I like workouts that use minimal equipment. Not because I’m lazy, but because you don’t need heaps of kettlebells, resistance bands, dumbbells, or gym machines to build muscle and strength and make a real difference to your fitness. In fact, this workout uses just two dumbbells and takes 17 minutes.
Of course, if your goal is to really build muscle (hypertrophy) or increase strength, you’ll need to train consistently using a technique called progressive overload. It’s a fancy way of saying you need to incrementally increase the volume of your training (reps, sets, or loads, for example) over time to prevent a plateau and stimulate muscles to adapt.
In this case, you can include this three-move workout in your existing routine, but remember to adapt it as you get stronger. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results — I recommend increasing the load if you plan to keep repeating this dumbbell routine.
What is the 3-move dumbbell workout?
A set of the best adjustable dumbbells works well for this workout, as you can scale up and down if you need to. However, in the absence of them, try a pair of medium-heavy hex dumbbells or similar. First, let’s look at the exercises.
1. Farmer's walk
The farmer’s walk is as functional as you can get — simply walking with weights. Hold a medium-heavy dumbbell in each hand, and walk it out, keeping tall through your spine and without arching your back or leaning to one side.
I favor a shorter but faster stride when lifting heavy weights, but this is up to you. Keep your shoulders pulled back and down and your chest proud. Think about engaging your glutes and core and driving forward with your whole body, not just your arms. This gets spicy on the forearms and grip strength, but it’s easier than using kettlebells, which have thicker handles.
Your goal is not to break your stride or drop the weights while keeping a strong, tall posture.
2. V-sits
A bodyweight core exercise at heart, V-sits target your abdominals and hip flexors as you drive your hands and feet to touch in a "V" position. However, the move also hits your obliques, back, quads, hamstrings and shoulders. The exercise teaches you to work with control, balance and stability as you lift and lower your legs and arms at the same time.
Start by lying on your back with arms and legs outstretched. From here, keeping your legs and arms as straight as possible, engage your core, then drive to sit, lifting your arms and legs together. Aim to tap your feet and hands together overhead, then lower to the floor again. If you prefer, bend your knees and tuck them toward your chest instead. Alternatively, work with one arm and the opposite leg at a time (demonstrated above), alternating sides.
3. Devil press
A full-body beasting and test of strength, power and endurance: the devil press. Choose two medium dumbbells and grip one in each hand. You’ll drop down into a burpee first, lowering your chest to the floor between the dumbbells; next, push up and jump your feet just behind the weights, then slightly swing them between your legs, and, keeping your elbows bent, drive them up overhead.
Control the weights back to the floor to repeat the exercise, and go again. Your core works hard to drive this movement, but remember to drive up through your legs and thrust the weights overhead in one swift movement. This isn’t an overhead press, so you won’t bring the weights to your shoulders first. Think burpee meets dumbbell snatch.
The workout
Start with 2 reps of the devil press and V-sit, then repeat for 4 reps, 6 reps and so on, adding 2 reps each time, moving between without rest. As soon as you need to break, stop the exercise you are doing, and move into a 100-meter farmer’s walk. Use the farmer’s walk as your reset button, and take no more than 10 to 20 seconds afterward to shake out your arms before moving back to your exercises.
You could opt to start straight back at 2 reps again, or continue from the reps you left off on — the decision is yours.
Move with a consistent pace and try not to go out of the gate too hard to begin with. This is about muscular endurance, but there is an element of cardiovascular fitness involved. You don’t want to reach fatigue too early, so choose your load carefully.
Can you build muscle using this dumbbell workout?
To build muscle, we usually set a program of between 4 and 8 movements featuring your main compound lifts like a squat or bench press (or both) with some accessory movements to follow, and aim for a rep range of between 6 and 12 reps and 3 and 4 sets.
Over time, exercises, loads, reps and equipment will vary to keep your muscles under challenge. While this is the “traditional” way of building muscle, that doesn’t mean your muscles can’t grow using other types of workouts. For example, the most muscle I have ever packed on has been with a regular CrossFit routine, switching between Olympic lifting, gymnastics and Hyrox-style workouts.
A combination of challenge, consistency, stimulus, adequate protein intake and recovery all help muscles to build. Exercises like the devil press work the major muscle groups in your upper and lower body and core, which makes it a full-body strength and conditioning tool. While it can help you grow muscle, you’ll notice major improvements in endurance and power over time, too.
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