Tom Barnes is an Australian professional dunker and a co-founder of JumpX, the vertical jump coaching company he still runs today. He also coaches a number of competitive dunkers, including Dunkademics regular Dylan Haugen.
Barnes stands 5'10" with a 7'7" standing reach and a 48" vertical. He is a two-foot dunker off a right-left plant, and his signature is the under both. He hit his first Eastbay at the end of October 2019, less than a year after his first dunk, and still describes that jump as the moment his balance and body control in the air changed for good.
He grew up in Australia running through nearly every sport the school system offered, cycling term by term through Australian rules football, field hockey, cricket, cross country, track and basketball. He did not take basketball seriously until he was around 12 or 13, and it was not until 17 that he decided dunking interested him more than the sport it came from. Watching Jordan Kilganon is what moved him from messing around on lowered rims to treating dunking as a discipline worth training for.
JumpX grew out of that obsession. Barnes co-founded it with training partner Austen Young after the two spent a couple of years dunking together and picking apart each other's programming, and the coaching staff has since grown to include fellow Australian dunker Brodie Stephens. Barnes also holds a sport science degree from Curtin University in Perth, though he is candid that the practical jump knowledge came from training himself and coaching others rather than from the lecture hall. He broke down his dunk journey and the founding of the company on episode 56 of the Dunk Talk podcast.