No Dumb Weights Here: The Top Ten Dumbbell Exercises

You may feel fit and trim, but you’re pretty sure that some parts of your body are less fit than the rest. For instance, although you feel strong, you may think your arms too large, too flabby, or lacking in tone. Although you know you can walk ten miles without breaking a sweat, you may think your leg muscles too weak, your thighs too big, or your legs too wobbly. And, although you feel like wearing a bikini every day to highlight your abdominal muscles, you may feel that your midsection – or what exercise enthusiasts refer to as the “core” – is still weak and lacking resistance.

To exercise only certain parts of the body, exercise experts recommend dumbbell training, which can allow you to build the muscle groups of your choice. Training with dumbbells has the following advantages:

• Such exercises not only add tone, but stabilize muscles, allowing you to have better posture, and improving your balance.
• If done correctly, these exercises are safe, and can be tailored to meet your needs. This is opposed to an exercise machine, which requires you to fit your physique and posture around.
• Because dumbbells only mimic natural movements, you do not need to train your body using abnormal or difficult-to-follow positions. This can allow you to design your workout with a greater scope of movement.
• Since dumbbell exercise movements are flexible and dynamic, you can use them to make a sports fitness regimen to suit a particular sport in which you are interested. You can make dumbbell exercises to fit the moves you make, in effect strengthening the muscle groups of your choice.
• Dumbbells not only build up strength in your muscles. Using them is a great source of cardiovascular workout, as you not only increase your heart rate, but burn calories as well.