Fitness Destinations » Dumbbell Exercises

P90X Review Day 10, Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps

Aaron Potts — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:12:09 +0000

Click here to see my personal P90X 90 Day After Pictures!

In this P90X^® review, the Chest, Shoulder, and Triceps routine is covered, and understanding this routine is critical if you really want to get a lot out of it. If you try to fumble your way through, you won’t see nearly as many results as you will by performing these moves accurately and intensely.

Intensity is what you are after in this P90X routine – NOT heavy weights. There is no room during this workout to try to be a hero and throw around a bunch of heavy weights, because – quite simply – this workout is hard. You will get more results, lessen your chance of injury, and build up more strength and endurance by keeping perfect form with lower weights rather than trying to “cheat” with heavier weights.

Also, there are a lot of body weight exercises in this routine, and they are spaced out appropriately to really burn out your muscles, so even if you are normally able to do heavy weights on certain movements, don’t let your pride get in the way when you have to drop the weight a bit in order to keep up proper form and/or the prescribed number of repetitions.

Exercises during this Workout include: Slow-Motion 3-in-1 Push-ups, In & Out Shoulder Flyes, Chair Dips, Plange Push-ups, Pike Press, Side Tri-Rise, Floor Flyes, Scarecrow, Overhead Triceps Extension, Two-Twitch Speed Push-up, Y-Press, Lying Triceps Extension, Side-to-Side Push-ups, Pour Flyes, Side-Leaning Triceps Extension, One-Arm Push-ups, Weighted Circles, Throw the Bomb, Clap or Plyo Push-ups, Slow-Mo Throw, Front-to-Back Triceps Extensions, One-Arm Balance Push-ups, Fly-Row Press, and Dumbbell Cross-Body Blows

This workout seems longer than some of the other workouts, but that is just because Tony Horton and the gang beat on the same muscle groups over and over again, and you never get all that much of a break.

That, of course, is why this workout is so effective, however, so be sure to give it everything that you’ve got. Whether you are a woman or a man, the muscles worked during this routine are the “glamour” muscles, so keep that in mind if you are thinking about giving up or putting forth a half-baked effort when you start to get tired!

See other related P90X Review posts:

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Exercise of the Day – Dumbbell Squats

Aaron Potts — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 12:29:43 +0000

The squat exercise has many different variations, and not all of them are the classic image that people get of some huge guy with chalk all over his hands trying to squat down with about 800,000 pounds of metal on his shoulders!

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Dumbbell Squats

When doing the dumbbell squat, you have many advantages over doing the classic barbell squat. For one, since the dumbbells are held down at your sides rather than having a barbell on your shoulders, you can focus on the exercise itself, rather than trying to balance a weighted barbell. Also, since the added resistance (the dumbbells) hangs down at your sides, it can be easier for novice exercisers to keep their head up and their back erect, both critical factors for doing a safe and effective squat of any kind.

When doing the dumbbell squat – as with all squats – be sure that when you squat down, your knees do not travel out in front of your toes. Your feet should be at least shoulder width apart and pointed straight forward, rather than angled out or in.Related Downloads:
Dumbbell Exercises
Fitness Programs
Weight Loss Keeping your head up allowing the straight, but natural curve of your back, squat down all the way until your thighs are parallel to the ground, pause for one full second, and then push up through your thighs to a full standing position before doing the next repetition.

Click here to see a massive list of websites that teach people to exercise!

Ask the Experts: Lower Body & Leg Exercises
Workout Resources: Lower Body & Leg Exercise

Exercise of the Day – Dumbbell Supination Curl

Aaron Potts — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 14:45:03 +0000

The Dumbbell Supination Curl is one of the best overall bicep exercises because it works the bicep muscles from several different angles and it engages the forearm muscles as well.

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Dumbbell Supination Curl

When you begin this exercise, you are holding the dumbbells down at your sides, with your palms facing in towards your legs. As you raise the dumbbells, turn your arms so that your thumbs rotate out away from your body. This has the effect of changing the angle of attack on the bicep muscles, which stimulates growth in a different way than "flathead" type of exercises like the Bicep Concentration Curl.

Also, you will engage the forearm muscles when doing the dumbbell supination curl, and since some of the forearm and bicep muscles and tendons wrap around the elbow, you will be providing additional stimulation there as well. Related Downloads:
Upper Body Exercises
Fitness Programs
Dumbbell ExercisesThe graphic shows doing this movement with both dumbbells at the same time, although you can actually get better neuromuscular coordination and ultimately more strength by doing the exercise one arm at a time.

Click here to see a massive list of websites that teach people to exercise!

