"What can I do to get a dunk in the next two weeks?" It is the question we get more than almost any other in the Core Advantage High Performance Centre, usually from an athlete about to leave for a tournament who has been running laps of an oval and grinding out sit-ups hoping it will help. It will not.
Working harder is typically not the answer when it comes to getting a quick boost for your vertical jump. Especially if you are working on the wrong things.
So let us answer it properly. What does dunking actually take, how much progress can you make in just two weeks realistically, and what should you do with the time you have?
Can you actually dunk in two weeks?
It depends how close you already are. Our best jump improvement result was 10cm in 5 weeks, so you will not go from baby backboard slaps to a full dunk in a fortnight, because that takes months of strength and power work. But if you are within a few centimetres of the rim, grazing it, or just can’t quite put the ball down, you can absolutely give a 2-3 week push and peak into a dunk.
We do this by arriving fresh and springy instead of tired and tight. Two weeks is a window to peak, not to build.
The fastest way to know is simple maths. Measure your standing reach, measure your running vertical, and add them together. A rim sits at 305 cm (10 ft), and to dunk you need to clear it with enough room to bring the ball down, so call it rim height plus roughly 10-15cm, depending on how well you palm a ball. If your reach plus your jump is close to that, the plan below can get you there. The good news for a two-week window: beyond the raw numbers, dunking is mostly skills — a confident approach, a takeoff you trust, and ball control at the top — and skills sharpen fast, which is exactly what this plan leans on.
The two-week dunk plan
The goal for the next fortnight is to arrive fresh and explosive, not flogged. That means cutting the junk fitness work and doing a small amount of very high quality jumping. Here is the advice we gave the athlete who inspired this article, cleaned up.
Stop the long, slow running. Endless oval laps just add fatigue. If you need conditioning, keep it highly sport specific by playing and scrimmaging, or short and sharp sessions, such as repeat sprints or 8:12s on a spin bike, which build fitness without beating up your legs.
Drop the endless core work too. Sit-ups and crunches are not building your dunk.
Then do a little high quality jump training, and no more. Two or three sessions a week, with at least 48 hours between them so your body can recover and adapt. Never jump hard on tired legs. A session looks like this:
- Roll, stretch and activate to warm up, using our stretches to jump higher
- 2 x 3 soft, controlled landings, drilled first
- 10 x 1 max ring touches, with full rest between every rep
- 3 x 10 squats
- 3 x 10 glute bridges
- 3 x 30 double-leg calf raises
That is 15 to 20 minutes of quality work. Get in, jump high on fresh legs, then start recovering.
Around those sessions, four things fill out the fortnight:
- Keep your strength work short and sharp — if you already lift. Cut the volume, keep the intensity, leave every session fresh. If you are not currently lifting, do not start now: two weeks is not enough time to adapt to a new routine, and you will just arrive sore.
- Roll and stretch daily. Our stretches to jump higher take five minutes and free up the hips you jump with.
- Light band work and calf raises. Easy, low-fatigue strength maintenance that keeps your ankles and feet springy without digging a recovery hole.
- Video analysis and technique work. Film your jumps and sharpen your jumping technique — a full arm swing and a fast, stiff plant are worth centimetres for free, and skill is the one thing you can genuinely improve in two weeks.
What not to do
Do not max-jump every day to "practise". Do not chase a dangerous internet program in the last two weeks. The only thing worse than missing the dunk on tour is arriving with sore knees from overdoing it the week before. Tendons remember a sudden spike in jumping volume, and they punish it.
Beyond two weeks: a vertical that dunks for good
Peaking gets you one dunk on a good day. If you want to dunk whenever you like, you have to raise the ceiling, and that means training the real drivers of how to jump higher: mobility, technique, strength, power and elasticity, in the right order, for more than a fortnight. That is exactly what our seven-week Boring Jump Program does — every session planned, nothing flashy, and athletes typically add 6–10 cm (2–4 inches) to their vertical. If this article found you two weeks out, the program is what you start the day the tournament ends.