August 10 Update

After almost four full weeks of work, I'm starting to see some signs of progress. Here's how I know that I'm moving forward (or upward). 

Before I started, I measured my standing reach to be 7'9" (or 93"). Then I took a combination of measurements to determine how high I could jump with a running start, a one-step jump, and even jumping with nothing but a deep bend of my knees.  My highest jump was 9"7" (or 115").

 So my starting vertical jump
was a lackluster 22". 

Most of you know that a regulation basketball rim is 10" (120") high, so I needed to pick up at least 5" just to touch the rim, then another 5 to 7 inches to have any hope of dunking a regulation basketball.  To get even more scientific, I found this site that confirmed that:

You need a 27 Inch vertical leap
to touch the rim and 33 Inch leap
to dunk considering that
you have to jump about 6 inches
over the rim to dunk. To accomplish
that you have to leave the ground
at a speed of 4.05 m/s vertically no matter
how much you weigh. You need a
force of 4626 Newtons against the ground
based on your weight to reach that
speed assuming you bent your
knees at an angle of 60 degrees.

Maybe that was my hint to quit while I was behind. 

Still, I pressed on and after these four weeks, I have increased my vertical 3 inches, and I'm almost grabbing the rim. I would love to think that my jumping skills will continue to improve in a linear fashion, but that's not likely. But I do know that my fitness level increase (CG wut wut!) is directly related to my jumping improvements.

Back to work. 

August 3 Update

After almost three weeks on this quest, I had a couple of revelatory moments. 

First, as much as I thought I was in good (enough) physical shape to just fine tune a few things and be dunking by September....that's just not the case.  If I needed a reminder of the value of consistent, continuous training, the CG Games preliminaries provided just the kick in the tenders I needed. 

Where did I get off coming to that event after a two month hiatus from bootcamp training? Oh, and to make matters worse, I had to do all six qualifying events in one 3.5 hour period, rather than spread them over a couple of sessions the way the smart people did it. 

Don't let the happy face in this photo fool you: I was not up to the challenge yesterday, and my ego is now in firmly in check. 

The second revelation is related to the first: my ability to increase my vertical leap enough to dunk will be directly tied to my overall level of fitness AND the specific training that I will have to do to address that particular set of explosive moves. 

For some reason, I thought I could focus on the leg work I've been researching and after about 12 weeks of squats, box jumps and assorted plyo exercises, I would become a leaper. No doubt, those kinds of activities will be critical to the mission, but none of this will matter if I haven't achieved a suitable level of overall athleticism.

More specifically, I'm going to need to get some assistance from experts in the "choreography" of dunking and not just jumping higher. As much as I might like to make this a solitary campaign, it's clear I'm going to need to call in the Special Forces....