Ask the Experts: Dumbbell Workouts

7 Simple Tips on How to Workout at Home

Aaron Potts — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 18:40:01 +0000

There are a lot of reasons why people want to workout at home, and there are many benefits to doing so. However, if you are considering working out at home, why not make it easy on yourself, as well as ensure success by doing it right?

The following list of 7 Simple Tips on How to Workout at Home will help you make the most of your home workouts, thus ensuring the success of your fitness and weight loss efforts!

1) Creating a Space

One of the most important tips about working out at home is that you must have a space that is dedicated to exercising. Ideally that space would be permanent and you would not have to put away your exercise equipment when you were done with it.

However, even if your ability to workout at home hinges on sharing your exercise space with common areas of the house (living room, dining room, basement, etc.), you must have a space that can be used at least part-time for exercising. If you do not have an area where you can easily do your home workouts, then you will end up not doing them, because:

You won't take your workouts seriously if you are in an area of your house that doesn't "feel" like an exercise area.
If you have to struggle with finding a place to workout on any given day, then it will become a hassle, and you simply won't do it.

2) Minimal Equipment

You do not need an excessive amount of exercise equipment in order to do effective home workouts. A good set of dumbbells and an exercise ball are a great place to start, and you can expand from there only if you desire – it is not necessary. There are dumbbell exercises and exercise ball exercises that are radically effective if done properly and consistently.

If you allow yourself to believe that you need a lot of equipment before you can effectively workout at home, then it may not end up happening for 2 reasons:

You may not have enough room in your home for a large stash of exercise equipment.
The more exercise equipment you need, the more it will cost you to set up your home workout area.

In addition, although it never hurts to have access to a good treadmill or elliptical trainer, you can also get a great cardiovascular workout by doing plyometric exercises such as jumping jacks and high jumps, or doing circuit-style training that keeps your heart rate elevated for the entire workout.

3) Scheduling a Time

Setting aside a time for working out at home is just as important as setting up a place to workout. For many people it is difficult in the beginning to workout at home because there is no time when they "have to" do it. They think that since they can just get up and go workout whenever they want to that they will just do it later.

"Later" keeps getting pushed further and further back in the day, and before you know it, the entire day has gone by and you still haven't done your workout! Make it a part of your daily routine to exercise, and even put it on your calendar if you need to so that you don't schedule something else during your workout time.

4) Removing Distractions

It is very easy to get distracted when you are working out at home because you have so many options for what you could be doing at any given moment. Between your own chores or responsibilities and the demands of your family members, neighbors, and even your pets, what started out as a planned workout can quickly become less than productive.

Whatever it is that you could be distracted by, be sure to remove it before you start exercising. That could include anything from turning off your telephone and your TV, to telling the people in and around your house that you are unavailable during your exercise time. It may take a few workouts before the new procedures become a habit for you and everyone else, so be sure to stick it out past the initial confusion. Everything smooths out pretty quickly.

5) Staying Motivated

For some people, it is difficult to be motivated in the home environment. It is not the environment that people generally associate with exercise, and without other people there who are also exercising, it can be easy for your motivation to leak away.

The best way to counter this is to do everything that you can to take your mind out of the home environment. Put on your headphones and rock out while you are exercising, use that time to listen to motivational or empowering audio programs, or even turn on the local health and fitness channel on the television to provide an appropriate backdrop for your exercise session.

6) Toys

A lot of people don't know it, but there are some incredibly fun electronic toys that you can play with at home that will allow you to have some fun while you are exercising!

The EyeToy Kinetic is a total blast and can deliver some amazingly difficult workouts while actually putting yourself inside the game.

Yourself Fitness is another gaming system where your virtual trainer Maya guides you through everything that you are supposed to be doing. In addition to over 500 exercises, Yourself Fitness also comes with meal planning, over 4,500 recipes, and even shopping lists.

QMotion FunFitness is another system where you actually interact with the environment on your television screen, while playing racing games that you already own. Very cool stuff!

Here are pictures of each of the products listed above:

In addition to the game-related exercise systems listed above, there are also thousands of exercise and fitness DVD's that you can choose from in order to get a great home workout, and most of them require very little exercise equipment.

7) Nutrition

And finally, when working out at home, you have the ability to plan your nutritional intake to get the maximum benefit from your home workout program.

People who workout at a gym tend to either workout on an empty stomach, or wait too long after they workout before they get the calories that the body needs in order to recover properly from their workout.

Ideally you would ingest some healthy calories one to two hours before exercising, and then again one to two hours after your workout. To find out what type and amount of calories you should be taking in based on your fitness goals, check out Nutrition Generator, which is an in-depth system of both planning and tracking your nutritional intake.

