Maintaining control of your body, when trying to Dunk A Basketball With One Hand, hinges heavily on the strength of your body’s core. Completing the right Dunk Workout will help you master the fine art of Dunking A Basketball With One Hand but it will also adequately prepare your body for the pressures of a game situation.

A lot of the preparation required for Dunking A Basketball With One Hand in a match centers on your mental fortitude. In sports we like to talk a considerable amount about removing the clutter from your mind and basketball is no different in this regard.

Going into a game knowing that you already have a strong core gives you one less thing to think about and likewise the prospects of you completing the Dunk With One Hand increase significantly.

How To Dunk A Basketball With One Hand?

If you harbour any aspirations of dunking a basketball with one hand, you need to master the intricate art of gripping the ball while airborne. My basic rule here is “the less fancy you are, the better your dunk will be”. There will be a lot of that theme in this article.

There is a strong case to be made that gripping a basketball is actually more important than learning how to How To Jump Higher.

As we have already mentioned earlier in this post, the fear of losing control when trying to dunk with one hand can be crippling - even for the most seasoned basketball player. However, the failure to grip the ball far outweighs this. It can crush you mentally.

One tip for gripping a basketball with one hand, while airborne, is to try and use the momentum of the basketball when you take off from the ground - whether that be off one foot or two feet.

There is actually a lot more to be said about Jumping Higher Off Two Feet but we will not dwell on that too much now.

Back to that momentum off the ground...the trick is to try and scoop the basketball with the one hand, when you take off for the dunk. For as long as you can, while you are airborne your one hand should be below the basketball. This limits the risk of you dropping the basketball when preparing to dunk.

Trying to do this any other way not only makes very little sense but it will almost always result in failure to dunk the basketball - when you are still learning the art.

Yes, some people know how to palm the ball faced down but those are either people with incredibly big hands or just special hand-eye coordination.

When approaching the net or hoop, you will ordinarily be doing that off a fast break. The emphasis here is on the speed. So, there will not be a considerable amount of time to think about your next movements when preparing to dunk. For that reason, you should actually start scooping the basketball before you jump towards the hoop.

Once you are at full reach, you should then cock your wrist backwards. So, when you initially scoop the basketball, the four fingers on your chosen hand should be facing forwards while the palm of your hand will naturally be facing up.

When you cock your wrist, the palm of your hand should remain facing up towards the sky but your fingers will now be facing backwards. You cannot cock your wrist inwards - you have extremely special wrists if you can - you can only cock it outwards because that is the natural motion of your body.

At this point in the motion, your hand will already be above your head and as we said, it should be at full stretch.

The IMPORTANT DETAIL here is that your hand is still under the basketball and the muscle on the underside of your arm will be fully extended at this point. Both of those aspects help enhance your reach when dunking with on hand.

Now, people can get a little technical about this, which isn’t actually necessary. However, in our experience the natural movement of the body is to take off from the left foot if you are dunking with your right hand.

If you are dunking with your left hand, the natural movement should be to take off from your right foot. That said, there are unique cases where a player dunking with one hand will take off from the foot that is on the same side as the hand or as mentioned earlier, off two feet.

It looks strange but if you are one of those people, do not let anybody knock it. It is obviously a technique that works for you and under these circumstances, the more comfortable you feel the better off you will be dunking.

The next stage in the motion involves the actual dunk itself. There is another mental block to overcome here. The natural development here is that you will try to flush the basketball into the hoop and then pull the rim down.

That is how the professionals pull this dunking routine off on the television set, right? It adds to the glamour of the routine.

The risk involved here is that you could pull that rim down too low and what can subsequently happen is that the rim will snap back into place hard and actually bounce the ball back up before it actually drains through the hoop.

When it comes to it, there are basically three ways to dunk.

1- You can flush the ball down the hoop without touching the rim. That involves you getting up high enough above the rim and just dropping the ball through the net. It is the safest option - as there is no chance of the ball popping out again - but it also hinges on how tall you are, how good your jump is and the overall quality of your hang time when preparing to dunk.

2- The next option is to get high enough above the rim for you to drop the ball and subsequently snap the rim on your way down.

3- As a progression from the latter, you can snap the rim and subsequently hang onto the rim after dunking. Players doing this normally do it with two hands. If you insist on grabbing the rim, the latter is probably the safest way to dunk because the basketball should have enough time to actually fall through.

