How to jump higher and dunk a basketball

The dunk is the most spectacular way to score in basketball, and one of the hardest: the rim sits at 3.05 metres and to finish above it you have to get there with your hand, not your fingertips. Here's where the move comes from, what types exist and — above all — how to train the vertical it takes.

Who was the first player to dunk?

Julius Winfield Erving, known to history as Doctor J. Born in East Meadow in 1950, he was the trailblazer of the air game: the first to show what physical power and technique could do together.

Unguardable on the break, impossible to stop once he took off toward the paint, he threw the doors of modern basketball wide open. Before him nobody had used flight as a tool of the game.

What a dunk is

A dunk is a finish where the attacker jumps high enough to put the ball straight down through the hoop, top to bottom. A player who can dunk is harder to contain, because in the last metre he doesn't need to look for a shooting angle: he just needs to get up there.

The types of dunk

• Two-handed — the basic one. To get there, practise jumping under the rim until you touch it with your wrists.
• Double pump — the ball starts high, drops to stomach or knee height and comes back up fast. Often done with your back to the basket.
• Windmill — the ball goes down toward your stomach and then the arm swings in a full circle, like the blades of a windmill.
• Tomahawk — one hand or two: you take the ball behind your head with your elbows bent and slam it down like a lumberjack.
• Between the legs — the ball passes under one leg mid-flight. It takes hang time, so it takes real hops.

And if none of them do it for you, you can always invent your own.

First question: how many centimetres are you missing?

To dunk on a regulation hoop your wrist has to clear 3.05 m. Knowing where you're at today turns a vague dream into a target with a number on it.

With the JHP jump test you measure your vertical in two minutes, free: you upload a two-second video of yourself jumping and you get your jump height, worked out from your hang time. Add your standing reach with one arm up and you know exactly how far you are from the rim.

➡️ Measure your vertical, free

Training the dunk

If you're just starting out, start on a lower hoop: you make progress right away, you work on the technique and you raise the bar a few centimetres at a time until you're at 3.05 m.

Be consistent: the first attempts will be clumsy and discouraging. You don't need to be especially tall — one web search is enough to see what normal-sized athletes pull off — but you do need structured work on your vertical.

The hands

Two-handed dunks are the most common, but they come to the more experienced players: start with the one-handed slam dunk.

Practise handling the ball with one hand and using the momentum of the bounce to control it as you extend your arm. Even players who palm the ball one-handed sometimes lose their grip in the air, so control in flight is worth training on its own.

Run at the rim and slam the ball off the backboard: even without finishing the dunk you're training the movement and the grip at the moment of takeoff. You can start with a tennis ball, move to a volleyball and work your way up to a basketball.

The jump: one foot or two

Some players take off on one foot, others on both. There's no technique that's better in absolute terms: age, weight and build point you toward one or the other.

On a one-foot jump the contact with the ground is very short and the drive leg has to release force in a tiny window: ideal for light, fast, reactive athletes.

On a two-foot jump the contact is longer, so legs and hips have more time to build momentum: it rewards raw strength and suits bigger, more solidly built athletes.

What to actually work on

To add to your vertical you need legs, hips and core, the structures that channel force upward. The tools are always the same: maximal strength in the weight room, plyometrics, and smart alternation of the two across the week.

In the JHP subscription (€99/year, 13 programs with day-by-day plans, a video for every exercise and WhatsApp support) the paths that get you to a dunk are:

• Jump Higher Program — 10 weeks of bodyweight jump training (€60)
• JHP Gym Edition — 16 weeks in the weight room on maximal strength and power (€60)
• Jumping Monster — 14 days of intensive plyometrics, 116 exercises (€40)
• Knee Power — solid knees, because landing from a dunk costs you something (€40)
• Basket Advanced — the package built for basketball players (€80)

You might also like: how high NBA players jump and training explosive strength for basketball.