Whatever your fitness goals are, home dumbbell workouts can be one of the most effective ways to train. Adding some weight to your workouts will help you get stronger and fitter faster, and allows you to keep progressing and building muscle through your training.
Armed with just one set of dumbbells (or ideally a set of the best adjustable dumbbells that allow you to use a wide range of weights within one set) you can strengthen every major muscle group in your body, improve your cardio fitness and fire up your metabolism.
With this dumbbell workout from YouTube fitness duo MrandMrsMuscle you can do all of those things in just one 20-minute training session. The workout is suitable for all fitness levels, but if you're more of a beginner then don’t be afraid to scale back the length of the sets and drop the weights if required.
Watch MrandMrsMuscle’s 20-minute dumbbell workout
The dumbbell workout is led by Viv Addo, one half of MrandMrsMuscle, and she does the workout with you to demonstrate each move. The session starts with a quick warm-up before you move into the workout itself, which is made up of two circuits of the same 10 exercises.
With each exercise you work for 45 seconds and rest for 15 seconds. The session contains a mix of bodyweight and dumbbell exercises, and involves doing lots of compound exercises like squats and combination moves like deadlift to rows.
You only need one set of dumbbells for it, but if you do have two — a heavy and a light set — then that is helpful because for some of the arm exercises like the shoulder press a light set of weights will be enough, whereas for moves like squats you might need a heavier dumbbell to challenge yourself adequately.
With each exercise you work for 45 seconds and rest for 15 seconds.
In between the two rounds of 10 exercises you get a 40-second break, but during the circuits themselves you’ll be moving between exercises quickly so it might be worth scanning through the workout video before you start so you know roughly what move is coming up.
As ever, the most important thing to remember with each move is that it's better to get your form right and engage the right muscles rather than rushing to get as many reps done as possible in the 45 seconds. In the first circuit focus on form and maybe count your reps, then in the second circuit you can perhaps push a bit faster and try and beat your rep totals from the first round.
If you have a kettlebell to hand you can sub it in and use it for this workout, or give this 20-minute kettlebell session a go instead. If you prefer to train without any weights at all, this 20-minute bodyweight workout targets muscles all over the body as well as getting your heart pumping.
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