I don’t know about you, but sometimes doing bodyweight exercises like squats or lunges, it feels like I can go on forever. This is decidedly not actually the case, as anyone who has felt the burn in a long segment can attest. But I’ve found that if I add even a little bit of weight to these moves, like in an at-home full-body dumbbell workout, my ability to keep on going gets diminished so much faster. How can a dumbbell change the game so much?
Because adding in an external load—of any amount of weight—challenges your whole body in a way that holding just your own weight does not.
How dumbbells strengthen your whole body
Progressive weight training, or gradually adding more weight, is the tried-and-true method to build muscle on whatever body part you’re targeting. You can turn to a machine, barbells, kettlebells, or other tools for this end, but