The title for this article was so cheezy it’s almost too painful to write, but I just couldn’t pass it up. My hope is that if you rolled your eyes at the title, you’ll at least pull away something useful from the content.
As some of you may have surmised already, the topic in this article is Dumbbells. And more specifically – how to best use them, and the mistakes I see people make with them in their training programs.
Dumbbells can be an extremely useful tool. I like them mainly as a compliment to heavier barbell work, used at slightly higher rep ranges for the addition of muscle mass.
This is where I see the primary mistake with most lifters – they try to go WAY too heavy with DBs, and they try to program them in the same way that barbells are programmed. For the purposes of this article, we’ll define “heavy” as anything in the 1-5 rep range. Work in the 1-5 rep range should be reserved for barbell exercises. The purpose here is to MOVE WEIGHT and you can put a helluva lot more weight on a barbell than with a pair of dumbbells. So you’re primary strength work should always be with barbells in the 1-5 rep range. For just about every lifter I work with, we begin each workout with heavy barbell work – dumbbells come second or third.
What dumbbells allow us to do is add a significant amount of volume to a muscle group without adding an overwhelming amount of systemic stress to the nervous system. This is a good thing. We need volume in order to grow. But we have to be careful how we add in that volume. Dumbbells are far less stressful to the nervous system than barbells and we run less risk of overtraining by tacking a few sets of dumbbell exercises to the end of a workout than a few extra sets of another barbell exercise.
In my head I have always separated “lifts” from “exercises.” The purpose of a “lift” (in my head at least) is to move the weight from point A to point B – with good form of course. But we are not focused on things like “feeling the muscle work” during a lift. We aren’t focused on feeling a muscle deeply stretch and tightly contract on a “lift.” The old “mind muscle connection” that we talk about in bodybuilding really isn’t a consideration in a “lift.”
But I treat “exercises” a little differently. In an exercise we are trying to focus on “working a muscle” not just completing reps by moving a heavy weight from point A to point B. Exercises can be done with barbells, but more often I find myself using dumbbells or even machines or cables depending on the target muscle group being trained.
Dumbbells make very good exercises for the chest, shoulders, arms, and back. We can add in an exercise or two for each muscle group over the course of the week and put our focus on working those individual muscle groups thoroughly. Remember – that all of this comes after the primary “lifts” are done at the beginning of each training session. For many exercises, dumbbells allow us to deeply stretch a muscle and tightly contract a muscle better than a barbell. If you repeat this for lots of reps, lots of sets, with ever increasing weights – you will grow and your physique will become better developed than if you just “lift.”
As far as sets & reps with Dumbbells….For most exercises 3-5 total sets is plenty and I try to keep reps between 6-12. This is a good range for building muscular size. If I occasionally drop below 6 reps is generally by accident! In other words – I overestimated my strength that particular day. Because dumbbells come 2nd or 3rd in a workout, they are affected quite a bit by the nature of the barbell work that preceded them. So there might be some variation on your strength levels from one workout to the next. That is ok. Remember, we are trying to “work the muscle” within a given rep range and sometimes that might mean adjusting weights up or down a bit from one session to the next. Dumbbells should be progressed when possible, but don’t expect a nice fluid linear progression workout to workout. As long as the trend is going up from month to month you are doing ok.
I like to use Descending Sets for DB work. In other words, if my first workset with a pair of DB’s is 6 x 100s, then on the next set I’ll drop down to 90 or 95 and aim for a set of 6-8. Then maybe down to 85-90 for a set of 8-10 and so on and so forth. The point is that I am trying to hold a certain rep range for the workout. Sets across with DBs are hard to maintain if you take each set to failure. I also use slightly incomplete rest intervals between sets. Usually around 2-4 minutes. Whereas heavy barbell work is 5-10 min rest periods.
The second biggest mistake I see people make with dumbbells – partial range of motion. This is often because the lifter is going too heavy, but it also comes from a misunderstanding of why he is doing the exercise in the first place. A Dumbbell chest press, shoulder press, curl, tricep extension, or row allows us to work a muscle through a very long and thorough range of motion. This will help to completely develop individual muscle groups – so do that. Lowering a dumbbell shoulder press to the top of the ears, for instance, makes no sense. Take them DEEP, stretch the delt at the bottom and press all the way until lockout. For a one arm row – let the dumbbell pull you down deep. Feel the lat stretch deeply, then drive the elbow up high and feel the lat contract. So many guys get wrapped up in how much weight they can heave around and arent’ really doing anything other than feeding their ego.
Partial work has it’s benefits in a training program. Partials are mainly there to overload an aspect of a particular lift with MORE weight than you could normally use. This helps to acclimate the CNS to training with extremely heavy loads. But this cannot be done with Dumbbells. It HAS to be done with a barbell. Mainly through exercises performed in a power rack. (If you are interested, check out my power-rack series from a few years ago). So if need be, lighten up the dumbbells you are using and take the muscle through as deep a range of motion as possible and focus on feeling the target muscle group stretch and contract on every rep. Leave the heavy partials for barbell work in the cage.
Another benefit of dumbbell work is that they allow us to work through or around injuries or certain ranges of motion that are uncomfortable with barbells. Certain lifters that can’t Bench Press due to shoulder injuries can often Bench Press with dumbbells with a neutral grip and elbows tucked into the sides. Barbell Curls and Lying Tricep Extensions are great exercises for building strength and mass in the arms. But many older lifters or lifters with previous wrist/elbow injuries find these exercises very painful. Dumbbells allow us to adjust how we hold the weight to make things more comfortable on the elbows and/or wrists.
Dumbbells don’t have any real value for a serious lifters when it comes to lower body exercise. A recreational fitness enthusiast or someone training at home can use a pair of Dumbbells for “front squats”, lunges, and even RDL’s, but these exercises are quite limited in value for a serious strength trainee. The only real value might come from a lifter who is forced to travel for work or vacation where access to good barbell equipment is not available. Most hotel gyms will have some dumbbells available for you to use. In this case a modicum of work capacity in the lower body can be preserved with Dumbbell Squats, lunges, and Dumbbell RDL’s.
So in summary here are the key takeaways from this article:
1) Train Dumbbells for higher reps. 3 to 5 sets in the 6-12 rep range are appropriate for most dumbbell exercises following the main barbell exercise
2) Use Descending Sets to maintain your rep range and good form.
3) Train Dumbbells through a complete range of motion. No partial reps. Stretch the muscle as deeply as possible on the eccentric and volitionally contract a muscle as hard as possible at the top of the concentric
4) Use Dumbbells “in addition to” NOT “in replacement of” heavier barbell exercises
5) For exercises that cause pain in the shoulder, elbow, or wrist – try exchanging it for a dumbbell version of the same exercise
If you want to take a look at how I use Dumbbells in a typical Power-Building program for clients, you can see examples in both the KSC Method for Power-Building and Strength & Mass after 40 programs. Both available for purchase at AndyBaker.com
Hope these recommendations help. If you have specific questions about how to implement Dumbbell work into your current program, hit me up in the Programming Forum at StartingStrength.com and I’ll be happy to help with specific programming details.
