Small dumbbells are versatile and easy to use and help you create a variety of workouts to achieve different fitness goals. You can improve muscle strength, increase muscular endurance or burn calories using dumbbells. Understanding a few basics about dumbbells will help you use them more effectively to reach your exercise goals.
Muscle-Building/Toning Workouts
If you have little or no arm strength, using 5-lb. dumbbells can help you begin to build some muscles. The myth of toning leads people to believe that using dumbbells or performing other resistance exercises somehow helps "lift" or "shape" muscles. Unfortunately, if your muscles are covered with fat, lifting weights won't change that, unless you do enough to burn those fat calories off.
To get the most muscle-building benefit from small dumbbells, perform repetitions slowly, without straightening your arm all the way when you lower weights. This will require you to use more muscular effort to resist the weight, and keep tension in your muscles the entire time. To create helpful isometric muscle contractions, hold one weight still while you use the other. For example, during biceps curls, perform repetitions with one arm while you hold a dumbbell parallel to the floor in the other. You should begin to feel a burning in the stationary arm, which means you are getting a benefit.
Muscular Endurance Workouts
To improve your ability to use your muscles for longer periods, perform circuit training workouts. Move from exercise to exercise, performing 10 to 12 repetitions of an exercise, then taking a break, then starting a new exercise. If you have very light dumbbells, add more repetitions of each exercise to challenge your muscles.
Cardio Workouts
To burn calories while you work your arms, increase the pace of a circuit training workout to raise your heart rate. Perform exercises by time, such as a minute or two minutes, rather than by counting reps. Add arm exercises to dance moves, jogging, using a treadmill or exercise bike or by themselves.
Arm Exercises
In addition to the basic biceps curl, add triceps extensions and kickbacks, chest flyes and presses, arm raises and rows to your workouts. To perform triceps extensions, hold the dumbbell behind your back, over your shoulder, with your palm facing your back. Raise your arm over your head, turning your forearm out so your palm finishes facing forward. To add isometric contractions to this exercise, hold your second arm behind your back without moving it while you work your other arm. Don't let hit hang limp; keep it partially bent so you keep tension in it.
For rows and kickbacks, kneel on a bench and steady yourself with one hand. For rows, hang your arm straight down, then lift the dumbbell toward your chest. To work your triceps with kickbacks, start with your arm bent, with the weight near your chest. Straighten your arm backward, hold the weight for two seconds, then bring it forward.
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