I wanton to dunk a basketball in 60 days dunking a basketball was always one of my biggest goals as a kid I thought it would be easy you know once I became older and taller well now I'm older but I'm the same height that I've been since middle school I'm only 5'7 if you round up I'm actually only 5'6 and a half but who's really counting according to my extensive research I'm going to need about a 38 in vertical and order to dunk a basketball to put that into perspective the average NBA player only has about a 28 in vertical which means I'm going to have to jump almost a foot higher than the most elite athletes in the entire world only three players in the NBA history have ever been my height or shorter and been able to dump my name is Zach and in this video I'm going to be taking you guys on my journey to hopefully dunking at 56 so how am I going to do this I'm going to take this 60 days into five different lifting phases the first one is going to be a two-e power phase before starting this challenge I've done a lot of strength work which is really important for getting more explosive but considering I'm not a complete beginner strength training alone will only take me so far since it doesn't necessarily translate to my jumping this power phase is intended to start closing the gap between General strength and actual performance phase two will be two weeks of heavy potentiation work this cycle has the potential to really quickly increase my power and explosiveness by hacking the central nervous system for me this will involve a slow exercise to activate my muscle fibers followed by a moderate speed moderate weight exercise and then finally followed by light Ultra fast mov movements the idea is activating these motor units will leave them ready to be activated again so as I go through a lighter faster movement I'll get more muscle activation and more explosiveness for phase three I'm going to be taking a D Lo week training hard is great and necessary but if you're always pushing hard you can never truly gain the adaptations you're working for this week I will be using similar weight but significantly lower volume like 50% or less total workl in theory this will give my body time to rebuild itself and be prepared for my next phase phase four is what I'm going to call my afsm phase afsm stands for autogenic facilitated specialized method basically it means combining different movement patterns and exercises to train your muscles not just to contract quickly but also relax quickly during this phase my hope is to use opposite muscle groups to train fast relaxation and contraction to quickly improve my athleticism my fifth and Final Phase is going to be another D Lo week this phase is a D Lo similar to the one I did previously this will allow my body and more importantly my nervous system to rest and recover so that I'm as explosive fresh and as powerful as possible for the final testing day quick disclaimer for each phase I will go through one of the lists and explain what I'm doing but after that the lifts will all be so similar that there's not much need for going over each one aside from the lifting I will also be doing a hard jump session once or twice every single week as well as light plios every day except for the day before a jump session so that I remain fresh I'll also be intentional on getting the sleep that my body needs and avoiding too much unhealthy food for day one I was mainly focused on fixing up my form before I actually test my vertical as you can see I have a lot to work on and this is kind of hard to watch back I promise I'll be jumping way higher by the end of the 60 days something fell off so I tried switching from a right left approach to a left right approach and this definitely did not solve the issue but it was starting to look a little bit better despite my slight progress this jump session was ugly my form is still not looking great and I'm not even touching the rim but I can only get better from here here after warming up with some preventative backwards walking and isometrics I went straight into the first lift of my power phase my main focus today was weighted jumps the purpose of this workout was to be as explosive as possible with really heavy weight I slowly worked my way up to three plates and I did two sets of three reps with that the weight honestly felt very smooth and I was really happy with how it felt I will continue doing this workout or very similar workouts until January 30th in order to keep increasing power and explosiveness in my legs now that I have a little bit of form it's time to test my vertical I think it's important to know exactly how bad I am right now so that I can truly see what progress I make by the end my goal for this session was to hit at least 30 in without too much effort I started off with 29 1/2 in this left me very hopeful for the rest of the session the next jump I hit 30 in I was very pumped to hit my goal this early on I think I got in my head after my first few jumps because I was stuck at 30 in for a long time luckily my friend Simon was with me and he was very helpful he knows a lot about good jump mechanics so it was nice to have him analyze my form as I went we came to the conclusion that I was not running fast enough I should be