Dumbbells are essential!

If there was only one piece of weight lifting equipment you could own, it would be dumbbells.

Even a single dumbbell provides dozens of potential exercises for your routine.

Dumbbells are not expensive, and you can even get high quality components second-hand. Dumbbells don’t take up a lot of storage space, and you can work out with dumbbells in a very limited amount of space.

A pair of dumbbells doesn’t take up much more room than a single dumbbell, and isn’t any harder to acquire.

Dumbbells are extra effective because they are less stable than a barbell, and require your muscles to stabilize the apparatus at the same time that the exercise is being executed.

I have three pairs of dumbbells that I love.

My light dumbbells are great for warming up and learning to exercises that I want to add to my routine.

My medium weight dumbbells are my work horses. I do most of my workout routine with my medium dumbbells. They are heavy enough to provide a challenge, but not too heavy to do multiple reps.

My heavy dumbbells are a great challenge for exercises when I really want to push myself.

My favorite exercise of all is the dumbbell fly. I use my light dumbbells to do a variety of flat bench and inclined bench curls and flys and presses. I use my heavy dumbbells to do flys that I do lying on the floor.

If you haven’t committed to a weight lifting program yet, go get some dumbbells.

Curls are for girls

Here’s another blog about the opposition I’ve faced.

I just can’t help talking about my weight lifting. It’s something that I’m very passionate about. But talking about weight lifting with the wrong people can bring the strangest reactions.

Recently while discussing weight loss and fitness with a group of young guys, my weight lifting routine came up. Like dogs who had spotted a cat from the front room window, they started to snarl and pepper me with questions.

“What kind of weights to do you have?”

“How often and how long to you work out?”

“How much can you bench?”

So I began to detail my equipment and my workout to these guys. Bench presses, dumbbell flys, lat pull downs, etc. When I got to the part about my military bar, one of them shouted at me: “Curls are for girls!”

What the???

Curls are for girls?

These two guys shared a hearty laugh and a high five. Apparently I had been disproved and humiliated. But I was flabbergasted.

One of these guys was a former college level athlete, and the other had been in the marines.

So I asked them how they went about working their bicep muscles.

No good answers.

Then it hit me: Some guys have lots of opinions about fitness and weight lifting, but don’t know much about it.

Don't get me wrong, if you're a girl, by all means grab some dumbbells and do some curls. I'm just saying that men performing curls with any kind of apparatus is good exercise.

It’s true that it's foolish to lift weights targeting only one part of your body, like your just your biceps or just your abs. But proper weight lifting should exercise all muscles in your body. I just don’t buy the idea that someone would want a strong body, but not want strong biceps, because “Curls are for girls.”

Educate yourself about fitness and weightlifting. More education brings better results, and makes you less vulnerable to dummies with zingers like

“Curls are for girls.”

My Routine

I love my routine. I look forward to it every other day.

There, that’s the first thing to know about my routine, I do it every other day.

I decided on that schedule because it felt right. I liked the “burn” I felt the day after working out. Then I did some investigation and found out that lots of people work out with weights every other day, because weights cause what is sometimes called “the 48 hour burn”.  From what I gather, working out with weights burns calories for two days.

The next thing you should know about my routine is that I’m not a professional of any kind. I’m not a trainer, I’m not a therapist, and I’m not a doctor. I could be making lots of mistakes, and doing some things wrong. If you’re going to start a workout program of your own, SEEK OUT SOME PROFESSIONAL HELP. I’m just telling you what seems right to me right now. Later I’ll share some of the resources that have been helpful to me.

So here’s the actual routine:

I start by warming up and stretching. Jumping jacks, stretches, wind mills (from elementary school PE class) and windshield wipers (look it up) I’m mostly worried about my back (remember, I’m old) but I also don’t want to hurt my arms, elbow, or shoulders.

Then I hit my weights.

Here’s a couple of terms you hear a lot in weight lifting: “Three sets of eight”, and “reps to failure”.

As I studied weight lifting routines those two terms popped up again and again. I resist both of them.

I do two sets of 15 on most of my exercises. At least that’s my plan. Sometimes it’s one set of 50 reps. Sometimes it’s even one set of 15 reps. Depends on the exercise.

More importantly, I’m doing a kind of a circuit or complex.  Maybe I don’t do it completely right, but the point of my routine is that it lasts for 30 minutes to 45 minutes and I move from one exercise to the next with very little rest in between. If heart really starts pounding and I’m gasping for breath, I rest a little more, or even better, I drink a little water. I’ve learned that staying hydrated during my work out is better than resting.

I’ll need another entry to talk about specific exercises and equipment, but what’s important to say right now is that the feeling is EXHILLERATING! My muscles turn red and I am quickly soaked in sweat. It feels great!

Do I do reps to failure? This means doing reps until you absolutely can’t do another, and you’re lifting absolutely as much weight as you can. At first I didn’t think so. Sometimes I feel like I could squeeze out one more rep if I really tried, but I’m working out alone, and I don’t have a spotter, so I don’t like to risk it. But I’m doing as many reps as I can.

Do I lift as much weight as I can? Some of my detractors have told me that I need to be lifting the maximum weight possible.

Well for example, I’m sure that if I had a spotter, I could bench press more than I am currently pressing. But it would just be a couple of reps.  Right now I’m pressing as much as I can for 2 set of 15 reps without a spotter.

So I feel good about the maxims, “3 sets of 8”, and “reps to failure”