Book Review: Year of the Dunk
Year of the Dunk is by Asher Price. The subtitle is "A Modest Defiance of Gravity". Price, tries to find out if he can dunk a basketball with a year's worth of training. He starts out as a guy with some sports experience, but having never lifted weights or otherwise trained seriously. He reports he's "6′2½” with orangutan arms", which is helpful for an aspiring dunker (he also mentions that he once "captained [his] college Frisbee team").
This is one of those books where the title of the book doesn't describe the content very well. The book is less about how he spends his year than it is about jumping and dunking in general. Some chapters start with a diary update on how his year is progressing, and then discuss something completely different: special shoes that are supposed to make you jump higher; women (like Britney Griner) dunking; the history of the dunk (banned by the NCAA!); which animals jump the highest (insects).
But the reason he doesn't focus on how is spends his year is that his advice on how to jump higher is pretty simple. Jump a lot. Be the guy in the gym who's working out the hardest. Eat healthy. Jump some more. Lift weights, especially squats. It would be hard to write a 200-page book that was only about what he did that year.
There were a couple things I found interesting about his workout routine: first, from his description, he did intense workouts every day Monday through Friday: he wrote he did jumping/lifting on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and then sprints on the track on Tuesday/Thursday. The only time he mentions jogging is in discussing his warm-up routine. And second, on a probably related note, his body has nearly fallen apart by the end of the year:
22 days left: Battling knee soreness, I stick to light weights and short sprints…
I had a couple of weeks still left—but my legs were starting to break down.
Certainly becoming more athletic should take some soreness, or even a lot of soreness, but if he's "starting to break down", he might be going a little too hard. And that relates back to those intense workouts: based on what I've read in other sources, he might have been better off with a few more long, slow days.
I read this book because I wanted to see if there were any good tips I'd never seen before. I didn't learn any useful jumping secrets; the book's main effect was strengthening my belief that it mostly just takes a lot of sustained hard work!
He seems to be a few years behind on nutrition advice. He comments again and again in those diary entries that he doesn't eat fat. I think people are more and more realizing that eating fat isn't what makes you fat. He doesn't seem to have gotten that advice at the time he was working on this book, though:
I would have to endure smaller, healthier portions and a steady diet of zero-fat yogurt and nonfat milk—the devil’s water, I call it...
...in my effort to further ratchet down my carbs, I’m officially resigning as an eater of oatmeal. Just grapefruit and maybe a sausage—for protein—for breakfast. And a glass of nonfat milk. And a small serving—make that two servings—of nonfat yogurt. With a teaspoon of fig jam mixed in. An avocado and tomato salad for lunch. Small helpings of hummus throughout the day.
I think this just goes to show the importance of controlled trials. Price tried techniques A, B, C, D, and E and managed to increase his vertical jump by 6 inches. But that doesn't mean A, B, C, D, and E were all important factors; it could've been that only A, B, and D actually helped him. I think eating healthier helped him lose weight, and being lighter helped him jump higher (he loses 20-30 pounds over the course of the year), but I doubt that what made his diet "healthier" was cutting out all fat. I'm going to continue eating full-fat Greek yogurt and olive oil without any second thoughts.
Some Notes
This was the funniest line:
He [the author's trainer trainer] told me that one reason he likes to work out is that he likes to “look nice,” especially for his wife. He said he likes it when she comes up behind him and feels his strong, naked buttocks. He had a big grin on his face now and, not knowing what to say but feeling a need to say something, I nodded: “Yeah, but I’ve got some hairy buttocks.” He stopped smiling, lightly pursed his lips, and nodded sagely back.
This was an interesting note about the anatomy of muscles. Apparently, we have muscle "fibers" whose number doesn't change throughout our life, but the smaller "filaments" making up those fibers can grow in number:
Each of us is born with a certain ratio of fast- and slow-twitch fibers. That raw number does not change. But when we work out, our muscles clearly get bigger. That’s due to an increase in the number of those protein filaments within each fiber, not an increase in the number of fibers.
There is something magical about the dunk for basketball players, and I feel it, too. A ten-foot hoop is just the right height that a dunk feels achievable if we just work hard enough. It's an objective goal, in a way that jumping higher to catch a frisbee doesn't have that hard line that separates "this is impressively athletic" from "that was alright".
Overall, this was a pretty short book that was easy to read. I didn't learn much new from it, but I didn't feel like I was wasting my time, either. It's worth it to me to read a few extra books about the topics I'm really interested in, just to make sure I'm not missing any good tips. It was good motivation for me to see a reminder that, yes, someone 30+ can increase their vertical by a few inches with the right amount of hard work. I have more thoughts about my own workout history coming in an upcoming post.