practically sprinting but instead I've been jogging up slower than most tortoises I only had a few more jumps than me but luckily f focusing on my speed really paid [Music] off I am extremely happy with 31 in for right now but I still have a very long way to go before I can even think about dunking a basketball as I said before the purpose of this phase is to try and trick my body into using more muscle fibers because of the extra stress from the heavy jumping I started with deadlift I wanted to find a weight that I would struggle to get one rep but I wouldn't strain getting it up I ended up settling with 405 lb I did trap bar deadlift because I feel it closely resembles the action of jumping after a minute rest I wanted to moderately heavy jumps I used two 40 lb dumbbells which is equal to about half of my weight for two to three reps after another minute I used a band for assist to jumps these made me feel very springy which is exactly what I wanted after 46 minutes of rest I I repeated this cycle for a total of three times I like this workout a lot and I'll continue doing it or something similar until February 15th today I came in just to mess around and shoe Hoops with my girlfriend and I jokingly went for a very slow jump at like 80% effort or so and I brushed the rim for the first time this entire Journey this was insane and it helped me realize something I've been focusing way too hard on form instead of focusing on fluidity naturally I'm very stiff and tight with everything I do so when I focus some form it usually doesn't go well so I got my camera out and we recorded a few jumps before calling it a day I'm feeling so much more confident about dunking now I didn't feel great this week but luckily I was feeling really amped to jump today I was consistently hitting Above the Rim so I decided to break out the tennis ball and do some dunk attempts I had a few where I grabbed the rim but I couldn't quite get the ball high enough to dunk it despite being unsuccessful today I had a lot of fun and I have a new gold strive for for a little while during my first de lo week I was still doing Max approach jumps but my sessions went from roughly an hour to more like 10 to 20 minutes my lifts during my D Lo week were the same as my lifts during my heavy potentiation phase I used the same weight but I only did one total set instead of 3 to five today was my first lift of my afsm phase the goal of this phase is to train my body to contract and more importantly relax quickly for my first exercise I rigged up our calf raise machine with some resistance bands usually when you squat the bottom of the motion is much slower than the top but the resistance bands allowed me to move at a consistent quick speed throughout the entire movement I had some decently heavy weight on the machine and I would finish the set as soon as I felt myself start to lose power or slow down at all I ended up doing four sets of this with about 4 minutes of rest next I did some more resistance band rigging this time with the trap bar for this exercise I was focused on Contracting my leg muscles by pulling pulling them up fast and then quickly relaxing them into normal jump depth then Contracting them again to jump as high as I could through the resistance I did four sets of three reps of this with about 4 minutes of rest I finished my workout with some different petrics petrics are great for this phase because by definition they involve rapid and repeating stretching and Contracting of the muscles I enjoy doing this workout a lot and I will continue doing it or something similar until my final de lo week begins on March 10th I'm also going to start heavily increasing the amount of petrics and jump sessions I do throughout each week today I felt very hyped which I think led to me jumping way higher than usual I felt good on my warm-up jumps and I wanted to try and dunk a tennis ball again but sadly I didn't bring the tennis ball so instead I decided to get a volleyball and practice some lobs my personal opinion I think lobbing a volleyball is so much harder than a basketball I started to figure it out though and I had the ball Above the Rim a few times I just wasn't quite high enough to slam it down but I was jumping way higher than usual so I asked Simon to come lob me instead and after some practice things started to go much smoother these are some of my highest jumps by far I think focusing on the volleyball was really helping me not overthink my jump form and just kind of go with the flow I didn't quite get the dunk and honestly I still have quite a long way to go but this session really shows the progress I've made since the beginning there isn't much time left but I really think I am going to be able to dunk by the end of the 60 days it was super nice out today so I decided to jump outside I started off kind of rough but after some more mode jumps I started to grab the rim on almost every jump I decided to get out my tennis ball and go for some dunk attempts but sadly my camera couldn't take the nice warm air so I had to record the second half of the session with my phone I was feeling springy and I was getting the tennis ball over the rim for a lot of these at the end I felt like I was getting robbed like look at this today went really