Geschatte leestijd: 4 minutenOf course, it’s better to train in a gym, where you have access to a barbell, a rack full of dumbbells, a power rack, a cable station, and all kinds of equipment. Unfortunately, many people don’t have the time or financial means to go to a gym, and a complete home gym is out of the question for many of us.
Table of Contents
In a desperate attempt to work on strength, conditioning, and appearance, people often buy a pair of dumbbells with a few weights, without any idea of what to do with them. This often results in a few weeks of doing bicep curls, after which the dumbbells end up in the garage and the attempt to exercise is abandoned. However, this is not necessary.
Dumbbell Exercises
With adjustable dumbbells and your own body weight, you can easily train every part of your body. The condition is that you can adjust the dumbbells and that you have enough weights. If you have fixed dumbbells (with a fixed weight), it is difficult to make progress with them.
Here, I’ll give you an exercise for each muscle group that you can do with dumbbells and your own body weight. These exercises are listed from the lowest part of your body to the uppermost muscle group that is most trained.
Calves
Calf Raises
Stand on a block of wood or a curb, with your toes on it, and the rest of your foot off the elevation. Now, lower your heels all the way down, while keeping your toes on the elevation. Stay down for a moment, then slowly raise yourself all the way up until you’re fully on your toes. This is one repetition.
In the beginning, this is already quite challenging, especially for balance, with just your own body weight. But after a while, you can add weight or try them while standing on one leg.
Hamstrings
For the back of the legs, you can do Dumbbell Romanian Deadlifts.
Pick up the dumbbells, slightly bend your knees, and lower down with the dumbbells (so bending your whole torso) until they reach about your shins. Feel the stretch for a moment and then come back up.
Make sure to keep your back straight; a trick for this is to constantly look forward during the movement. Perform this exercise in a controlled and strict manner.
Quadriceps
For the front of the legs, you can do an exercise that is rarely seen: the Bulgarian Split Squat.
Stand, optionally with dumbbells in your hands but in the beginning, your own weight is challenging enough, and place your back leg on an elevation (a bench, desk, whatever). Now, hop forward a bit, so that only your foot is lightly on the elevation. Then, lower down with your front leg, until the back leg almost touches the ground, then come back up.
This sounds simple but is challenging for balance and quite heavy. Great exercise!
Abdominals
For the abdominals, you’re best off doing the well-known Crunches, but instead of doing, like most people, 100 repetitions, just do 8-12 repetitions with possibly a dumbbell with weight on your chest for added difficulty.
Lower Back
Despite the dumbbell Romanian deadlift already engaging your back, there’s another nice exercise specifically for your lower back, the ‘Superman’.
Lie on the ground, on your stomach. Then, stretch both arms out in front of you as if you’re ‘superman’ and do the same with your legs. Try to hold this position for a while.
This is a good exercise for your lower back. This is very important for everyone because the lower back, along with the abdominal muscles (also called ‘core’ together) provides support for almost all our activities and especially for sports.
‘Wings’
The ‘lats’ are best trained by doing pull-ups, but often this is not possible when you’re training at home. Now, you can go look for a playground, a staircase, or whatever, but I can imagine you’d rather just train at home. The solution: One Arm Dumbbell Rows.
Find an elevation, preferably a bench, and lean on it with one arm. With the other arm, grab a dumbbell and move it upward by pushing your elbows upward. The difference between ‘pulling on the arms’ and ‘moving the elbows upward’ cannot be seen, but you can feel it clearly, so play around with it. Go up until your stomach is reached, or your hip if you prefer. Then, slowly go back down until your arm is fully extended.
Trapezius
The trapezius is often trained by many people with dumbbells anyway, through Dumbbell Shrugs or shoulder shrugs.
Grab a dumbbell in each hand and slowly shrug your shoulders. Try to make as large a movement as possible, literally try to touch your ears. Then, slowly lower them again.
Chest
If you have a bench, you can do dumbbell presses well, but the rule was ‘only dumbbells and body weight’, so here we do an oldie but a goodie: the Pushup. Although many people do it, the exercise gets a bit of a ‘less valuable’ name, but done strictly and with possibly extra weight, this is a killer.
Shoulders
The front of the shoulders is already trained a lot with pushups, the back with rows, leaving the sides. For this, we also do a well-known exercise: Dumbbell Side Raises.
Stand with a dumbbell in each hand, slightly bent at the elbows, and raise your arms sideways as if you want to fly. Do this slowly, hold for a moment, and lower down in a controlled manner.
Biceps
For THE show muscles, we do the well-known Dumbbell Curls, which together with barbell curls are THE basics for biceps. Make a full movement with each repetition, so stretched at the bottom and all the way up. Also, try not to swing too much, perform the exercise correctly.
Triceps
Lastly, we do Bench Dips.
Find 2 elevations, for example, a bench and a desk. Put your hands on the edge of one of the elevations, your feet on the other elevation. Now, slowly lower until your arms are slightly more than parallel bent, then push up.
You can also add weight by placing it on your lap, although I find this not very comfortable.
