STEP 1. Building Your Strength

Being in great shape is the best way to start your quest toward dunking a basketball. There are specific exercises that you can focus on while improving your level of fitness. Common leg exercises like squats, lunges, hamstring curls and leg press can help you to get into that desired shape. Once you develop a level of fitness that your comfortable with, you can implement exercises that focus on developing speed and strength like squat jumps, bounding and low and high skips. When you implement these specific exercises, you will boost your overall lower body power and this will help you to develop a more explosive vertical jump.

STEP 2. Practice Your Jump

Working on your jumping mechanics is equally as important as strength training. Before actually trying to dunk a basketball, go up without a ball first to determine what your actual limitations are. In order to dunk a basketball, you would want to be able to grab a hold of the rim with relative consistency. Many of the newer rims installed in parks and gyms are breakaway, and will snap down if you grab onto it. If you want to have a shot at actually dunking a basketball, you should be able to snap the rim down with some consistency. One word of caution, if you can grab ahold of the rim but can't get a solid grip, it is possible that the momentum of your body could cause a hard fall so be careful. A player can usually achieve their highest jump when jumping off of one foot and reaching up with one hand. For a right handed person the most common way is to approach the basket from the left and jump off the left foot with the ball in the right hand. Some people do however find jumping off two feet more comfortable so this is something that you would have to test for yourself to see what will work best for you. Dunking with a two handed slam, while awesome, is a more advanced dunk and shouldn't be done until you are consistently dunking with relative ease.

STEP 3. Working Your Way Up

At this point, you are well on your way to putting down that intense dunk that you have been working towards. Now you want to gradually work your way up toward dunking an actual basketball. Start dunking with smaller balls like a tennis ball or a baseball. Keep working on your mechanics with a focus on your timing and your elevation. Take your time and progress methodically. A mini basketball is a little more challenging than a tennis ball, but it's easy to palm and that helps. Your goal is to see if you can get high enough to get your hand over the rim almost up to your wrist so that you can throw down the mini ball. Keep in mind that if you are struggling to throw down with a smaller ball, a full size basketball won't be any easier. Once you are comfortable with that, you can try dunking a volleyball which is generally a little softer and easy to grip. This stage in the dunking process can be so much fun but also quite exhausting. You need to keep a close eye on how you are feeling and try not to over do it. Your legs can only handle so many jumps before they become weak and you may risk putting yourself in harms way. When in doubt, call it quits and live to dunk another day!