well and the change in scenery was nice I think it's a matter of time before I dunk the tennis ball since I'm nearing the end of my 60 days I decided to jump every single day this week before I do my deload week so far in my journey I not had any real pain so I'm not really scared of injury at the moment also I'm only going to be doing this for a week which is not really enough time for it to have a huge impact on my body but hopefully it's enough time for it to have a decent impact on my vertical the last day of jumping before my de lo week I decided had to practice some lobs the rim has been getting easier to grab every single day and the lobs were a lot of fun too I felt like I was getting kind of close to dunking today the big day is only a little over a week away I know I'm still a couple inches off of dunking for real but honestly with a full D Lo week a ton of adrenaline and a little bit of luck I think I can do it the big day is finally here I got to the gym around 6:20 p.m. and a few of my friends came to watch I was feeling so hyped about an hour before this I had 300 Mig of caffeine and when I got here I had 200 more I promise I'm not addicted it was a very big day for me and I wanted to go all in my warm-up jumps were feeling so good I was feeling very confident about dunking today I got my friend Megan to lob the ball for me and honestly she got it down almost immediately all right Megan whenever you're dialed in all right I'm going that was pretty good my first jump was like this far over the rim and usually it takes like an hour before I can get even close to touching the rim so I think in about 20 minutes I'll be like way over top of itoo not of breath had so much caffeine this what the caffeine did definitely did H like here which is probably high enough to dunk take a little bit longer on the rest good job Zach you're doing great [Music] [Music] oh that was closest one yeah I was you got this you got this got this that was so freaking got this we just started literally my best jumps are like an hour in we're only 42 minutes in so that's what you're saying is you're going to Windmill off vert by the time we're done uh yeah oh oh that felt good no that was beautiful that was the best love okay make sure I'm not [Music] bleeding that hurt yeah give me some more tape please medic medic yeah my finger kind of hurts very slight blood that was Blood Sweat and Tears that's how I was just now we're in it look at that we're almost an hour in that's why oh my gosh dude that was that was [Music] it heart R st about 156 oh dude that good I'll the you keep this up you're going to start sounding like a good girlfriend for the video she knows the mic's on I'm an absolute catch this the one that was probably my highest jump felt like there it was probably more like here but felt pretty good all right let's go [Music] medic you yeah oh my gosh dude holy crap progress has been we we're 82 minutes in almost an hour and a half that was another perfect one good job that was good you got this oh oh let's go they're just like little cups of cheat wo that was really [Music] good does that count no it was getting really late and I was about 3 hours in so I felt like it would probably be smart to start up but I wanted to jump a few more times and I'm really glad I did because my adrenaline was through the roof no worries so close each jump was higher than the last that was one of the closest that was a really good jump too cuz you actually like yeah oh my gosh dude I got to my last few jumps and I felt like I was flying I easily grabbed the rim here and I easily grabed the rim again dang all right last one for real okay only two minutes of storage so last one last one so 3 and 1/2 hours in here's my final attempt of my 60-day challenge all right Megan go great work Zach great job that's definitely the highest jump well Mission failed I tried for 3 and 1/2 hours but I just could not get the dunk I had a ton of close calls but in the end I did not dunk a basketball in 60 days of training I'm still incredibly happy with the progress I've made I was going to check my vertical again but I didn't want to exert too much energy and waste any potential dunks so I didn't end up doing that but ing the difference between these two jumps I think I'm somewhere around a 39 in vertical now after this was probably the sorest I've ever been in my life I could barely walk up steps for days I'm recording this audio 5 days after the jump day and today is the first day I haven't felt any soreness this is definitely not the end of my journey I'm going to keep working at getting my first dunk and I'm not going to stop there during this challenge I've really fallen in love with increasing my vertical and it's one of those things where I don't think I'll ever be truly satisfied so expect a lot more jumping content from me in the future in order to not make the this a ful length film I do not include each and every part of every day if there is something you would like me to go more in depth on such as stretching routines diet or my warm-ups leave a comment I'd love to hear what you guys want to see if you did like this video make sure to subscribe because I have a lot of plans for the future of this channel thank you so much for watching