Pro Dunker Reveals How to Get a 50 Inch Vertical Jump | Connor Barth Digital Social Hour #84

I found the wrong guy and he like picked me up and slammed me into the wall, like holding me up by my shirt.

It was like a movie.

He was like looking me like dead in the eye and was telling me like you're gonna disappear.

Your whole family's gonna disappear.

Like you came and fed around in the wrong hood, kid.

Welcome to the digital social hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

I'm here with my co-host Charlie Cavalier and our guest today, Connor Barth.

How we doing?

Doing pretty good, man.

We just played last night.

Got the W.

That's what matters.

I saw your game.

You were pretty nice, man.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I think a lot of people don't actually know that I'm very good at basketball.

Yeah.

Well, there's a stigma with dunkers that they're not like.

You know, we can just dunk.

Yeah.

And that is true for some of us but uh for a large majority of us we stemmed out of basketball right so it just dunking became something we liked to do and we could make some money off it so we just transitioned into it yeah that makes sense so how did you get into dunking was it just playing at first and then you just started yamming it oh gosh uh i mean that was part of it obviously i came up and i was watching like vince carter and like uh with the mavericks there was gerald green when he was with the mavericks um and i just became obsessed with like that part of basketball.

I just thought it was the most impactful part of basketball.

So all through high school I was trying to dunk.

I couldn't dunk well, but I could dunk.

And then I started, you know, googling, you know, how to do dunks, how to do tricks.

And I ran into Jordan Kilganon, which shout out.

And then

just from watching him and talking to a bunch of the other like semi-pro dunkers,

that led into me just becoming more and more interested.

So, yeah.

And then from there, you just started training and eventually got a 50-inch vertical.

Yeah, I mean, so I basically spent, I was playing like semi-professional basketball at the time, and I had done that for about three years and didn't really want to go pro.

I didn't want to go to college, like not my thing.

And so I decided like, I'm just going to focus on one thing right now and just, you know, everything else done.

So I was like, I'm just going to be a pro dunker.

I don't care what it takes.

I decided that at like 23.

I'm 30 now.

So I spent a year and a half to two years doing nothing but just like studying, training, dunking.

I would literally just like wake up, go to my nine to five, and then I would just go straight to the gym and I would either jump for like multiple hours

and or I would just lift weights and then go home and then I just repeat.

And I did that every day for that two-year span.

So I gained like 10 inches on my vert in that time.

Jeez.

Yeah.

So.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

You mentioned becoming a pro-dunker.

What does that look like?

Is there a circuit?

Is there a paycheck that comes from being a pro-dunker?

How do you monetize that?

Yeah, so up until this point, monetization around dunking has basically been you can get brand deals.

So, you know, build your social media, get brand deals.

You might get sponsors, get paid like that.

But most people make money from it from just appearance fees.

So it's like, you know, hey, come to Dubai, do this dunk contest.

We'll pay you two grand and we'll pay your whole way.

The truth is...

There's almost no pro-dunkers that make a full living off of just dunking.

There's not that much money in it currently.

A lot of that has to stem with like the organizations never been put in to really like get the brand deals and get you know everything just organized.

So that's actually something I've been working on a lot.

Ever since I got into dunking, it upset me that it wasn't an actual sport.

And I was like, we have all the qualifications to be a sport.

It takes a lot of work to be a pro dunker.

And it's obviously very entertaining.

It is.

A dunk contest is, some years is very entertaining.

Some years it's not.

But Chase mentioned they only get 100K when they win.

Yeah, and that's an NBA player.

Yeah.

So like, imagine what we get.

Like, we don't.

That's nothing for them.

Yeah.

What would you say the top workouts are that helped you gain 10 inches?

So

this is a very common question.

And the top workout is always going to be just jump.

So like, this is true for almost anything in life, but like, if you want to get better at something, you have to do it a lot, right?

So jumping is the most specific thing you could do.

If you jump a lot and you just do it consistently, one, you won't get hurt as often, and two, you will just get better.

Eventually, it becomes a point where it's like, how much do I get from jumping three hours a day?

And can I do that every day?

No, like as you get better, you have to start jumping less because you jump so high.

But that's when you start adding in things like weight training, you know, all sorts of different modalities like that.

Right.

Yeah.

So when you say jump, you're literally saying just jump up and down as long as you can.

Yeah, not quite like that.

Although that would help.

But really, what I mean is like, just go to your gym and have a dunk session, even if you can't dunk.

If you can't dunk, you have two choices.

You can either just jump at the goal, which is what I did, or lots of places have adjustable hoops now.

So you would want to put the goal down to like right above where you can dunk.

