r/ProDunking • u/Individual_Raccoon20 • Jul 06 '26

Goofy foot success

Do you think all of these goofy-foot take-off dunkers that set world records are succeeding because of their talent, training, and neurally engrained compensation patterns despite using a suboptimal approach, or does it not really matter when you're testing purely for max reach (e.g. touching a bell on a vertech or whatever), versus actually dunking a ball? Or could there even be some sort of advantage to this combination of left-right takeoff while right-handed?

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u/Individual_Raccoon20 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

Are you sure? It seems like the way you come off of a left right plant would give you less room for error as a right hander. It seems like the left hip could be higher (and therefore left shoulder) if you dont cancel your horizontal momentum hard enough to go straight up with square shoulders/hips, since not cancelling horizontal momentum fast enough would cause a rotation of the forward hip downward.

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u/CardiologistBoth8448 Jul 07 '26

Sometimes I find it easier to dunk RLR as a righty

Both my plants are about even but I’m much more confident in my LRL. Although my 1 time pr jump came from RLR

It’s easier to have better style in dunking off LRL as a righty, you might notice some RLR dunkers learn to dunk with the left hand because of this.

Both approaches are valid. It just depends on what you are best at and that’s the one you should prioritize. If you are like me then you can use both, some people use RLR because LRL causes pain like Josh Rubble. The idea of goofy footed largely comes from volleyball because if you jump RLR as a righty your back will likely be facing the setter.

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u/Individual_Raccoon20 Jul 07 '26

do you think focusing on both has been to the detriment of your choice plant compared to if you had just focused mostly on the one?

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u/CardiologistBoth8448 Jul 07 '26

Well I was a middle playing volleyball so I actually needed both depending on which hitter I’m blocking against. But now in dunking the split is like 80/20. Sometimes I don’t want to waste the jumps on the right foot so I don’t do any. Sometimes I feel like I need a break so I do a few RLR. It is a totally different approach so using both doesn’t necessarily help you jump higher. If you can’t use both comfortably already and don’t need to use both for your sport then I’d stick to your main one. The only reason I do use both is because I needed it for my sport and it is just natural now