The 8 Best Dumbbell Exercises Ever

Selecting my favorite dumbbell exercises is like being asking me to pick my favorite kid!

(Which if you’ve seen how cute my twin boys are, you know is IMPOSSIBLE.)

BUT I had to choose…and choose I did. And not only will I tell you WHICH dumbbell moves I believe are best, I’ll tell you exactly WHY!

I love training with a pair of dumbbells for two reasons:

1. They don’t take up a lot of space, making them ideal for your home workout.
2. They allow you to train very athletically.

With their three dimensional freedom, dumbbells allow you to workout in all planes of motion and require a great deal of core strength and stability to use them properly. We aren’t afforded that three dimensional ability with a bar, and many people just don’t have a bar at home!

These 8 dumbbell exercises were chosen because of their ability to give you maximum bang for your buck. This is based on their ability to work multiple major muscle groups in one dumbbell-only workout.  The more muscles you can train in one dumbbell training session, the quicker your dumbbell workouts will be and the more impact you can have on your body in a shorter period of time.

So let’s look at each of these 8 dumbbell exercises one by one and point out the benefits of each. If you like, you can combine them into one full-body dumbbell workout.

8 BEST DUMBBELL EXERCISES

There are folks that think you can’t train some muscle groups effectively with dumbbells because you aren’t able to load up enough weight.

That’s definitely not the case!

Dumbbell only workouts can be incredibly challenging.

I’m choosing lifts that you can load with heavier weight so you are sure to be pushing yourself to your limits!

You can’t continue to lift light weight and think that you are going to get a good enough workout program to build mass and strength.  Even if you are training at home, aim to use as heavy weights as you can lift if you’re looking to build lean muscle tissue.

In this list of 8, you’ll see that every single one of these can be loaded heavy and some dumbbell workouts can also be done in a lower weight higher reps fashion to make them more metabolic if that’s your goal. Feel free to combine these 8 exercises into a complete full-body workout.

1.) DUMBBELL CURL AND PRESS

This is a compound exercise and most of the exercises I chose will be compound exercises.  This is because we want to get the most bang for our buck, get the muscles working quickly and get our workout done.

The Dumbbell Curl and Press gives us a classic biceps lift and a shoulder movement all in one.

We’ve got both a pull (biceps curls) and a push (overhead press), and we are able to blend these two movements together because of how the biceps function.

In order for the arm muscles to fully contract, we’ve got to include some sort of elevation or flexion of the shoulder joint. We get that in the bicep curl portion and we continue it with the flexed position of the shoulder joint in the shoulder press portion of this movement.

In the Dumbbell Curl and Press we have antagonistic muscles that normally don’t like to work together that are actually teaming up to create a really beneficial exercise.

2.) CRUSH GRIP GOBLET SQUAT

We already know that goblet squats are a great classic lift to train our lower body including glutes, as well as leg muscles like quads and hamstrings.

Some people have a tough time figuring out how low they should squat and how wide their feet should be. The great thing about the goblet squat is that your body usually falls right into the position that’s most comfortable and biomechanically correct for you.

With the addition of the crush grip portion we’re actually getting a chance to incorporate some upper body activity into what would normally be a passive exercise for upper body, not to mention grip strength.

If you grab a dumbbell in the normal goblet squat hand position which is just holding the underside of one end of the dumbbell, you’re not really doing anything actively to hold that it other than supporting it with your hands. But with the crush grip, you’re squeezing the dumbbell between your hands with a constant tension, making it an excellent dumbbell exercise for building strength in the chest, delts, traps, core muscles and grip strength!

Everything now is working, with muscles under tension from top to bottom.

This makes for a superior version of a goblet squat, which was already a great compound lift to begin with! Be sure to include this move in your dumbbell leg workout.

3.) DUMBBELL PULLOVER

Some people refer to it as the ‘upper body squat’ because it’s one of the most powerful compound exercises for building strength in the upper body!  There are actually two different ways to perform this upper body exercise that can emphasize back or upper chest muscles depending on which variation you choose.

If you take the dumbbell and you try to pull your hands up against each other as you pull over your chest to mid chest level, it’s going to preferentially hit your upper chest muscles.

If you let your elbow joints flare out a little bit and you drive with your elbows instead of leading with your hands, then you start to get a lot more lat activation.

It doesn’t really matter which one you choose.  Mix them up back and forth between sets to work both areas.  Why not!  This is one of the best dumbbell workouts you can do for your upper body and certainly one that I would include in my 8 best.

4.) FARMER’S CARRY

The Farmer’s Carry is an exercise with multiple benefits that a lot of people still haven’t caught onto!