Because then you know, like, oh, when I start consistently hitting a dunk on nine foot three inches.

you know you got better okay put it to nine four and keep going and then when you can do it consistent there nine five and just keep repeating so So nice.

Do you think it's a good idea for those trying to dunk on a 10-foot hoop to bring the hoop down a little bit to start to get the repetitions of in grabbing the hoop, hanging, all the stuff like that?

Is that the best way to start?

Yeah, I mean, if you have that option, I think it's definitely the best way to start.

And I also think, too, that doing that and like doing tricks with it, especially if your main goal is be a pro dunker, the biggest challenge is not jumping high.

The biggest challenge is having the hand-eye coordination to do all the tricks.

Like, you could jump really low and do like between the legs behind the back if you just have really good hands.

Right.

Um,

like, even right now, like, I'm not jumping the highest I've ever jumped.

I could go do a behind-the-back dunk with like in a warm-up just because I've repped out the technique so much.

Wow, yeah, that's insane.

Behind the back, geez.

Yeah, are you a fan of squatting and deadlifting?

Huge fan, massive fan.

Some people say it causes injuries and stuff.

It does.

I think that the health and fitness industry is pretty opinionated.

It's a lot like politics.

It becomes very extreme.

There are like people that say never do these things.

There are the people that say always do these things.

Without getting like too philosophical with it, generally that has to do with what someone found worked for them.

So whatever they find works for them, that's going to be the thing they preach to everybody holistically, right?

It's a lot more nuanced than that, that, but squats and deadlifts are really good for you if you work up to them properly.

Just like I would never tell someone to just like go jump three hours a day every day when they've never jumped.

I'd be like, okay, go jump twice a week for 30 minutes and then next week do 35 and then next week do 40.

When you get to an hour, do 30 minutes again, but go three times a week.

You know, it's all about this progressive adding.

of the stress over time.

So if you start with squatting body weight, then you do 10 pounds, 20, and you do that for over a year and you just slowly work up to where you're squatting, you know, your body weight on the bar, you'll avoid all those injury issues if you're using proper technique, too.

Which there's so much information online now, you can

find everything you need.

That makes sense.

I feel like social media did a lot for the dunking, you know, community, things going viral, things of that nature.

What is the most incorrect stereotype you see put out amongst those trying to get hops, trying to get up higher, and trying to do more at their dunking game?

Hmm.

Repeat that question.

So what is it?

What incorrect stereotype do you see put out on social media from other dunkers to those trying to learn?

Like what is something that people tell everyone trying to learn that you just think is incorrect?

The most widely pushed incorrect stereotype?

Yeah.

I think...

I think going back to the previous question, the kind of the biggest stereotype I see is that everyone has to do it the exact same way.

That's not really true.

Like, for instance, Sean, like, probably if you squatted more, like, if you focused more on weightlifting and you just jumped consistently, I already think you're like pretty springy.

So, like, adding in more strength would be something that would probably benefit you more than someone else, right?

Like, everyone's trying to give everyone this, like, one template that this is exactly how you do it.

I think that's kind of what's wrong and gets spread around a lot.

It's like, this is the one thing that will make you better.

It's just, it doesn't work that way.

There's so many aspects to it.

It's not that complicated.

I think it gets overcomplicated a lot.

But it's like some people are at the phase of, you just need to learn how to jump, go jump a lot.

When they get through that phase, they're at the phase of, okay, you need to get stronger now.

When they're through that phase, now it's like, okay, you need to get stronger, but in a very specific way because you need these different qualities of strength.

It's not just just be strong.

Now it's be strong, be strong and fast.

Now be strong and slow and still keep jumping

so it's just that this is the one thing that's the biggest stereotype there is around yeah do you think if you trained a five-foot person with your training regimen you could get them to dunk

possibly it it depends so

they would jump higher a hundred percent like anyone who does something correctly

Like they'll jump higher 100%, no doubt.

The big thing becomes like, can you dunk?

Well, that depends less on your height and more on your reach, like your standing reach.

I've actually done a dunk contest in

Riga, or it was in New Mexico, or New Mexico?

No, Mexico City.

It was the first dunk contest I ever did.

And there was this guy named Gedamina Zetlinskis, and he was 5'8, and he had a higher standing reach than me at 6'4.

Right?

So I have short arms as a dunker, by the way.

My wingspan is like, I think it's 6'1.5.

Oh, wow.

So my, yeah, that's not normal.

So, um,

so if I knew their standing reach and like they needed, you know, a 40-ish-inch vert to dunk, I would say that is achievable for most people.

If you give like a good five years of training hard, you could get a 40-inch vert and you could dunk as long as your reach was high enough.