Exercise of the Day – Bicep Concentration Curl

Aaron Potts — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 20:48:43 +0000

The Bicep Concentration Curl is an effective bicep exercise because it will isolate the bicep muscle, while at the same time giving a point of leverage so that you can move more weight, resulting in faster progress.

Be sure to visit Fitness Generator to get access to almost 2,000 exercise graphics as well as instructions on using bodyweight, dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, and more!

Bicep Concentration Curl

Start with your feet flat on the floor, wider than shoulder width apart. Grab the dumbbell and then brace the back of your elbow against the inside of the knee.

Keeping your feet firmly planted on the ground, simply curl the weight up towards your shoulder, hold for 1 to 2 full seconds, then slowly return to the starting position before repeating the movement. Be sure that your upper body does not move as you start to get fatigued. This will cause the exercise to lose its effectiveness, and could also lead to injury.

Click here to see a massive list of websites that teach people to exercise!

5 Tips on How to Workout with Dumbbells

Aaron Potts — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:01:23 +0000

If you don't know how to workout with dumbbells, you are truly missing out on a great way get in shape, yet a way that requires very little exercise equipment.

In fact, if you had a proper set of dumbbells, you could stay in shape for the rest of your life without owning a single additional piece of exercise equipment!

This guide will help you to get the most out of your dumbbell workouts by teaching you how to workout with dumbbells in the most safe and effective manner.

Use Proper Form

As with all exercise-related activities, doing it right is the very first priority. Failure to properly do your dumbbell exercises could result in:

A lack of progress
Injury
Wasted time and energy

Since dumbbell exercises are normally done either standing up, or sitting/laying on a bench of some kind, you are 100% in control of the movement, which, of course, is the whole point.

However, without an exercise machine to guide your body in the ranges of motion that are necessary for any given exercise, it is very easy to get sloppy when you start to get tired.

In order to make sure that you understand exactly how to do any given exercise properly, simply do it with very little weight in order to teach yourself the movement. Once you are sure that you know how to sit/stand/lay down while performing the actual range of motion needed for each exercise, then you can graduate up to more challenging weights.

Also, remember that your "core" muscles are a large part of your ability to stabilize your body when exercising. One of the secrets of how to workout with dumbbells effectively is to always use your abdominal and lower back muscles to "tighten up" and stabilize your body before and during every single exercise.

Do Effective Exercises

When it comes to exercise of any kind, quality always trumps quantity! If you have grabbed 10 dumbbell exercises from the latest edition of some fitness magazine, and you intend to incorporate all 10 of them into a 15 minute workout, you're already on the wrong path.

There is no way that you are going to provide enough stimulus to any of your muscles or connective tissues if you rush through a large list of exercises rather than focusing on a few powerful movements, and taking the time to do those movements effectively.

With very few exceptions, there aren't very many "bad" exercises. As a general rule, any exercise is better than no exercise. However, people who have been on and off the fitness or weight loss bandwagon will attest to the fact that the number one reason for a lack of follow-through on their program is because they weren't seeing enough results to keep them motivated to continue.

That will also be your fate if you don't make very good use of your exercise time every day. Choose exercises that are very effective for whichever area of your body that you are targeting, but don't fine-tune the effort so much that you need to do 50 different exercises each time you workout.

Check out Superior Dumbbell Workouts and Dumbbell Routines for more information about picking specific exercises that will work best for you.

Use a Challenging Weight

Okay, it's time to 'fess up! Are you one of those people at the gym who only ever picks up the multi-colored dumbbells that weigh anywhere from 3 to 8 pounds? We used to call those the Crayola Dumbbells when I worked at a gym because they would only be challenging weights if you were still a child!

Now, I'm not talking across the board here, because there are some dumbbell isolation exercises that can only be done with a small amount of weight. However, as a general rule, if you are an able-bodied adult male or female human being, you should be able to do most of your exercises with weight that is more challenging than the Crayola Dumbbells.

Going back to what I said earlier about stabilizing your core whenever you exercise, this will definitely come into play once you start using some challenging weights. Especially when you are doing movements where you are sitting or standing up, you will need to really flex those abdominal and lower back muscles in order to keep your body from moving while you perform exercises with heavier weights.

Modify Your Routine

You could have the best dumbbell workout routine ever known to mankind, but your body will still get used to it eventually. Once your body has adapted to your routine, you will need to change it if you want to continue to see results.

That does not necessarily mean that you need to do more repetitions of each exercise, or that you need to use heavier weights, although those are both ways of modifying your routine.

