Women's Dumbbell Workouts

Dumbbells can help women build lean muscle tissue and improve their overall strength. Exercising wit dumbbells provides benefits strength equipment doesn't, because you use stabilizing muscles, making your exercises more effective in producing muscular strength and power gains, notes the American Council on Exercise. You also can use dumbbells in your workouts to train all the muscles of your body.

Training Schedule

Training plans can vary from one woman to the next depending on your training goals and fitness level. The minimum recommendation for strength training is at least two days a week targeting all the major muscle groups. A two-day-a-week plan could consist of two total-body workouts or one upper-body workout and one lower-body workout performed on nonconsecutive days. If you have a fairly high fitness level, you may prefer to train three or four days a week using dumbbells with a day of rest in between. A common training split is the push/leg/pull split.

Push: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps

Perform each exercise for three to four sets of eight to 12 repetitions, resting one to two minutes between each set. Begin your workout with chest exercises such as flat, incline and/or decline dumbbell chest presses. Then do dumbbell chest flys using a light weight. Your shoulder workout should begin with seated or standing overhead dumbbell presses, followed by front raises, lateral raises and bent-over lateral raises. Finish by working your triceps, including exercises seated or lying on a bench such as overhead triceps extensions and triceps kickbacks.

Legs: Quadriceps, Hamstrings, Calves

Compound exercises -- exercises that use multiple muscle groups and joints -- are commonly used in leg training. Begin your leg workout with a thorough warmup and start by performing dumbbell squats. Dropping your hips below parallel during the squat will activate more of your glutes during the movement. Additionally, dumbbell straight-leg deadlifts and dumbbell calf or heel raises target your hamstrings and leg muscles.

Pull: Back, Biceps, Abs

Train your back with dumbbells by performing bent-over rows and one-arm dumbbell rows. These exercises target most of the muscles in your back. Begin your biceps workout by performing dumbbell curls, seated incline dumbbell curls and preacher curls.

Abdominal exercises can be performed just once a week or no more than three times a week on nonconsecutive days. Train your abs by holding a dumbbell against your chest. Perform three sets of 15 ab exercises, such as incline bench situps, leg lift with dumbbell between your feet, and crunches.