When dunking with one hand, our strong suggestion is that you avoid the temptation to hang on the rim altogether, after you have dunked the basketball.

It does not serve any real purpose. We suppose it might protect a player who is standing below - and that is also a huge maybe. Players are trained to avoid this kind of contact or injury anyway.

Beyond that, grabbing on the rim is really just a glamorous exercise. We don’t like being party poppers but just leave the rim alone when dunking a basketball - whether that be with one or two hands.

There are no extra points to be had when you hang onto the rim. There can also be consequences for hanging on to the rim too long after dunking. Referees tend to monitor that quite closely during matches. By con deeding a technical foul you are harming your team. That is something to think about when you want to touch that rim.

Do You Dunk The Basketball With One Hand Or Two Hands?

You should grip the basketball with two hands and lift both of your arms into the air while you are at it. In your mind you will imagine that you are about to dunk with two hands, but you obviously do not need to jump in this instance.

The first thing your teammate (and possibly even you) will notice is that your shoulders are perfectly level. That is an important detail because it limits the amount of movement you can make when dunking. When dunking with two hands you cannot stretch your arms while airborne.

When you take one hand off the same basketball and drop your arm, the first thing you will notice is that your shoulders begin to slope.

With the hand holding the basketball, you should then try and reach further upwards and the first thing you will notice there is that you can slope those shoulders even further and reach considerably further than that. That is to say that you will no longer have the limitations that hampered you when you were trying to dunk with the two hands.

It makes a considerable amount more sense when you actually do it, as opposed to reading it here. That is the first and main reason why we would strongly suggest that you learn to dunk a basketball with one hand.

We think the capacity to reach higher with the one hand while airborne is actually more important than Jumping Higher To Dunk or Jumping Higher In Basketball.

Make no mistake, all three aspects are important facets of the game but we feel that dunking with one hand offers a more critical advantage in this context, as you will likely find that the vast majority of basketball players are either tall or can jump well anyway. Dunking is all about the finer margins and we are helping you manage them better.

Is It Easier To Dunk A Basketball With One Hand Or Two?

Opinions can vary a tremendous amount on this, but we would say this ultimately comes down to the comfort level of the basketball player. This can sometimes also hinge on your personality.

Confident and aggressive personalities will almost always opt to dunk a basketball with one hand.

The more tentative and conservative players will tend to opt for dunking with two hands. That is not carved in stone but is often how it plays out.

As we have already stated above, there are limitations that come with dunking the basketball using two hands. However, the reason that most people will turn to dunking with two hands is a sense of security that comes with the territory.

When dunking a basketball you will want to play it safer because you are not confident you can actually grab the ball with one hand.

Perhaps you are one of those players who have tiny hands and using two hands is the only option that you feel you have at your disposal - both to hold the ball while you are airborne and subsequently balance the ball when you are preparing to dunk it in the hoop.

There is a considerable amount of wrist work that goes into dunking a basketball and the potential for you to lose control of the ball can be high when dunking with one hand.

Basketball is also a contact sport and contact is inevitable when you are trying to dunk. Your prospects of absorbing that contact are considerably higher if you use two hands to dunk a basketball and not one.

If you are going to dunk with two hands - and many beginners and short players might opt for this option - make sure that you get nice and low when doing so. The more flex you get in your leg muscles the more Explosive Power you will have when taking off from the ground.

You want that additional power to help compensate for the reach that you will probably lose from using two hands to dunk, instead of the one.

Conclusion

When you start your quest to dunk a basketball with one hand, our strong suggestion is that you center your focus on just getting high enough to drop the ball into the hoop, without subsequently holding on to the rim.

Train your mind to focus more on scoring and less on playing for the cameras. The latter is a basic human instinct and we would urge you to resist it as much as you possibly can.

In addition to that, you should also focus on keeping the ball in your hands long enough to actually execute the dunk, instead of trying to be fancy by trying to carry the ball with the palm facing down. We caution against this approach, even if you feel that your hands are big enough to grip the ball without too much of a fuss using this method.

You will notice that most professionals avoid the temptation to show off their skills set like the plague - that is mostly because that kind of behavior is trained out of them by their coaches at various stages in their development. You can quite simply train yourself to avoid these habits.

Remember that when dunking a basketball, you only really ever need to get about half of your hand above the rim, to just drop the ball into the net. The scoring will take care of itself from then on.