New Year's Resolution

Posted December 28, 2008 in Basketball, Fitness

I used to play basketball a lot when I was around 18. Now I play about once a year. But I still work out. They say it’s good to have a goal for your work-outs, so here’s mine: I want to be able to slam dunk on a 120’’/305cm basketball rim in 2009.

Now I seem to remember that some of my friends at the time managed to dunk and we worked out that for somebody of my height (178cm, 5’10’’) it would take a 65cm/25’’ vertical jump. Now this calculation looks correct and claims I would need around 35’’, but I think the author is confusing things since he’s really calculating what a vertical jump you need, in order to be able to slam-dunk using the strict vertical jump. But in reality, you don’t use a vertical jump in order to slam-dunk. Instead you use a jump where you are running with a ball in your hands and take the two-step standard that you’d use in a basketball game. And most people are able to get higher like that than with a pure vertical jump…

So far I’ve found three resources that show some promise: