So you only have dumbbells and an adjustable weight bench available? This blog will leave you spoilt for choice of exercises you can choose from to increase your muscle mass and strength in your home gym.

Results don’t have to involve fitting an Arm Curl Machine into your living room, just a solid progressive gym plan and the right exercises. There is plenty of scope for you to increase the weight of the dumbbells as you get stronger on each exercise, with Mirafit’s range of dumbbells from 0.5kg to 50kg, including Dumbbell Sets and adjustable dumbbells.

Dumbbells provide balanced muscle development due to the unilateral nature of each movement, and a greater range of motion compared to a barbell. Adding an Adjustable Gym Bench creates heaps of variation when it comes to different movement patterns: such as incline pressing, rowing, lunging, and core work.

Master the fundamental movement patterns, and you’ll prove that the “less is more approach” can still deliver powerful results.

How to Structure Your Training

For a each of your sessions, you might consider organising muscle groups into set days, for example:

• Monday – quads, shoulders, calves, and core.

• Tuesday – chest, back, and tris.

• Wednesday – rest.

• Thursday – hamstrings, shoulders (different exercises than on Monday), calves and core.

• Friday – chest (different exercises than on Tuesday), back and biceps.

• Saturday – biceps, triceps and core.

• Sunday – rest.

Start each session with 2 compound movements that you’re going to focus on building strength for. Then choose 4 exercises that will compliment those movements by building balance or muscle mass, complete these four as 2 separate supersets. Then choose 1-2 exercises that you can use at higher rep range as workout finishers.

Dumbbell and Weight Bench Exercise Options

Biceps

• Inclined alternating bicep curls.

• Single-arm supported hammer curl.

• Concentration curl.

Triceps

• Dual dumbbell skull crushers.

• Single-arm standing bent over kickbacks.

• Single-arm dumbbell skull crushers.

• Narrow grip press ups (hands on the bench, toes on the ground).

Core

• Weighted crunches.

• Bird dog row.

• Weighted deadbugs.

Quads

• Bulgarian split squats.

• Goblet box squat.

• Bench assisted sissy squats.

Calves

• Seated calf raises.

• Assisted single leg standing calf raises.

Hamstrings

• Stiff leg Romanian deadlifts.

• Assisted single-leg Romanian deadlifts.

• B-stance Romanian deadlifts.

• Long lever isometric hamstring holds.

• Single leg hips elevated hamstring bridge.

Back

• Chest supported back rows.

• Three-point rows.

Chest

• Incline chest press.

• Flat chest press.

• Chest flyes.

• Wide grip press ups.

• Single-arm chest press.

Shoulders

• Seated lateral raises.

• Seated Arnold press.

• Seated overhead press.

• Seated rear delt flyes.

Aim to keep things simple, "quality over quantity", be consistent, and strive for those 1% marginal gains. That’s how you’ll get the results that you want and keep them. So check out our Dumbbells For Sale.

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Tags: Equipment > Benches ; Equipment > Dumbbells ; Exercise Type > Strength