This is my first attempt at blogging. I've been reading the blogs placed on myjumpmanual.blogspot.com and have enjoyed watching his progress as he's pursued the two-handed tomahawk dunk. My hope is that, by blogging, I can keep myself motivated as I, too, pursue the two-handed dunk.

Just a little on my background: I'm 6 feet tall and almost 38 years-old. I played basketball in high school and in junior college right out of high school. At the time, my game revolved around the passing and the outside jumpshot. I was able to dunk occasionally at the time but wasn't able to consistently dunk the ball until I was 21 years-old. At that time, I used Air Alert and had good results suring the first 3 weeks, but after that I quit the program because of sore legs and the amount of time it was taking to complete the exercises (this was the original Air Alert that had you jumping hundreds of times five days-a-week). I also lived in Italy at the time and just couldn't spend that much time on exercising with the other responsibilities I had. I got really into weighlifting when I was 21 and would squat three days-a-week. I also performed depth jumps twice-weekly and was able to dunk very easily off of one or two feet. I then got back into college and fell back out of shape but was still able to dunk on a good day. Towards the end of my undergraduate studies, I purchased the Science of Jumping and had good results as I was able to bounce the ball off the floor and dunk it with two hands anytime I wanted to. I continued to use this program but my vertical stalled after a few months. Even though I was jumping higher than I ever had before, I was frustrated by the lack of continued progress.

I graduated with my Master's degree at age 30 and wanted to get back into shape because I had put on a few pounds after two years of full-time employment and full-time studies. I tried the new Air Alert at that time and ran into the same results: Initial improvement in my vertical followed by burnout. I started to focus on weighttraining and my highest vertical after that happened at two points in time: When I used the Ralph Sampson workout and when I used the stronglifts method I found on stronglifts.com (I was also performing depth jumps with these programs). Each time, the programs were cut short because of injuries.

The past two basketball seasons were fun but I had injuries each year that set my vertical jump back by a lot: I had severe tendinitis in my right Achilles tendon and two stress fractures in my right tibia two seasons ago and a severely strained left calf with, again, severe tendinitis in my right Achilles tendon this past season.

So, I am ready to give the Jump Manual a legitimate try. I will post my starting vertical later in the week along with my current PR's in several lifts. My goals are several:

1. Dunk with two hands on a regular basis. I can get the rim with two hands right now but I need a few extra inches in order to dunk.
2. Avoid serious injuries this basketball season.
3. Get my squat back over 300 pounds. Because of my knees, I started squatting with an empty bar 12 weeks ago and am now up to sets of 5 with 225 pounds,
4. Have my sons increase their verticals in these 12 weeks. I'm going to have them perform a modified Jump Manual program where they concentrate more on form with their weighttraining using goblet squats, light deadlifts, bodyweight calf raises, and swissball leg curls.