That's impressive.

Yeah.

Hope, Charlie.

I got hope.

I was going to say, I'm not five feet, but six feet on the dot.

Maybe I got hope with my bad, my bad knee.

But now saying talk about standing reach, standing reach is is a way better indicator of how easy it will be for you to dunk than your height is, right?

Because that's yeah, again, it's like

people just don't actually understand what goes into it.

Like, your standing reach is the only indicator if you're going to be able to dunk, other than obviously how high do you jump.

But, um, hand size has a little bit to do with it, but even that is like negligible compared to standing reach.

Uh, I actually want people to start just posting their standing reach instead of their height because it's misleading.

Yeah, like

I'll give it like one foot god, Jordan Sutherland.

Yeah, he has a pretty high standing reach compared to his height.

So it's like if Jordan Sutherland and I had a dunk contest, he's at like a three-inch advantage.

Not to say that's the reason he'd win or not win, but that's just like the actual physical fact, right?

Like if I was dunking against Zion Williamson,

him and I to have like even dunking fairness in terms of like reach I'd dunk on like a 9-6 rim if I was dunking on a 9-6 rim like I would be doing wild things so wow when you go into a dunk contest do you know that you're gonna make the dunks like you're very confident yeah i mean most dunkers have like i would call call like a repertoire of like they know they'll make these dunks uh a lot of the time especially when i do contests i actually don't care about winning that much i just care about doing something cool so i'll try to do dunks i've never done before in a contest like You were with me at Vegas when I did that behind the back.

Right.

Like I did that because I was just like, I need to do this in front of people because no one's ever done it.

People didn't even know what happened.

Yeah,

they still don't know what happened.

He went behind the back off the backboard, dunked it.

Wow.

Yeah.

Like caught it with the other hand after it bounced off the backboard and dunked it.

Where was this?

This was in Vegas at the Ball Dog celebrity game.

Yeah, that's where we met.

He went off that game, man.

Wow.

Yeah.

That was a fun game.

It was.

But like, so that dunk, literally no one knew what happened, so it didn't go viral.

And then like ran, that was two and a half years ago or like two years ago.

And then randomly, like a few weeks ago, it went viral.

Like, because someone finally realized, like, oh, that's crazy.

Yeah, like, the crowd didn't even react when you heard it.

They were just like, huh?

You ever get in any street ball fights when you're hooping, dunking off people?

Yeah, so I mentioned this to you yesterday at the gym.

But so

when I was like 17, I got kicked out of my high school because bad grades, not doing my homework.

And

yeah.

For bad grades.

Yeah, I was in a private school.

Oh, private school.

So they were just like, hey, you know, you're not a fit.

See you later, kid.

And I was like, whatever.

So I went to this school that was like not in the best part of town in Fort Worth.

Grew up in Fort Worth.

And right down the street, there was a boys and girls club.

And I would like hear that guys would go play basketball there.

So I went and played basketball there one day after school.

And this is at like 9 p.m.

because I had to wait.

And they don't start playing until like 9.

And they have this whole like program where it's just, you know, you come in, like, it's to keep people like out of gangs, off the streets, like not doing hooligan shit so that they'll actually like

just not get in trouble, basically, right?

So, I went in there, and I'm like, only white guy.

Like, I'm 17.

When I was 17, I was like not super athletic.

I was super skinny.

And I went in there.

I'm just like, I just want to play.

And I was good at basketball.

I just couldn't dunk really well.

Okay.

And

we're like going, we're playing.

They like finally let me play after like multiple games.

I had to convince someone to let me play.

And

this guy, his nickname is Rambo.

He's just like jacked.

Like, probably one of the most jacked guys I've ever played with

and

He fouled me when I went up for a shot on one end and I was like talking to him, you know, cuz I'm smart like that and then we went to the other end and I absolutely just like fouled the out of him because I was like I don't like people like disrespecting me in basketball like it just there's no reason for it.

So anyway, I fouled the wrong guy and he like picked me up and slammed me into the wall like holding me up by my shirt.

It was like a movie and um he was like looking me like dead in the eye and was telling me like you know like you're gonna disappear your whole family's gonna disappear like you you came and around in the wrong hood kid and i just like looked and i was like okay like i didn't know what was going on like i had never been in that situation before like i didn't know how to act but the funny thing was he kind of respected it because i just like didn't care at all i was so nonchalant and uh i ended up playing at that gym and that's actually kind of where i started trying to do trick dunks and stuff is like with those guys.

And me and that guy became friends.

We actually still talk when I go back to Fort Worth.

Wow.

Yeah, that's wild.