Other methods include:

Change the order that you do your exercises in
Change the exercises themselves for different movements that target the same areas of your body
Modify the speed at which you do your entire workout (more or less rest time in between exercises)
Modify the speed at which you do individual exercises (more or less speed with which you actually move the dumbbells)
Do your workout at a different time of day (different energy levels)

Become Unbalanced

If you want to know how to workout with dumbbells in a way that will guarantee maximum results from both a strength/weight loss point of view, as well as an overall health point of view, becoming unbalanced is the way to go!

Basically what is meant by "becoming unbalanced" is that you take your body outside of its normal comfort zone of solid surfaces, and do your exercises in ways that will add more core training to your workout, thus making it more challenging, and burning more calories.

There are numerous methods for doing this, and they include doing the same exercises that you would be doing anyway, only to become unstable you do the exercises:

On one foot
On a wobble board
On an exercise ball
On a Bosu ball

In each of the conditions listed above, your body is forced to both consciously as well as unconsciously recruit the use of muscles and connective tissues that would never have been used during more "traditional" exercises.

To use myself as an example, the hardest muscle for me to "shock" into growth is my biceps. They are already fairly well developed, but if I want to take them to the next level, I really have to beat on them hard.

One day I decided to do a standard Alternating Dumbbell Bicep Curl on one foot instead of two, and for 3 days afterwards I couldn't move my arms without feeling a healthy level of soreness from that workout. That is the power of becoming unstable!

Remember: Dumbbell exercises are more effective than exercise machines in almost every instance, so the next time you are at the gym, try out some of the techniques that you just learned. Alternatively, you could grab your own set of dumbbells and get a great workout without ever having to leave your house!

Exercise of the Day – Barbell Step Up

Aaron Potts — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:24:53 +0000

The Barbell Step is one of the most effective leg exercises that you can do, and it also does a great job of keeping your heart rate up, thus burning more calories!

Be sure to visit Fitness Generator to get access to almost 2,000 exercise graphics as well as instructions on using bodyweight, dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, and more!

Barbell Step Up

The premise here is pretty simple. Using a Barbell that is perched on your shoulders, or using dumbbells that are held down at your side, you step up onto an elevated surface and back down again. Be sure to do the exercise with good form, though! Most people do not keep proper form when doing this movement, especially when they start getting tired.

To get the most out of the Barbell or Dumbbell Step Up, you need to keep good posture the entire time, keeping your head up and your back erect. Step all the way up onto the elevated surface with one foot, then the other, and then step back down with one foot, then the other. Alternate starting with your left foot then your right foot, and remember that the higher your elevated surface is, the more you will get out of the exercise!

Click here to see a massive list of websites that teach people to exercise!

A Good Push Up Workout, Part II

Aaron Potts — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 02:51:28 +0000

If you’re looking for an incredible chest and upper body workout, P90X® is one of the most effective programs you’ll ever find.

In Part I of the good push up workout series, I covered 9 different ways to do push ups using nothing but your body weight. Here in Part II, I will be adding in one dumbbell exercise, and also cranking up the intensity.

Here are each of the 4 push up exercises that will be used during this workout, and the workout itself is below.

Push Ups with Elevated Feet

This movement was also in the previous workout, but I wanted to include it here as well in order to enhance the shoulder strengthening aspects of this workout. Whenever you do a push up with your feet elevated, it puts even more strain on the shoulders than a standard push up.

Given the high frequency of shoulder injuries, strengthening the shoulder muscles and connective tissues is not only a good idea, but it makes your upper body physique more aesthetically pleasing as well.

Other than having your feet elevated on a chair, foot stool, or other surface, this push up is done just like a standard push up, with the hands approximately shoulder-width apart, and in horizontal alignment with the upper chest area.

Dive Bomber Push Ups

This exercise was also featured as the exercise of the day, and is an incredible movement not just for upper body strength, but for core stabilization as well. It is one of the many push-up variations that are included in the P90X program.

In order to do the Dive Bomber Push Up correctly, be sure to have a very controlled rate of speed during the exercise, and also follow the same upward and downward arch throughout the repetition.

Also, get as much of your body as close as possible to the floor without actually coming into contact with the floor, and be sure to return all the way up to the fully extended position when you ascend back to the top of the movement.

Dumbbell Push Up and Row

If this exercise looks hard, believe me when I say that it’s even harder than it looks!

Basically all you do is put your hands some some light-to-moderately heavy dumbbells which are resting on the floor in the same position that your hands would be in for a standard push up.

Go down into a standard push up and back up again, and then immediately follow up that movement by picking one of the dumbbells up and pulling it back into a 1-arm row.

