Thib's 10 Best Dumbbell Exercises

Home gyms can vary widely in their equipment level. From a minimalist set-up of only dumbbells or only a barbell and weight right up to a fully equipped, near-commercial level torture room!

But one thing is for sure, regardless of how much equipment you have at your disposal, you can get a super effective program done.

In this article I’ll tackle my 10 favorite exercises that only require dumbbells.

Note that there are other effective movements that are useful to isolate a specific muscle, like lateral raises, front raise, bent over lateral raises, DB lying triceps extension, DB flies, etc. But my “Big 10”includes the most efficient exercises, movements hitting a lot of muscles at the same time. These multi-joint lifts should be the cornerstone of any effective program, regardless of if you are using dumbbells or a barbell.

Dumbbell clean & press

This is a simple variant of the olympic lifts. The press variation (which can be done strictly or with a leg drive depending on your goal or the weight used) obviously target the shoulders and triceps and to that you can add the traps, arms and some lower body from the clean portion.

Each repetition includes a “clean” and a “press”.

For the clean, you lower the dumbbells down to the knees as if you were doing a Romanian deadlift. That’s your starting position. From there you “stand up fast” to create momentum and finish the standing-up action by explosively going up on your toes while shrugging your shoulders to whip the dumbbells up to your shoulders.

From there you press the dumbbells overhead. You either use a strict motion of only pushing with your arms (strict press), use a slight leg drive to be able to move more weight (push press) or a powerful leg drive/jumping action to work on explosiveness (power jerk).

Dumbbell high pull

This is another variant coming from olympic lifting. You can either do this exercise strictly (upright row) or with a leg drive (high pull).

The upright row got a bad rep years ago, and I honestly don’t know why. The theory is that it can cause shoulder impingement, but in my 27 years of coaching I’ve never seen it happen even once.

The fact is that the upright row is an amazing deltoid movement that also hits the traps pretty well. If you look at only the upper arm movement during an upright row, you’ll notice that it is the exact same as during a lateral raise. But you can obviously use more weight.

Dumbbells are safer than a barbell for upright rows, because of the greater freedom of movement.

You can bias the upright row to hit the dents or the traps more: If you pull very close to you, with a narrower hand spacing you’ll hit more traps; if you you a bit more away from you and a bit wider you’ll hit the delts more.

You can also progress toward a high pull. The high pull uses the same explosive action (stand up fast) as for the dumbbell clean, but without whipping the dumbbells up to the shoulders.

Essentially you initiate the pull by standing up fast, to create momentum, and you finish like an upright row. This allows you to use more weight and build more power and strength.

Single and double dumbbell snatch

This is mostly an exercise to develop power/explosiveness and is very effective for athletes. It also has the side benefit of improving shoulder stability.

And while it is not a great hypertrophy exercise, it can still contribute to building the delts and traps.

I suggest starting with the single arm variation and when you get comfortable you can move on to the double dumbbell variation.

The dumbbell snatch is very similar to the dumbbell clean that we saw earlier: you lower the dumbbell(s) to the knees like a RDL. Then stand up explosively while pulling fast to your shoulder. But instead of whipping the dumbbell to the shoulder, you bring it all the way up to the overhead position in one smooth but explosive motion.

Dumbbell front squat

This is a squat while holding a dumbbell in each hand, at the shoulders (the dumbbells are actually resting on the shoulders). To get to the starting position, you’ll have to clean the dumbbells (just like we saw earlier).

If you cannot bring the dumbbells to your shoulders, you can do the movement by holding the dumbbells to your side.

I personally prefer the front squat option as you are much less likely to “cheat” by bending forward, turning the squat into a deadlift motion.

Dumbbell Romanian deadlift

The Romanian deadlift (RDL) and it’s cousin, the stiff-leg deadlift (SLDL) are the best tools to hit the posterior chain when you only have access to dumbbells.

The main difference between both is the degree of knee bend when doing the movement.

In a RDL there is a small to moderate knee bend, allowing you to push your hips further back, stretching the glutes more. This bias the exercise toward the glutes.

In the SLDL the legs have no, or minimal knee bend. This allows you to put a greater stretch on the hamstrings, biasing the exercise toward them.

To make it simpler…

RDL is more glutes; SLDL is more hamstrings.

In both cases the movement is done not by thinking of bending at the trunk, but rather by pushing the hips as far back as possible. The fact that the torso is bending forward, is pretty much a side effect of the pushing the hips back.