So I would have been myself, bro.

Yeah, that'd be an interesting experience.

It was a blast.

I learned a lot from that group, actually, just about life, too.

Yeah.

You were the only white kid.

Yeah, yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So, growing up in Fort Worth, obviously, you know, Texas is a football state first and foremost.

I'm sure you remember that often.

What is it like having a love of a different sport in a place that is so ingratiated into football?

Yeah, I mean,

yeah.

Texas, football's a religion.

Like, it's actually like an obsessive thing for a lot of people.

Yeah.

It was annoying a little bit, especially like when it was basketball.

Basketball's still pretty popular.

Like actually, so my school played against Julius Randall in state every year.

Wow.

Yeah, we lost like three times by one point.

Yeah, Preston would, man.

You played him?

Yeah, yeah.

What was it like, Gardingham?

Scary?

I mean, he's like, he was as big as he is now then.

So he was just like, oh, go past you, dunk on everyone.

Wow.

But so, yeah, it was nuts.

They're actually, that team had three number one recruits of their class.

It was Mickey Mitchell,

Randall, and then it was Zach Peters.

Wow.

He ended up going to Kansas, and then he quit because he got a concussion and he quit basketball for the rest of his life.

Wow.

Yeah.

But was that a private school?

Yeah, a private school.

Yeah, yeah.

So they would just like recruit people from across the country.

Yeah.

But um

so original question back to it.

What was that?

Dealing with loving basketball.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So football is like actually religion.

Like our basketball team would always have less funding.

Like most of the football kids would, some of them would play basketball, but like football and basketball season overlap.

So like we'd only have half our team for the first half of the season.

Wow.

It was pretty annoying.

But

truthfully, like

sports are so big there that it ended up not really mattering.

Like you could still do everything you wanted to do.

But

it was just like those slight biases of the schools and stuff.

Like, oh, well, football makes us a lot of money.

So we're going to focus on that more.

Did people even go to the basketball games to watch?

Not like the football games.

The football games would be like packed out entire stadium.

The basketball games would be like, yeah, you have some crowds.

Like when it got to state, people would come.

But like the normal games and stuff, it'd be like, oh, your parents and stuff are there, but you're not having like a crazy crowd.

Yeah, that's how it was in Jersey.

Nothing crazy.

Yeah.

So you own a gym.

I want to dive into that.

How did you get involved with that?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, so originally I moved from Texas to Florida to work with knees over toes guy, Ben Patrick.

And I worked there for like two years, ended up leaving there.

We never did like...

brick and mortar like locations or anything like that.

After that, I worked with some other people here and there, mostly online training because that's what we specialized in.

Just had tons of thoughts about wanting to do stuff in person with people, like especially personal training, just because there's a lot of people who want to jump higher and I've got the time.

So I ended up working with a friend of mine, his name is Ben Gilbert, like nine months ago.

And,

you know, came, like, gave up my business.

And I was basically like, I'm going to give up my business and come and join you so that we can like help each other, you know, use our strengths to grow faster.

And we did that for the last six months.

And it's worked out really well

but during all that time I basically convinced him I was like you know I'm gonna help you grow this big I just need someone to help me manage things so like stick with me we're gonna do this but you're gonna have to give half and I was like I already gave up my company so you're gonna we're gonna have to have an agreement here so we did that like we just went all in together And then actually last week, I was telling you this, we had some other people sign on.

Our gym name is about to change.

Our gym name was Adrenaline Fitness.

it's about to change to probably evolve fitness group um

it's interesting that we went to that lifetime we want to do something very similar we want to basically create like high performance athletic facilities like all over the country um

and there's a lot of like specific training like structures that we want to implement that don't really get implemented at normal gyms like um well it's it's it's about like the order you do things like i was talking about before right everyone's at a specific point, and lots of people will just go into gyms and all be treated exactly the same, which doesn't work as effectively.

It works, but it's not the best, right?

Like, we basically want to try and solve fitness.

Like, this is a belief I hold more so than anyone else at my gym, but like, I believe fitness is a solvable equation.

I think almost everything in life is like objectively solvable.

And so I want to create a gym where we can actually do that.

And like, just when it's solved, it's solved.

and then someone comes in and you just have them do the test you put them where they are and the results are only a matter of time and doing it interesting it's not like a subjective thing anymore so it's kind of like a leveling system yeah almost yeah we've we've described it as like belts in karate karate yeah it's like when you are this level you will have these qualities yeah like it doesn't mean that someone who is like at the same level will like all of them will have 30 inch burts or something but it might be like when you reach this level, you should have had some percentage gain where you were at that level.

You know, that makes sense.

