My relationship with dumbbells is like Captain James T. Kirk’s relationship with tribbles: I love them and every time I turn around there are more of them in my gym
Dumbbells are so versatile and easy to use that I’m amazed more people haven’t embraced dumbbell training.
Without further ado, here are 7 reasons YOU should be using dumbbells in your fat loss and fitness training program:
Dumbbells Make Your Body Smarter
When you’re training with dumbbells (as opposed to machines) you are working in three dimensions, not locked into static pushing and pulling on padded handles. This means your body is learning how to work in the real world at the same time you’re becoming healthy and lean.
The ability to move your body and knowing how to handle a moving weight is one of the most valuable things you can do to improve your safety and quality of life.
Icy sidewalk? After training with dumbbells, you’ll have the strength and balance to get to your car without falling down. Real-world abilities like this will never come from a machine that does all the balancing for you.
Dumbbells Make Your Heart Healthy
More than 100 studies have shown that strength training will lower blood pressure and strengthen your heart.
A few recent studies have shown that working out with dumbbells will lower your lipid profile (less FUNK blocking your blood vessels) and increase your oxygen uptake.
Dumbbells Give You A Better Workout
Most people only use dumbbells for training their arm muscles, but dumbbells can be used to train every part of your body:
Legs – Lunges, squats, deadlifts
Back – All sorts of rows and pulls
Chest/Shoulders – 1000′s of press variations
Core – Side bends, windmills, renegade rows
Dumbbells Make You Strong
Training with dumbbells allows you a great range of motion, building strength in ways no machine can.
Ain’t No Machine Can
Barbells and machines can restrict your motion. For instance, in a barbell row, you can only bring the bar up to your body. With a dumbbell row, you can pull an extra two inches, building strength through the entire movement.
Dumbbells Prevent Injuries
Weight training machines are designed to only use one muscle at a time (ex: biceps). That’s great if you want to spend hours in the gym to hit all of your muscles, and then the only thing you do outside the gym is flex in a mirror…
For people with a real life though, it’s important to train the small muscles, tendons, and ligaments that stabilize your joints.
Machines MISS these balancing muscles and support tissues (tendons and ligaments), which means you’ll likely be injured as soon as you move in a way you haven’t pumped on a machine.
Dumbbells, however, strengthen you everywhere (including your support and balance systems) which means when you move, you’ll be safe from injury.
Dumbbells Keep Your Body In Balance
Using dumbbells forces each side of your body to do its share – train with dumbbells for the first time after using machines and you’ll definitely see how much you favor one arm and leg over the other.
From the way you drive, the way you carry packages, and the way you play sports, you will develop HUGE imbalances that will eventually lead to injury. For instance, if one leg is much stronger than the other it will pull your hips out of alignment and give you low back pain. In this case, the answer isn’t back stretches or a heating pad – the cure is balancing out your leg strength!
When you lift a barbell or use a strength machine, you can compensate for a weak left arm by pushing more with your right arm – which makes your imbalances worse.
When you lift two dumbbells each side of your body has to work on its own, so both sides get the right amount of exercise.
Dumbbells Are More Challenging And More Interesting
With dumbbells you can do thousands of exercises. With a machine you can do one.
There are so many different ways to work out that you’ll never have to get bored – which means you’ll work out harder and enjoy your workouts more. Pretty sweet deal
































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