What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. Today, I'm going to show you a home dumbbell
workout to get jacked. That's right, you can actually build muscle with just dumbbells if
you know how to train properly with them. Now you can also do this workout not just with a pair of
dumbbells, but with a single dumbbell. Because I realized that not all of us have access to a full
rack of dumbbells. So what I m going to do is, I m going to show you the exact exercises to do.
I'll tell you the sets and reps to do and also the rest times, which will vary
depending upon how you're going to go about training in this workout. That being said,
it's time to just start breaking it down exercise by exercise. So let's get started.
So not only can this workout be done by anybody that has access to even a single pair of
dumbbells, it's also going to hit your entire body. The first four exercises here are going
to hit your shoulders, your arms, your chest, your back and your legs, all in just these four
movements. From there, I'll give you some optional additional direct arm work, and we put it all
together you've got one killer workout. So let's start at the top. All of these exercises are the
first four are going to be done in sets of three and about the six to eight rep range.
Now the dumbbells that you have allow you to fail within that range, that you've got the right
dumbbells. But what happens if you don't? If your dumbbell weight is too heavy, then you're going to
perform the single dumbbell exercise variation I'm going to show you. If your dumbbells are
too light, I would advise you to simply do the set until you reach failure and dramatically decrease
your rest time to increase the metabolic effect of the exercise instead. So let's start breaking
down the workout. I'm going to show you both the single dumbbell variation here and also the
version that you would do with two dumbbells. Well, let's start with the single dumbbell.
Here we have the dumbbell clean up and over. And obviously, this is an explosive exercise
that's working our shoulders, our back, biceps, brachialis, our legs, everything together, working
together. Clean the dumbbell up to one shoulder, press it up and overhead to the other side,
bring it back down to the floor and explosively repeat. A helpful tip for those that might have
difficulty with the timing of this exercise, you want to time the catch of the dumbbell
on your shoulder with the stomping of your feet. Why? Because you need your feet to be in contact
with the ground to be prepared to already start to absorb the weight of that dumbbell eccentrically,
to get you to be able to go back in the opposite direction explosively.
So if your feet aren't on the ground already to do that, you're not going to have the force in the
power that you need to drive that dumbbell up and overhead to the opposite shoulder. And you can see
if you had access to the appropriate weight let's say, for a pair of dumbbells you could do here,
basically the clean and press one to each shoulder, dip down, press up and continue to
go. Again, working the same muscles, but different options, depending upon what access you have.
Remember three sets of six to eight of these choosing a weight that would help you to fail
within that range? Rest time in between sets would be ninety seconds to two minutes if you had access
to a weight that was only capable of being done for much higher reps. Perform them until failure
and simply drop your rest time down to 45 to 60 seconds to really turn this into a metabolic
burnout. Again, those with limited weight would choose the single dumbbell option.
The second exercise here is actually going to brutalize your legs, it's our goblet leg sequence,
so you put the single dumbbell here again up into the goblet squat position, you're going to do a
reverse lunge into a reverse lunge. Come back to center here and perform a goblet squat.
And if two dumbbells are at your disposal here, you would choose the appropriate weight and once
again perform six to eight repetitions on each leg for three total sets. One key way to perform this
exercise is to maintain a slightly wider stance. Basically, start from your goblet squat stance
because you want to have a wider base of support when you go back into your reverse lunge.
All too often, people lunge directly backwards, which provides too narrow of a base of support,
and you wind up losing your balance left or right. When the goal is to get jacked and
build muscle here balance should not be your focus. Keeping your legs a little bit wider
will provide you with the stability that you need to focus only on the effort level that's
going to drive that new muscle growth. The next exercise up here is a classic old
school back exercise the T-Bar Row that we, of course, could do with a single dumbbell. And
let's start right there with that single dumbbell here, you're able to use a single weight with a
crush grip to mimic the mechanics of the T-Bar Row that will help us to build a bigger back.
If you have access to two dumbbells, of course you can do this variation here,
but we're going to add a little bit of extra to it. This is a dumbbell row, but we call it a dead
row. You're utilizing your legs for the first quarter of the motion to help you to move bigger
weights and to move them more explosively. Of course, in the T-Bar Row, one thing I want you
to focus on is the manipulation of the dumbbell in space as you perform the exercise, you're
going to want to tilt the heels of your hands downward in order to create a little bit of extra
range of motion because that dumbbell is less likely to hit your chest at the top. Make sure
you're bent over enough at the waist to create a higher load on your lats but do so without
compromising your low back and rounding it. Three sets of six to eight once again is the goal.
And finally, we're going to hit a great pushing exercise here that's going to hit your chest,
shoulders and triceps, it's the crush grip floor press. So you take that heavy dumbbell if you're
only using one and you squeeze both hands on the handle. And this is not just a passive squeeze,
this is actually squeezing as hard as you can with an inward force to create that isometric
abduction to really light up the chest, you extend that dumbbell up and over your body,
and of course, you're hitting your shoulders and triceps like you would with any other bench press.
Of course, if you had two dumbbells here, the traditional floor press is going to be
the option you're going to go for. In either instance, again, choosing a weight
that's going to cause failure in the six to eight rep range for three sets is the goal. As always,
if you had to light of a weight, you're going to keep those reps higher and just decrease that
rest time to no more than 45 to 60 seconds. And for those looking to add a little bit jack-ness
to those arms as well, let's talk about the extra fifth and sixth exercise options here
are accessory work for this workout, and we're talking about a direct tricep
and a direct bicep exercise. The direct tricep exercise of choice here
actually brings back nightmares for me of a tricep extension done on the floor that I did back with
C.T. Fletcher that I'm still, again, thinking about negatively. The fact is, this can easily be
converted into a single dumbbell option by simply taking that palms up diamond grip on the dumbbell
and then again extending it down to the floor. Make sure that you don't drive too much with
your lats on the exercise. Try to isolate this to a tricep exercise by limiting the range of motion,
mostly to the elbows bending and not driving forward and backward.
Here we're going to increase the repetition count just a little bit 10 to 12 reps to failure, but
still for three sets. And then finally, we wrap up the entire workout with our bicep exercise,
and this is tailor made for a single dumbbell option. This is the dumbbell waiter curl. And
again, you can go pretty heavy here, and it allows you to really build up your biceps.
If you haven't done it, this is one of my favorite ways to do so. Again, three sets of
10 to 12 repetitions is the goal here. If you had two dumbbells and didn't want
to utilize this option, of course, the standing dumbbell curl is another great
way to target your biceps. I like to perform it as always in alternating fashion so I can
make sure the biceps are doing all the work here, and I'm not limiting myself
by either strength or weakness of my core. No matter how many dumbbells you have access to
guys, if you know how to train with them, there's always something you can do. As you saw right here
one dumbbell, a pair of dumbbells, a whole rack of dumbbells, this exercise sequence is going to
take you where you want to be. Speaking of taking you, where you want to be, I have a
brand-new program that's designed to do exactly that. I don't care how many dumbbells you have.
It's called Jacked, ironically. It's going to get you where you want to be. Check it out.