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Outside Magazine, March 2005
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Bodywork: Fitness, Health, and Nutrition for the Outside Athlete
Jump Start (cont.)

Dunk
HOOP DREAMS: the author takes off (Photograph by Chris McPherson)
AS I PROGRESSED slowly toward the rim, my powered-up legs took me to a new and giddy level of performance in my other sports. Surfing my local break, San Francisco's Ocean Beach, became easier thanks to the increased strength in my abs, legs, and back, which allowed me to pop up smoothly, hold a low center of gravity, and crank the board around on cutbacks. In lacrosse games, I was now sprinting, changing directions, and chasing down opponents the way I had in college, more than a decade ago. While snowboarding at Lake Tahoe, I was able to hold screaming toe-side carves through bumps and icy crud that would have sent me sprawling last winter.

Six months to the day after my training started, I could regularly nick the rim with my fingertips, which meant I was jumping 34 inches, and I was ready to show off my new skills.
Dunk
MAN ON A MISSION: only four feet to go (Photograph by Chris McPherson)
With two dozen (mostly skeptical) friends in attendance at a local gym, I made my bid for dunk-master status. On my first attempt, without holding a ball, I ran at the basket as fast as I could and jumped up. Amazingly, I was able to grab the rim with the palm of my hand and hold on for a split second before I fell to the floor and the basket snapped back into place with a resounding twang. It was the highest I'd ever jumped. Then I tried it with a basketball and clanged it, as they say, again and again—the ball kept slipping out of my sweaty hand as I hoisted it toward the basket. In my quest to dunk, I'd neglected to master half the sequence: the part that involves handling the rock.

In short, I had a long way to go before I could start channeling Allen Iverson. But I'm going to keep training, giving myself three more months to dunk. And even if it doesn't work out, I've gained plenty. Winter swells are still rolling into Ocean Beach, Tahoe is buried under fresh snow, and I'm in the middle of the best season of surfing and snowboarding in my life.
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