Dumbbells offer the challenge of requiring your muscles to stabilize the weight throughout the exercise. With effective training techniques, such as progressing to heavier weights to continuously challenge your muscles, men can achieve gains in strength and muscle size. Working out with dumbbells at least three days a week will help you develop strength and endurance. Strength training maintains bone strength and is linked to a lower risk for heart disease.
Background
Strength training with dumbbells promotes muscle growth by making your muscles work harder. Weightlifting causes small tears in the muscles. Muscle growth occurs during the recovery period following the workout, when the muscle repairs itself. For adequate recovery, it's best to allow 48 hours before training the same muscle group again. Sufficient sleep aids in muscle growth and is crucial to the release of human growth hormone. Getting at least seven hours of sleep each night will support your dumbbell workouts.
Full-Body Workout
Men can accomplish a full-body dumbbell work out at home or at the gym. Working your large muscle groups, legs, back and chest, increases your strength and body composition faster than exercises for smaller muscles. A workout that works all your muscles results in a balanced physique and reduces the risk of injury. A 30-minute full-body workout on three alternate days, such as Monday, Wednesday and Friday, provides sufficient weight training to make progress.
Split Routine
After mastering a full-body dumbbell weightlifting routine, advancing to a split routine allows you to increase your weightlifting progress. A split routine involves training your upper and lower body on different days. For example, if your train your upper body Monday morning, wait until Wednesday morning for your next upper body dumbbell workout. Training your lower body on days you refrain from upper body training lets you get more workouts in each week while still allowing time for your muscles to repair and grow between lifting sessions.
Considerations
Warming up by walking, marching in place or using a stationary bike increases blood flow to your muscles and prepares your body for weightlifting. Working your larger muscles with exercises such as squats, lunges, pushups, pullups, deadlifts and bench presses improves your ratio of muscle to body fat and elevates your metabolism. If you're overweight, a combination of circuit training with dumbbells and performing three moderate to high-intensity aerobic exercise sessions a week will help you burn off body fat and obtain visible results from weightlifting. A 150-lb. person can burn 756 calories in an hour of circuit training, according to the President's Council on Fitness.
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