.
If you really really want to get in shape, there is no better exercise than using dumbbells.
For those of you in a hurry, I thought I would cut to the chase and give you my opinion of which are best dumbbell sets on the market today.
There are many free weights on the market, but which can truly be called the best? While you may have a personal preference for a specific exercise style, the reality is that there are many dumbbell benefits that outweigh the pros of owning any other free weights. Using dumbbells correctly gives you a full body workout that burns more calories and reaches more muscle groups than any other type of exercise.
If you are determined to reach your fitness goals and want to use free weights you should consider a good set of dumbbells. This may feel like a difficult decision to make, especially if you start searching online for the best dumbbell set. There are many websites dedicated to providing reviews and breakdowns of all the top rated dumbbell racks and sets. In the end, however, you need to make the right choice for you personally.
Why Dumbbells?
Give you a more complete workout plan.
Many people think of dumbbells only in terms of biceps curls, but they’re effective for working your legs (lunges, calf raises), back (deadlifts), and abdominal muscles (side bends, weighted crunches) as well.
Challenge your muscles more that weight machines.
One of the biggest challenges to weight lifters is called plateauing. When your body becomes used to the same workout, it stops being challenged, and your muscles stop growing. Because there are thousands of different exercises you can do with dumbbells, you can keep changing and updating your workout, so your muscles stay challenged, when they stay challenged they keep developing. For example, there are 20 or 30 variations of biceps curls you can do with dumbbells, as opposed to only a handful you can do with a barbell and only one or two at most on most exercise machines.
Build greater strength, quicker.
Because dumbbells allow for a greater range of motion during exercise, they challenge your muscles in ways no other equipment can. For example, a barbell becomes restricting during a bench press because you can bring the weight down only so far before your chest gets in the way. But when you’re holding a dumbbell in both hands, you can bring the weight down closer to your chest during each repetition, calling into play more muscle fiber and stimulating more growth.
Build strength faster.
Negative resistance training is the stress you put on your muscles during the lowering, or negative, phase of exercises. And negative resistance may grow muscle even more effectively than the positive, or lifting, phase the exercise. With dumbbells, you can add extra negative resistance into your workout at your own pace.
Let’s say you’ve done 20 biceps curls with your left hand and you can’t possibly lift the weight again. You can now cheat, using your right hand to help your left lift the weight one more time, and then lower the dumbbell using your left hand only. Doing so will help you squeeze out that last little bit of benefit from your workout, the harder you push the better.
Done right, it can give you a healthier heart.
Plenty of research has shown that weight training reduces blood pressure and indirectly strengthens the heart. More recently, researchers have shown that dumbbell workouts can yield additional benefits, including a lower lipid profile (less gum for your arteries) and increased oxygen uptake, increasing lung capacity.
It can, make you smarter.
Dumbbells make you work in multiple dimensions: They don’t lock you into the static up-and-down or side-to-side motions that exercise machines do. That means your muscles can learn to function in real life as well as in the controled environment of the gym.
Helps keep your body in balance.
By forcing both arms to lift its fair share, dumbbells help to immediately identify strength imbalances that may have developed from different sports, from simple acts like driving or carrying a briefcase, or from lifting with free weights or various machines.
When pressing a barbell overhead, for example, you can compensate for a weaker left arm by pushing harder with your right side—and just making the imbalance worse. When you’re pressing two dumbbells overhead, however, each side of your body has to work independently—and each side gets the same amount of exercise which helps keep your entire body balanced.
Greatly helps prevent injury.
Exercise machines are calibrated to mainly target one muscle exclusively to maximize growth potential. That’s alright if your only daily activity is flexing, but on a practical level, it’s important to strengthen the smaller muscles, ligaments, and tendons that act to stabilize the joints and bones. Machines sometimes miss these secondary muscles and supporting tissues, which can increase your chances of a injury. Dumbbells, on the other hand, strengthen you everywhere and protect your body from harm and injury.