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LISBON, PORTUGAL - NOVEMBER 06: Bryan Johnson, founder of Kernel, OS Fund and Braintree delivers remarks during the opening night of Web Summit in Altice Arena on November 06, 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal. Additionally, a stock image of a basketball hoop has been added to the photo.
Eventually, every man must come to the conclusion that, try as we might, we cannot reverse aging or stave off death. It is inevitable.
That includes tech bro Bryan Johnson, who, despite spending millions of dollars on weird therapies such as receiving regular blood transfusions from his own son, recently admitted that there is simply no way to cheat death.
In fact, after all of his treatments and health practices, Johnson actually ended up with an incurable disease. So now he’s shifting his focus to a new goal. Not only is it one that’s more attainable, but it’s one that basically everybody man alive can relate to.
I’m 49, training to dunk.
A new PR today: 365 lbs for 2 reps.
I’m aiming for a ~35” vertical. At 180 lbs, I’ll need a take off velocity of 14.5 ft/s in 0.2 seconds, to generate 585 lbs of force, and 11 kW of peak power.
This lift helps build the raw maximal force ceiling. pic.twitter.com/rOuWqybuhP
— Bryan Johnson (@bryan_johnson) August 28, 2026
Bryan Johnson Just Wants To Dunk A Basketball
At 49 years old, Johnson has shifted his focus. He doesn’t want to live forever, or to fight off aging. In fact, for the time being, he doesn’t even want to do anything all that remarkable from a biological standpoint.
Instead, he wants to do one thing: dunk a basketball.
“I’m 49, training to dunk,” Johnson posted alongside a video of him working out on X. “A new PR today: 365 lbs for 2 reps. I’m aiming for a ~35” vertical. At 180 lbs, I’ll need a take-off velocity of 14.5 ft/s in 0.2 seconds to generate 585 lbs of force, and 11 kW of peak power. This lift helps build the raw maximal force ceiling.”
See! This is a good goal! An achievable goal! In fact, it’s a goal that most people seem to support. After all, who among us, especially us short kings who have never been able to do so, has not dreamt of the feeling of throwing down a dunk?
Beyond that, at 6 feet tall, it actually feels like it’s something that Johnson could attain. Sure, he’s 49 years old. But he’s also in very good shape, and he clearly seems to understand the math behind it all. Physics is physics. If he can create enough force at a specific weight, he will be able to jump high enough to dunk the ball.
For all the reasonable shtick Johnson has taken in the past, he seems to have people behind him on this one.
“I don’t much care for all of this, but I do think there is something kind of relatable about realizing you can’t *actually* become immortal and thinking, ‘OK, second-best option: tomahawk dunking,’ Yahoo’s Dan Devine posted on X.
“Giving up the Search for Immortality and settling for Trying to Dunk is a real shoot for the moon, land in the stars moment,” another person wrote.
Listen, is Johnson a bit of a dweeb? Sure. But for the sake of all of us who once dreamt of dunking, I kind of hope he’s able to do it!