Yeah, we're seeing a lot of high flyers like John Morant get injured, you know, more often than maybe even ever before.

What are some unique things that dunkers can do to protect themselves other than just, you know, landing on two feet?

Yeah, so I'm a big one would be, this is a shout out to John Evans, just so I give him credit, but like isometrics.

That was something I implemented into my routine.

And if you don't know what an isometric is, like when you pick something up, the bringing it up portion would be called a concentric.

It's when your muscle gets shorter.

When you lower it back down, that's eccentric.

It's when your muscle gets longer.

And then if you hold it still, that's an isometric.

Your muscle is contracting, but it does not get shorter or longer.

So you can do those a lot.

Those are really, really good for your connective tissue just because you're putting a lot of force into them.

Your connective tissue wants force on it.

You just need to do it the right way.

way.

So

a lot of these really athletic guys, like Zion and Jaw and things like that, they get hurt because they're putting such huge forces into their body so frequently that they're just not prepared for it.

And I would hazard a bet that like a lot of these guys are doing preparatory things in the weight room, but

it's really hard to account for every...

possibility in a basketball game because it's so random yeah that like

the only thing you can really do is like prep the best you can again I think that there is an objective answer to this eventually I don't have it right now but I think that there is like you could figure out all the movements someone go through you could test someone and figure out like what their weakness is and if you know that you know the injuries that can stem from that and you would just bring that up like there's always a chance for injury but you just minimize it as much as possible those isometrics are a big part and then just the basics of like progressive overload and load management are super important.

I actually think I heard an interesting take from it might have been Kendrick Perkins who said that like yeah I think he said something about like he actually thinks part of the problem is that people are doing load management now

because

the the problem is not always the load you're at it's the these peaks of the load.

So like if you like when I was dunking three hours a day when I was at like a certain level of jumping I could do that that and I could just do that forever if I didn't get better.

The thing that would hurt me is if like now, right, like I said, I hadn't trained as consistently or dunked as consistently while working on this business.

If I go jump a ton, my body can handle small amounts of that large force, but not consistently.

So it's about like keeping it smooth.

Doing these load management things and like having players not put the forces on themselves as frequently, I think detrains them a bit and then ends up leading to more peaks and valleys of like stress on themselves.

If they're outside of the gym, actually training hard and like practicing hard and stuff, it smooths it out.

So like

there's a dual-edged sword there where it's like part of it is if you have a really, really high intensity that you do consistently, you might like not have everyone be able to sustain that.

But the people who can will stay healthier because it's not doing this.

Yeah, I think there's a balance.

Exactly.

And and again everyone's going to be a little different yeah but i think that uh

it's an interesting topic for sure no it's very interesting because it becomes a what-if conversation what if kawaii leonard hasn't been getting injured all these years yeah he could have two three more rings yeah like what if zion

could actually play chris paul yeah all these people like Chris Paul, the one that really bothers me because I just want him to stay healthy for one playoffs.

One playoffs stretch.

It'd be nice to see.

I think he'd be looking good without him, but I don't know if they'll beat the.

It's gonna be interesting do you have an age that you want to dunk at like do you want to be able to dunk when you're 50 when you're 60 each of these guys

yeah i do actually what's the age oh i want to be able to dunk at 60.

oh that's actually the age i had picked before

what's the world record age like oldest dunker i think the oldest dunker i've ever seen was uh dr j dunked at like 64 i believe he had this whole thing where every year on his birthday he would like dunk and film it so That's a good tradition.

Yeah, so I think I'll start doing something like that actually.

But the thing I wanted to do different was I want to be able to dunk at 60, but what I really want to be able to do is do a double up at 50.

So a double up is when you like jump over someone and take the ball out of their hand and dunk backwards.

Wow.

And I sp this this exists because there was a guy in my comments who said something to me that annoyed me.

So now I'm like, I think I said like in a caption, oh, I'm going to be doing this at 50 because it's so easy right now.

And he's like, it'll never happen.

And I screenshotted it and I was like, bet.

So that's sick.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, Kadora's dunking barefoot at 47.

Exactly.

And Kador's also shorter than me.

And like,

so I definitely think it's possible.

Oh, yeah.

It's just not stopping.

You just have to stay consistent.

Absolutely.

It's been a pleasure, man.

Any closing comments, things you're trying to promote?

Yeah, man.

If you want to jump higher, go to adrenalinefitnessgym.com.

And if it's not that, by the time this comes out, then just go to my Instagram page and go to the link in my bio.

But yeah, man, thanks for having me on.

Absolutely.

Digital Social Hour.

Thanks for tuning in, guys.

I'll see you next week.