a volleyball and I was able to grab the rim with both hands off a 2 foot jump.   This remained the same until I was about age 24.  Then I slowly went down hill in terms of fitness to the point where I basically didn't play basketball or do much of anything except play a little golf until about 1 year ago.   I got so bad at basketball that I was embarrassed to even play a local pick up game.  I relied a lot on quickness and once that was gone, so was any semblance of a game.

Jump Training Past

I mentioned above that I used to do the Strength Shoes,  these actually helped me get some good gains back in the day, not sure how much in terms of inches but I went from just nicking the rim to being able to dunk a volleyball.   That was all I ever did for my legs except the odd calf raise or leg machine.  I was under the idea that basketball and just jumping would make my legs stronger and whenever I did lift weights it was mostly to look good on my upper body, hence the reason my bench is so close to my squat (it used to be better, lol.)

Over the last year

So I guess I'm going through a mid life crisis but I just had to do something to get back in shape.  I've always been slim, getting a little chubby here and there but mostly i'm blessed with a good metabolism.  But I got very soft and my cardio was to the point I couldn't even play a pick up game to 9 pts.  Not sure what my vertical deteriorated to at its lowest but I'm pretty sure I could barely touch the backboard on a layup.

So about 1 year ago I started weight lifting,  of just focusing on upper body with one measly leg day of poor form squats and some machines.  My friend convinced me to start dead lifting and after doing some research, I realised I was doing it all wrong,  I started a strength training program called Bill Starr's 5x5 and that brought me to my current numbers.   And what do you know, if you actually dead lift and squat with proper technique (depth slightly below parallel)  your vertical goes up.  I got so that I could hang on the rim with 1 hand off of 2 feet.   This got me thinking,  if only I had this (leg strength) 10 years ago,  this could have been my missing link.   Now I feel like I have one last chance to dunk.

So I researched a few programs and settled on the Vertical Jump Bible by Kelley Baggett.  And, so my journey starts.

Goals: (I will have some more concrete goals next post)

Dunk (I'll take anything, lol)
Squat 2xBW (340)  for 5 reps (I figure these 2 go hand in hand)



Pretty simple for now.  I'll put up some vertical numbers once I figure out what it actually is.

I will post some jumping numbers and some vid's to get started hopefully within the next week.