I want to be able to dunk a basketball, I’m 6 feet tall and fairly athletic. I can just barely touch the rim. What do I have to do to increase my verticle jump. I’m looking for specifics that I could work out to substantially increase my verticle jump. Anyone?
You have to increase your leg strength, specifically the strength of the ‘fast twitch’ muscle fibers. Good excercises to improve your jump hight are squats and calf raises. The more weight you can squat and calf raise at high speed, the higher you can jump. Additionally, you can practice jumping from a squatting position. If you do this, I’d recommend that you wear knee joint wraps and thoroughly stretch all the muscles in your legs. Build up slowly, don’t go crazy the first day and set youself back many months.
You want to increase the speed that your leg muscles can contract with a load ( your body) attached, without blowing a knee or achilles tendon. Keeping up a good regimin of stretching will help avoid injuries. The knee joint is very vulnerable to injury while doing things like jumping, so I highly reccommed the wrap.
I’m 72.5 inches tall, and I used to just be able to dunk a football, but could never quite get a basketball in. A bad ankle and back prevent me from getting close now. Then again, I’m white, so I use that as my excuse. 
Something I’ve been taught as a dancer is: Don’t think of jumping UP from the ground, think of pushing DOWN into the ground. Bend your knees before the jump, then try to straighten them down, into the floor.
The correct shoes will make a huge difference…try these…
I agree with Thaumaturge. I’m a 6 foot 2 white boy who could dunk a basketball two handed. I used to run 5 miles a day and had thighs that made pant buying difficult. Leg strength is probably the most important thing.
Another thing is timing. There have been times that I would get off a lousy jump and get no air at all because the motion of the jump was off.
I’m about 6’ tall, and was 165 in high school. My cross country and short distance track training, along with doing the long jump (triple and high I also did on occassion) did more for me dunking than basketball practice. The running helped build the leg strength, and the long jumping helped build the timing – as other have pointed out, those two are probably the most important aspects. When we would practice the long jump, we use to do box jumping exercise. Neither my team mates nor I had any knee problems (and still don’t) so i can’t tell you how much it hurts. I’ll say that I felt more soreness in my quads and calves than my knees. We would start with two sets of 30 (about every day), and by the end of the season, we would be up to 5 of 20 (once a week) – this was a strength builder, and as the seasoned wined down, it was more important to concentrate on technique than strength. The box jump was fairly simple: find a box, about knee height, jump on that, and then jump off. There was two variations: jump up and jump off back to the starting point; or, jump up and then over the box.
Also, as others have mentioned, technique counts. Think about coiling like a spring and then exploding the basket.
Alternatively, one of my co-captains (6’ 1") in basketball told me that he stood at his fireplace mantle and did calf raises (I think that’s what they’re called): face the fireplace (or stairs), toes on the edge, heels dangling over, lower yourself as far as you can go, then stand on your tippy-toes for a count of 1. He said he did at least 100 a night. He only played basketball (while I was a three sport athlete.) He could monster dunk two handed, and he said that my one hand dunk (though left handed) was phony. It kind of was, I threw the ball down first then grabbed the rim – which led a lot of missed dunks. My friend could put both his hands in the basket. We joked that he could that because he was black.
IMO, I probably wouldn’t do any serious weights to build strength. We had a 190lb, 6’3" forward on our team (he also played football). While he could shoot the lights out, he couldn’t dunk to save his life (he said he got closer in college). My co-captains and I mused that it was because he had so much weight on his frame, i.e. too bulky. I now weight almost 30 lbs more, and while I can bench a hundred pounds more than when I was in high school, I can barely touch the rim. Then again, I haven’t played a serious game of basketball in like 5 years.
You might also want to work on hand strength, or being able to palm the ball. If you’re trying for the running, one-handed dunk, the ball can slip out of your hands a lot.
Depending on how motivated you are to be able to dunk, there are products you can buy. I bought a pair of Strength Shoes when I was in high school, as I’m a 5’9 white kid and I wanted to get up too. They’re expensive as hell, but they work; basically they overload your calves and Achilles’ by eliminating the heel support. You wear them and do about a 45 minute workout a few times a week- box jumps, jumping rope, sprints, and things like that. There’s other similar products, one is called Jumpsoles I think. I should tell you, you can seriously hurt yourself if you’re not careful with them, because they put a hell of a strain on the muscles back there. For that reason, I’d recommend not doing them during the season (which I guess means now is a good time to start). They’ll make you sore to the point of crippling you if you push it too far. Still, I used them for two years with bad knees, and I escaped serious damage… and my calves looked like grapefruits- mission accomplished.
If you’re concerned specifically with dunking, there are a few other things to consider besides just leg strength. First, some people are two-footed jumpers, some are one footed dunkers- think Dominique as a two-footer vs. Jordan as a one-footer. Basically, some people are more comfortable going up one way vs. the other, and if you’re not comfortable with the way you go up you’re not going to get as high as you could. Whichever way feels best is the way you should go, although it’s probably a bit easier to get to the rim going off of one foot.
If you go off of one foot, the way I was taught to jump was like this: you know how you approach the rim, and then plant your takeoff foot really hard before you explode up? If you’re right handed, that means you plant your left foot, probably. Plant your right foot hard on the step before the takeoff, too. I don’t know why that works, but it does. In other words, instead of running up to the takeoff point, stomping the left foot, and pushing off, you run up, go stomp-stomp, and then push off with the left foot.
If you go off both feet, I can’t help you that much, because I suck at it- I’ve successfully dunked off of two feet maybe ten times in my life. I guess it’s just a matter of transferring enough power- bend the hell out of your knees, swing your arms, and all that, but it’s more natural to dunk with two hands off two feet, and I can’t get high enough to do that.
If you’re just barely getting enough height, another important thing is to make sure you’re taking off from the right spot. Too far under and you can’t extend your arms, too far out and you won’t be able to make the dunk.
On top of all that, you could have a 45 inch vertical and still not be able to successfully bang one in a game if you can’t palm the ball. My hands are too small, so I can only really dunk on a breakaway or if somebody throws me a lob. My advice, if you can’t easily palm the ball, is to get someone to throw it up for you once you get the vertical built up. It’s a lot easier that way.
If you want to research the subject, look for plyometrics. (definition: In the exercise world, Plyometrics is a high velocity exercise that entails eccentric and rapid concentric contractions, such as jumping or weighted ball throwing and catching.) Amazon has several books on the subject.
Personally, in rowing, we always need to increase our explosive power. (when you take a stroke, you’re basically “jumping” off the foot stretchers, rowing strength is mostly leg) We do a lot of box jumps (which always totally kick my ass). If you work out at a gym, you might use the rowing machines to help develop the explosive power while workign out aerobically.
Try to train all the muscle groups in your legs evenly (ie, don’t only focus on your quads or something).
Very simple calf-muscle building drill: stand on the balls of your feet. Using your knees as little as possible, jump up and down in place. The aim here isn’t to jump high, but over and over and over. I believe that this strengthens your ankles, too, moreso than just calf raises (same movement but iwthout leaving the ground.)