I have watched a lot of jumpers on my phone. Then at The Dunk Camp in Salt Lake City I stood in the gym while Ethan Pimstone jumped in front of me, and it was not the same thing at all. A video flattens it. In person you understand how far away the rim is from a normal person, and then you watch him go past it.
“that’s the craziest jumper I’ve ever seen.”
Piotr Zawiślak
He jumps 52.5 inches. That is a world record max vertical jump. I said the number out loud a few times during our conversation because it still does not feel like a real number to me.
This is the last article in my series about the people I met at camp. It started with my week at The Dunk Camp and the one before this was about the best low rim dunker. Ethan is the right person to finish with, because he is the one who is furthest from me in how he dunks.
What Inspires Me About Him
Dylan asked me what I find most inspiring about Ethan. I did not say the record. I said the thing that people say against him.
“His jumping ability probably because even though some people are saying that your technique isn’t perfect… you’re still jumping like 52 and a half.”
Piotr Zawiślak
I think about this a lot. There are people online who look at his form and explain what is wrong with it. He is still the highest jumper. So the form talk is a smaller thing than people believe, and the training behind the number is a bigger thing than people believe. If his technique is not perfect and he jumps 52 and a half anyway, then what he did to get there was very serious.
That is useful for me. I hear notes about my own dunking too. Everybody does. His answer to the notes was to keep training and let the number speak.
He Wanted to Trade
He said things about my dunking that I did not expect from someone who holds a world record.
“this man was hitting dunks that I can’t even fathom hitting. And your age, that’s impressive.”
Ethan Pimstone
Then he made it into a deal.
“Let’s trade. We’ll trade some talents. And then we’ll both be top of the game.”
Ethan Pimstone
I want his jumping. He wants my hands. It is a joke because you cannot trade these things, and it is also correct, because we are missing exactly what the other one has. He is 23 and got his first dunk at 17. I am 18 and I have been dunking since I was much younger, so I had more years to work on the ball and fewer years to work on the jump. Our paths are almost opposite.
He wrote his side of the same conversation in trading talents with an 18-year-old. He noticed different parts than I did.
He Asked Me How I Train
This was my favourite part of the interview, because nobody usually asks. People ask what dunks I can do. Ethan asked how I am able to do them, and whether it is hand speed training or only reps. I told him the plain version.
“So I used to be doing a lot of low-rim dunking.”
Piotr Zawiślak
I was 15 and 16 then. A low rim gives you more time in the air, so you can learn a movement without needing a big jump for it. I built most of my bag there. By the time I could dunk properly on a full rim, my hands already knew what to do.
“I’m having two dunk sessions a week… And I’m doing a lot of hand speed drills.”
Piotr Zawiślak
Two dunk sessions a week, and a lot of weights around them. People are surprised it is only two. Dunking is hard on the body and I would rather come to the session fresh and land the dunk than come tired and grind it out. The rest of the work is in the gym and with the ball.
The Drills Come From Jordan Kilganon
Ethan asked what the hand speed training actually looks like. It is not complicated. I stand with a ball and go through the motion of the dunk, at a wall or at a rim, without jumping.
“I’ve seen some drill at Jordan Kilganon’s channel. And I started doing it a lot.”
Piotr Zawiślak
He asked how often.
“Daily… when I’m before a important contest or event I’m bringing my ball to the gym. And I’m spending like one hour just doing it.”
Piotr Zawiślak
Daily is the honest answer. Before a contest it becomes one hour with the ball and nothing else, no jumping, just the motion again and again until the hand path is automatic. I have never used a weighted ball. I want to try it, but I have not needed it yet.
“And it shows. It’s crazy. It really shows.”
Ethan Pimstone
Then I Met Him
The strange part of that week is that I did these drills every day for years from a channel, and then the person from the channel was standing in the same gym. I wrote about that in meeting Jordan Kilganon at camp. I tried some of his drills in front of him and I could not get them, and he did them with ease.
He told me why he made them. He can only jump so much, so he asked himself how to keep getting better without jumping. That is the same problem I have, from the other side. He built the drills because he had reached his ceiling on the jump. I use the drills because I have not reached mine yet and I want the hands ready when the jump arrives.
Two Different Ways to Be Good
Camp put all of this in one room. Ethan is proof that you can be a late starter and still hold a record if you train correctly for a few years. Kilganon is proof that you can be past your jumping ceiling and still get better every year. I am 18 and I am somewhere before both of those, so I get to take something from each of them.
“he’s levels ahead of where most people are at, and he’s already close to the top of the game.”
Ethan Pimstone
I am thankful he said that. I do not think it is finished. Close to the top and at the top are different places, and the distance between them is inches off the floor.
These interviews exist because Dylan Haugen of Dunk Talk and Dennis Yu taught a session at camp for 76 campers about how athletes get found on Google and in AI tools, then offered to film anyone who wanted it. The method is written out in the repurposing system from Dunk Camp. The same conversation was covered in the Dunk Talk breakdown, in two dunkers with opposite superpowers, in the version for other sports, and in why the training detail matters.
That is the end of this series. I came to camp to dunk and I left with a training list from people I used to only watch. Next time I want to bring a weighted ball, and I want to jump higher, and then Ethan and I can talk again.