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There are some really good dumbbell exercises that you can do for legs. How about we discuss lunges. Lunges are an excellent exercise for shaping and strengthening the legs.
To start this dumbbell exercise for the legs, pick up a couple of dumbbells, say 10-15 pounds. There are several different style lunges. We’ll talk about the basic lunge.
- Stand tall, shoulders back, tummy in tight, pick up and hold your dumbbells by your side and bring the leg behind you.
- Keep the heel lifted.
- Bend the front knee 90 degrees, while bending the back knee and lower your body straight down.
- CAUTION!! Keep the front knee behind your toes. You are not leaning forward, but lowering down. Shoulders are back, and back is straight.
- The dumbbells may throw you off balance with the motion, causing instability. Execute 12-15 reps on each leg.
To add difficulty, try walking lunges, just walk forward, turn around and walk back. Watch your
form as you can get sloppy when you get tired. You can place 1 foot on a bench with the heel lifted behind you, and proceed with a lunge still holding dumbbells in both hands and repeat with both legs.
There is a plethora of dumbbell exercises that can be done for the legs, including lunges and squats. The key to success with any dumbbell exercises is correct form.
You guys know by now, I love to multi-task when exercising, especially with dumbbell exercises. This upcoming exercise will work your core, butt, hamstrings, quads, hip flexors, biceps and shoulders. This will also work your balancing skills too.
- Get a pair of dumbbells.
- Do a 1 leg deadlift, extending the other leg behind you.
- As you come to a standing position, DON’T put the leg down, bring the leg forward, bend the knee and keep it lifted.
- Maintain the lifted knee, while doing a hammer curl.
- Extend the bent leg straight forward, as you hold the leg forward perform a set of overhead presses, 8-10 reps
- After the overhead presses, put the extended leg down.
- Switch legs and repeat these dumbbell exercises on the other leg.
Are you guys feeling the love??? If not you will be. Try doing this combo dumbbell exercises first with NO weight. Then add the dumbbells. If you have to put the foot down between exercises, go ahead. Keep practicing till you can do the exercise in its entirety. You will feel rewarded and hit a whole lot of muscle groups at once!
Most guys are usually working on their pectorals. They all want a big chest, for that matter I guess some women want a big chest too, if you know what I mean. Dumbbell exercises can target the chest effectively. There are a variety of ways to target your chest using dumbbell exercises.
Which bench do you want to use? There is the flat bench which when using dumbbells, hits the entire chest. Then there is the incline bench, which targets the upper chest area more specifically. Keep in mind you can use the dumbbell exercises as a chest press, where your
palms face away from you toward your feet. Whereas, the chest flys have the palms face each other above your chest. Either of these dumbbell exercises can be used on the flat or incline bench, depending on how specific you want to target the chest.
While we are discussing specific chest dumbbell exercises today, there are apparatus in the gym that can be used too, like the Pec Deck, Cable Crossovers, or even push ups. As I always say, change up the routine frequently to keep the muscles challenged.
Check out www.Fitnessfromthepro.com for more detailed info on execution of these chest exercises.
Yesterday we kind of talked about lower body exercises with squats. Today our dumbbell exercises will also be for the lower body…lunges! Oh how we hate to do them, but they are so good for us. The main thing when you are doing lunges is to maintain good form.
I would first master the proper lunge technique before I added weight. You can do these dumbbell exercises with the ball against the wall in a lunge position, holding a
pair of dumbbells by your side. You could combine this lunge with a bicep curl, or overhead press using dumbbells. You could even use dumbbell exercises when doing walking lunges.
Be careful with your form during walking lunges, because when weight is added, it causes us to lose our balance and want to rush them. Always keep the knee directly above the ankle, and watch that the knee does not go over your toes. Keep those knees safe when adding dumbbell exercises with your lunges!
I love teaching my Body Sculpt class as it is a full body workout. There are several dumbbell exercises that we use, and every week is different. When we do these dumbbell exercises I enjoy doing compound sets for a single body part. Like we did our lunges and squats back to back. Oh yeah, you are working those legs!
Today, we used the Step Bench and held some dumbbells and did lunges on the bench. These are such a great exercise because your leg muscles never get a chance to fully relax. There is a constant force on the muscles when you keep one leg on the bench. While you are doing your lunges, feel free to throw in bicep curls, so you forget the pain in your legs…well it’s a good distraction anyway. Plus you get the added bonus of 2 dumbbell exercises at once.