Done perfectly, your back will neither sag, bow, nor sway to one side as you try to keep your core immobile during the rowing movement. Alternate back and forth between the left and right hands for the 1-arm row.

Explosive Push Ups

Another exercise that looks hard, and lives up to its appearance.

It is absolutely imperative that you use proper body mechanics during this exercise, or else you risk a shoulder, wrist, or elbow injury. This exercise has great benefits, so it is worth the risk, but be sure to do it the right way.

As your palms come back into contact with the floor, immediately bend your elbows in order to absorb the shock of your body rapidly descending from the top position.

Once you understand the rhythm of the movement, you will know the precise fraction of a second when you need to switch gears. You will go from absorbing the shock by bending your elbows to reversing the movement and explosively pushing your upper body back off of the floor for the next repetition.

There is no rest period during this exercise! Once you start your set of repetitions, you will not stop moving again until that set is complete, or until you reach momentary muscle failure.

The Workout

These 4 exercises will totally exhaust your upper body muscles, and will likely fatigue or exhaust your abdominal muscles and other core stabilization muscles as well. As you can probably guess, using that much raw muscular power is going to scream through both oxygen and calories at an alarming rate, thus making this a great workout for weight loss as well as muscular and strength gains.

In order, the exercises are:

Push Ups with Feet Elevated
Dive Bomber Push Ups
Dumbbell Push Up and Row
Explosive Push Ups

At the beginning of the set, you will still be fairly fresh, so go for a standard number of repetitions with the elevated push ups. Shoot for 15, or 20 at the most. Anything more than that and you will use up so much energy that you won’t be able to finish the other exercises.

Next, the Dive Bomber Push Ups are not as intense in the “pushing-sense” as the elevated push ups, but if you do them correctly, they will still burn the shoulders and abs, and possibly the triceps as well. Go for 10 slow, complete repetitions, remembering that you need to go all the way down and all the way back up to count 1 repetition. Also, do not rest even for a second at the top of the movement.

By this point your heart rate should be racing along and your shoulders and triceps will really be starting to feel the strain. For the Dumbbell Push Up and Row, you will still be using those muscles, but you will be adding in the increased energy and oxygen needs of the core stabilization muscles as well. When you first do this exercise, if you get 6 good push ups and 3 good rows done on each arm, you’ll have done better than most when they first tried it. Work your way up to 16 push ups, with 8 rows on each arm.

For the last exercise, the Explosive Push Up, it is simply time to give it all you’ve got! You will likely be at or near exhaustion by this point if you really put forth the effort during the first 3 push up exercises, so for this last movement, just go for as many repetitions as it takes to get you to muscle failure. Remember: Focus on proper form even though you are tired. No exercise is worth getting injured over.

So, that’s it!

Once you have survived completed your first set, take a well-deserved 2-minute break during which time you will catch your breath and drink some water.

Go for a 2nd set the first time around, and the next time you do this same workout, do 3 complete sets, adjusting the number of repetitions as needed to keep it challenging.

Exercise of the Day – Alternating Dumbbell Bench Press

Aaron Potts — Mon, 14 May 2007 13:57:45 +0000

The Dumbbell Bench Press is a standard and very effective exercise for the chest and the shoulders. However, by alternating from one side of the body to the other, you get even more out of an already effective exercise.

Be sure to visit Fitness Generator to get access to thousands of exercise graphics as well as instructions on using bodyweight, dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, and more!

Alternating Dumbbell Bench Press

One of the reasons why dumbbell exercises are so effective is because they cause us to recruit more of the stabilizing tissues surrounding any given joint than would be used when doing that same exercise with a barbell, or in an exercise machine. By alternating from one side to the other, even more stability is required, which not only increases the strength of the tendons and the ligaments that are used during the movement, but also increases the level of neuromuscular communication that you have with your body. A heightened level of neuromuscular communication equals not only a heightened level of strength, but the ability to retain that strength for longer periods of time, even as we get older.

Exercise of the Day – 1-Arm Squat

Aaron Potts — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 23:02:03 +0000

Using a kettlebell, a dumbbell, or a medicine ball, you can develop incredible strength, stability, and neuromuscular coordination with this one-sided movement.

Be sure to visit Fitness Generator to get access to thousands of exercise graphics as well as instructions on using bodyweight, dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, and more!

1-Arm Squat

Be sure that the weight you are holding does not migrate in front of your head during this movement. The idea is to create a "counter-weight" situation where the weight pulls you slightly backwards and you have to compensate for that by using your core stabilization muscles. Also, be sure to practice perfect squat form – feet flat on the floor, toes parallel and pointing straight forwards, head and shoulders up and not rounded forward.