Now, as you lower the weight, don’t think of going as low as possible. You only want to be going as low as you can maintain a neutral spine. If you lose your natural low-back arch to go lower, it’s too low.

So depending on your level of mobility the dumbbells might end up anywhere from knee level to 1” from the floor.

Dumbbell incline bench press

When selecting my favorite dumbbell exercises, efficiency is one of the characteristics that I’m looking for. I believe in training economy: trying to get maximum results with the fewest exercises possible.

That’s why I value movements that hit several muscles adequately.

The benefit of the incline press versus the flat press is that it hits the shoulders and upper chest better, while still providing a good stimulus for the whole pectoral as well as triceps.

You can vary the angle of the bench depending on the bias you want to give the exercise. A low-incline bench (15-30 degrees) is a bit less shoulders and a bit more chest whereas a high-incline (45-60 degrees) is more shoulders and upper chest and a bit less sternal pectorals.

Dumbbell split squat

The split squat is really a family of exercises. You could progress to the more demanding Bulgarian split squat (where the back foot is elevated), dynamic split squat (in which you step forward into a split squat then bring yourself back up to the erect position), reverse dynamic split squat (in which you take a step back into the split squat, then get back to the erect position) all the way to walking lunges.

You can also vary the length of your steps (distance between both feet). The further appart feet position will hit the glute more as well as the hip flexor of the back leg; a closer feet position will focus more on quads.

Dumbbell Pendlay row

The Pendlay row is essentially the strictest free-weights row you can do.

The dumbbells (or a barbell) starts on the floor on each rep.

To get into the starting position start by performing a RDL until the dumbbells are on the floor and your torso is parallel to the floor. Note that you might need to flex at the knees more than a regular RDL to reach that position.

You maintain that exact position for the duration of the set (you don’t extend the torso to help you pull).

You row the dumbbells toward you.

Depending on the pulling path you are using you can bias the rear delts/traps (row with the elbows out, in line with the shoulders), the upper back (row to your lower sternum with the elbows at 45 degrees from your body) or the lats (by rowing toward your hips with the arms close to your body).

Dumbbell farmer’s walk

I’ve always been a big fan of loaded carries and the farmer’s walk is the simplest exercise in that category.

In it’s most basic form you grab a heavy dumbbell in each hand and you walk with them.

When doing farmer’s walk, I typically equate 10 meters with 1 rep. So for example…

• If you want to use farmer’s walks to build strength, walk 30 to 50 meters per set.

• If you want to focus on gaining muscle, walk 60-100 meters per set.

• If you want to use farmer’s walk to improve conditioning or lose fat, I suggest a 1 to 1 work to rest ratio (e.g. walk 30 seconds/rest 30 seconds, or walk 60 seconds/rest 60 seconds, etc.) for a total work time (not counting rest periods) of 3-5 minutes.

What if you don’t have room to walk that distance (realistically you need a straight line of at least 15 meters) you have two options:

1. Walk in a figure 8

2. Walk in place

In the case of walking in place, I suggest doing high steps rather than normal walking.

In both of these options, I suggest using time rather than distance to program your movement.

• Around 12-20 seconds for strength

• Around 30-45 seconds for size

• And our 1 to 1 work to rest ratio for conditioning/fat loss.

How much weight to use on farmer’s walk? Probably heavier than you think! A good load is 40 to 60% of your body weight in each hand, depending on your goal.

Dumbbell Gorilla row

This is similar to the Pendlay row with a few minor differences:

1. Use a wider stance

2. Row one dumbbell at a time

3. Turn your torso to the side of the pulling arm when pulling

4. Anchor yourself by holding on to the dumbbell that stays on the floor

5. Alternate arms

I like the Gorilla row because on top of working the typical pulling muscles, it does work the core quite effectively.

Conclusion

When designing a dumbbell-only training program, you should pick among those exercises to create the foundation of your program. I personally recommend a whole-body approach at each workout with…

• One lower body quads dominant exercise (DB squat, DB front squat, split squat variation)

• One lower body hip dominant (RDL, SLDL)

• One upper body push (clean & press, low-incline bench, high-incline bench, flat bench, DB push press, DB shoulder press)

• One upper body pull (Pendlay row variation, Gorilla row)

• One athletic movement (Farmer’s walk, high-pull, DB snatch variation)

To that you can add 1-2 isolated exercises, which I will cover in the second article in this series (The best targeted dumbbell exercises).

In part 3 (Dumbbell-only program design) I’ll show you various ways of building your dumbbell program.