What we are talking about today is not the 3 pound gadgets in the gym, but the real iron bump dumbbells in the free weight zone. Dumbbell training has many advantages over barbell training. Even the great Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter to his son: “My life is very restrained, I don’t drink alcohol, and I use dumbbells to exercise every day.” You have made a lot of progress in strength and size.
We can even say that dumbbells can completely maximize your strength growth and muscle growth, dumbbell training should occupy a place in your workout plan. Let’s take a look at the benefits of dumbbells compared to barbells!
1. High stability and high activation
In a study, electromyography was used to compare the muscle activation of the chest, triceps, and biceps during bench presses using barbells, Smith machines, and dumbbells. The findings indicate that while the dumbbell bench press and barbell bench press both activate the three heads and the chest, the barbell bench press considerably activates the two heads more than the dumbbell. Why?
Dumbbells need you to control balance, stabilize weight and body. Because of this, arm-developed bench press athletes are uncommon. A requirement for dumbbell training is improved control, and a benefit of dumbbell training is that it activates more muscle fibers.
2. Identify and eliminate imbalance
Dumbbells will force your limbs to work independently. If one side is significantly weaker than the other, you can tell at a glance. Training your strong side with dumbbells will not help your weak side, which makes dumbbells very effective in eliminating muscle development imbalances.
3. Security
Heavy barbell squats and bench press training are more dangerous. If you can’t restore your weight, it’s still trivial to lose face, and the most dangerous thing is injury. When training with dumbbells, don’t worry about this. You can throw dumbbells on the mat (of course, pay attention to safety). Of course, don’t throw dumbbells for light weight training.
4. It is more convenient to use strength skills
When you are alone and training with dumbbells, rest and pause, the use of decreasing groups will become more convenient. If you train with a barbell and want to be a decreasing group, you need to put the barbell back on the rack, then run to the sides of the barbell to change the weight, and then before returning to the barbell. Using dumbbells will not be so troublesome.
3. Security
Heavy barbell squats and bench press training are more dangerous. If you can’t restore your weight, it’s still trivial to lose face, and the most dangerous thing is injury. When training with dumbbells, don’t worry about this. You can throw dumbbells on the mat (of course, pay attention to safety). Of course, don’t throw dumbbells for light weight training.
4. It is more convenient to use strength skills
When you are alone and training with dumbbells, rest and pause, the use of decreasing groups will become more convenient. If you train with a barbell and want to be a decreasing group, you need to put the barbell back on the rack, then run to the sides of the barbell to change the weight, and then before returning to the barbell. Using dumbbells will not be so troublesome.
5. Greater range of motion
One of the most effective ways to increase muscle strength and size is to increase the range of motion. When you use a barbell for bench press and rowing, when the barbell touches your sternum and abdominal muscles, it is the apex of your movement. If you use dumbbells, you can greatly increase the range of movement.
Maybe using dumbbells you will not be able to use the weight in barbell training, but this is enough. The increase in displacement is also an idea to increase training intensity.
6. More freedom of movement
When you bench press with a barbell, your arms and shoulders are in a fixed position throughout the entire process. In contrast, when you use dumbbells for bench press, you will be able to slightly change the trajectory of the movement, leaving the shoulder joint in a more free mode.
The barbell bench press has a fixed posture and a single displacement. Because of this, if your shoulder is injured, you will be very uncomfortable when doing the barbell bench press, or you can only use very light weight. The dumbbell bench press allows you to rotate your shoulders outwards or inwards to let the dumbbells lean up or down a little bit so that you can avoid injury and pain to stimulate the target muscles.
7. Prevent injuries
Although dumbbells are very safe, I have to admit that many accidents are caused by dumbbell clips. This is often caused by lack of attention. Dumbbells will not cause accidents by themselves, but trainers will. In the long run, more free movement and more natural way of exerting force will bring fewer injuries. Looking further, by identifying and eliminating the imbalance in muscle development, the possibility of injury is greatly reduced.
Dumbbells and barbells are indispensable tools for strength training. In addition to knowing how to use them, we also need to understand the advantages and disadvantages of each. These are the advantages of dumbbells. We will bring you the advantages of barbells later.