Back To Basics: The Best Dumbbell Exercises

I’m a certified personal trainer, and one of the most common questions people ask me is, “what’s the best dumbbell exercises for (name a body part)”. Novice weight lifters tend to gravitate towards isolation exercises, such as dumbbell curls for the biceps, and forearm curls for the forearms.

However, when I tell them that the best exercises are basic dumbbell exercise that utilizes compound movements, they think I’m joking.

But the truth is, in order to build any significant strength, power, or muscle mass, the best exercises are the bread-and-butter, basic, compound exercises. Compound exercises with dumbbells and barbells involve multiple joints and many muscle groups.

Compound exercises such as the dumbbell bench press, dumbbell rows, and dumbbell shoulder presses are fundamental exercises for the upper body. You’ll often find that strength can transfer from compound movements to isolation exercises. For example, the more you can row with dumbbells, the more weight you can lift during a dumbbell curl. But the opposite is unlikely.

Also, you’ll find that you can pack on a lot of mass in very little time with compound exercises. It’s a lot more difficult to do this with single jointed dumbbell exercises, because you don’t have the benefit of exercising multiple muscle groups with one exercise.

So whenever you’re designing a dumbbell workout, place an emphasis on compound dumbbell exercises. They’re essential to building strength and muscle mass, and they’re the best to getting the results you want.