Just load up that weight as heavy as you can and WALK. If you don’t have a lot of space for this farmers walk, then walk back and forth in whatever space you have.

While the Farmer’s Carry does work your grip and form, these are definitely not the only benefits!

The fact of the matter is, trying to hold onto these dumbbells becomes infinitely more challenging when you add movement with your lower body. When you’re moving, your core has to work to stabilize from right to left. If you just stand still and hold dumbbells, it will be much easier than it is when you have that weight shift going on.

It’s also a very demanding upper and mid back exercise because you’ll find that since you’re holding them for a long period of time, you’ll have to learn how to hold with the bigger muscles in your upper back.

You can see here as I walk away that my upper back, mid back and even my triceps and upper arm are kicking in to try to hold these dumbbells up!

And of course by having the locomotion component when we’re walking, our lower body gets involved too.

This is one of the best exercises to build lean muscle tissue in your entire body, literally from your fingertips all the way down to your feet!

5.) DUMBBELL THRUSTER

Speaking of those fingertips to toes movements, the Dumbbell Thruster is one of the best.

But it’s a killer because you’re literally working everything in your body at the same time!

You start down in a Squat position and thrust your body upward allowing that that momentum to continue. But the momentum is only going to get you so far.

The only way you’re going to get those dumbbells up and over your head is if you press them, and you’re going to need to apply some force to do so.

For a classic builder, load the weight as heavy as you can, because for the front squat portion your leg muscles are likely to be able to handle whatever weight you’re using. It’s a matter of how much weight you’re going to be able to press up and over your head that will be the limiting factor of this exercise.

This can become a great metabolic exercise as well, if you go with a light dumbbell and go for higher reps.

6.) 1 ARM DUMBBELL INCLINE BENCH PRESS

At ATHLEAN-X, I always say we like to put the core at the core of everything we do, and this exercise is a perfect example of it.

The regular incline dumbbell bench press is a great exercise on its own for the chest muscle fibres.

However, in making one small tweak – doing one arm at a time – we’ve made the exercise that much more demanding on our core!

You can see that as I lower the dumbbell, all that weight wants to pull me to one side. The only thing I have to stabilize and prevent me from rolling off the bench in the direction of the heavy dumbbell is my abdominal muscles and obliques.

I have to contract everything together to keep my low back flat on the bench and then initiate the momentum that I need to push that dumbbell back up in the opposite direction.

You see, we have to overcome both the force of gravity and the mechanical disadvantage that our core is put in as we lift and lower that dumbbell. That makes this a great dumbbell chest exercise to work on the weaknesses we have in our core.

7.) DUMBBELL SWING

Put simply, the Dumbbell Swing is one of the most metabolically demanding exercises there is.

We’re basically mimicking a kettlebell swing by grabbing the bottom side of one end of the dumbbell with both of our hands.

As with the kettlebell swing, this is a great exercise for glute and hip extension.  These are some of the weakest areas of our body.

If you choose a lighter weight, you can do this for lots of reps for more of a metabolic exercise.

If you choose to load it heavier, it becomes a great way to develop strength in your posterior chain and you’ll be huffing and puffing after just a few reps.

8.) DUMBBELL TRIPOD ROW

This may look pretty similar to a dumbbell one arm row, but it’s not the same thing!  In the Dumbbell Tripod Row we’ve changed our base of support, and by doing so, we are challenging our core.

With a regular dumbbell one arm row, we have one arm and one knee on the bench and the dumbbell is held fairly close to our center of gravity.

When we perform the Dumbbell Tripod Row we’ve got a wider base of support and the dumbbell is held out to the side farther away from our center of gravity.

You’ll feel from the very first rep that it’s a challenge to hold your body still and straight as you move the dumbbell.

This variation is also more athletically inclined here because both feet are on the ground with your knees bent and your butt out.

So there you have it, my 8 favorite dumbbell exercises, each with a justification of why it’s on this list. Dumbbells give you the ability to train athletically because unlike a bar, they require you to work and stabilize in three dimensions. I’ve chosen exercises that take advantage of this freedom of movement to help us work more than one muscle group simultaneously.

If you like, you can combine these lifts into one dumbbell-only routine or use them as part of a complete dumbbell exercise program. Adjustable dumbbells are a great investment, but even if you have just a couple of pairs of dumbbells at home, you can perform a dumbbell-focused routine that will help build serious muscle.

If you’re looking for a complete workout program that helps you take advantage of your workout time and the equipment you’ve got available to you, check out our ATHLEAN-X programs.  Train at home with just a few dumbbells and a pullup bar, or utilize the full variety of equipment at your local gym.  Whichever you choose, let me be your coach!