In a sense, the slam dunk is a tribal sign that “you’ve been initiated” as a modern sportsman.
A little over a month ago, a package arrived in the mail from my coaching friend, Mike Goss. Inside was a book called “The Year of the Dunk” by Asher Price. 
My own quest to dunk was a 4 year voyage from the ages of 10 to 14 as a youth, so I was familiar in my mind with at least the spirit of the journey, and what a journey it is! I have trained, and am currently training multiple athletes in their 30s with the primary goal of forcefully projecting a 30”circumference ball through a ring of metal suspended in the air.
Why is dunking the goal of so many? Why not sprinting a legit 40 yard dash time, or throwing a baseball from home plate to the left field wall? There are plenty of athletic accomplishments we can hone in on, but the dunk is in a league of it’s own. Also, how often it is that we hear from those who’ve been through the journey, and meticulously recorded and analyzed both the process and the philosophy?
It is to that end, I’ve interviewed Asher Price on his 1-year journey to dunk, and subsequent topics on his training regimen, his experience as a cancer survivor, buying and dealing with APL shoe manufacturers, learning of his ACTN3 profile, advice for aspiring dunkers and more!
Just Fly Sports: You speak many times in “Year of the Dunk” on why the act of jumping is such a popular and joyful pursuit. If you could sum up, in a nutshell, why the act of a jump, and specifically, a dunk, has such an allure to it vs. say sprinting a particular time in the 40 yard dash? What makes jumping such a joyful and rewarding pursuit?
The dunk is the most exuberant, dramatic maneuver in all sports — just a step or two and a thundering throw-down. I think it’s something many of us fantasize about — and yet few of us really ever test whether we might be able to do so. I was interested in that gulf, between our fantasies and our self-perceived limits, and whether it could be crossed. Also, the dunk is as American as jazz, or apple pie: The more I thought about it, the more there was to write about how the dunk, in particular, was a touchstone for issues of culture and race and self-reliance. We Americans like to think of ourselves as upwardly mobile, so to speak — so how much could I really improve myself
Just Fly Sports: If you could repeat your one-year journey to dunk, would you make any changes in your training regimen, environment, nutrition, and what would they be?
The chief thing I’d watch out for is over-training. In a weird sort of way, I felt keenly that I didn’t want to disappoint either the people giving me advice — including trainers at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City and a gold-medal-winning high jumper — or myself, that I practically spent too much time in the gym. Over a year, that can add up to a lot of stress on your muscles, especially if, like me, you’re a newbie to working out.
I also think you can’t work on flexibility enough. Lifting technique and range of motion are key to building up your hops, and they depend on flexibility.
Finally, I would’ve dedicated more of my idle time to working on palming a ball. You should have a basketball with you while watching TV, eating your breakfast cereal, filling out crosswords — work on building up that tensile strength! And if you have the right technique, you should be able to palm the ball just with your thumb, middle finger and ring finger.
Just Fly Sports: It’s always awesome and inspiring to see things that cancer survivors do following their battle with the disease. Do you feel like your experience helped you in your journey to dunk, and how so?
Great question. I grew up the ambitious sort — prep school in New York, then Yale and Oxford. I think getting testicular cancer at age 26 taught me to cut loose a little. Along those lines, as seriously as I was taking the dunking year, there remained something fundamentally child-like and carefree about it. The cancer story is a parallel one I tell for another important reason: To get healthy I was depending entirely on a team of very smart doctors to make me better; here, trying to dunk, I would depend largely on my own two feet to see how much I could change my trajectory.
One of my favorite parts in the book was your experience with the APL shoes. How much of the market geared towards athletes looking to jump higher do you feel is of dubious/questionable claims? What is your advice for athletes seeking “external” (shoes/supplements/bracelets/etc.) means of gaining a better leap?
Note: Also check out Jack Woodrup’s work on the APL shoes.
Right, APL claims its sneakers will add several inches to your vertical. That wasn’t so obvious in my experience. To my mind, the company was like so many others in the sportswear or sports drink game — leaning hard in ads and marketing material to convince people that their products have something magical to offer.
At the end of the day, the success you have on a field or on a court really has nothing to do with what kind of sports drink you consume or what brand of sneakers or cleats you wear — it’s about the hard work you put in at the gym and during practice. Old-fashioned jumping exercises (lots of them!), abdominal work, and stretching are what will help you leap higher.
Just Fly Sports: What is the biggest thing you learned from your “year of the dunk” that you’ll take with you for the rest of your life?
The biggest lesson I learned is that you can really surprise yourself with your improvement, no matter your age. By most measures, I should have reached my peak leaping ability in my mid-twenties. But I worked harder than I ever had before — and got far higher than I ever thought possible.
Just Fly Sports: It must have been tough learning about your genetic profile (lack of ACTN gene) during your journey. Looking back, do you feel you would have been better off if you never knew your exact fast twitch makeup/pre-disposition in your dunking endeavor?
I made sure to wait till I was quite far into the year for the very reason you hit on — I didn’t want to get dispirited if things didn’t seem to work genetically in my favor. Of course, from the perspective of a guy writing a book about dunking, it made the whole project that much more interesting that my genetics were basically stacked against me.
Just Fly Sports: Do you keep tabs on any of the current dunkers worldwide, or the best NBA and D-League dunk artists?
Not more than any other basketball fan. In-game dunks are generally far more impressive to me than the freakish performance dunks you see in contests. The dunk, as the late, great Darryl Dawkins once said, “gets your team hyped, gets the crowd all excited, and takes the starch out of other teams, especially when you dunk on somebody.” (I do have this idea that the NBA should host an over-50 years old dunk contest, one that once again pits Michael and Dominique. I dunno, maybe that would be kind of sad. But I’ll bet a lot of people would tune in!)
Just Fly Sports: Do you have another physical goal or adventure planned in your future?
Not right now: Frankly, I’m kinda enjoying not having to hew to any mad exercise regimen right now. I eat ice cream a little more freely, and happily chomp down on pasta (I was going more or less carb-free during my dunking year). And yet, I still drag myself to the track a couple of times to do some sprints and pushups: When you get yourself into the kind of shape I had, you find it hard to let yourself go.
About Asher Price:
Free Training Guides!
Sign up for the newsletter, get your FREE eBooks, and receive weekly updates on cutting edge training information that will help take your knowledge of athletic performance to a new level.