Dumbbell Only Muscle Building Tips and Plan

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So you want to build muscle?

Well, I’ve got some good news for you - you can do this all while never leaving your home.

That’s right. A commute to the gym - not needed. A monthly membership with exorbitant fees - declined. Standing and waiting for that bench or machine - a thing of the past.

Sure, home gyms have always been an option.

However, we know cost can be an issue. Of course, we would all love to have a stocked home gym - you know, the gyms you see on Instagram with 8 different barbells, dumbbell racks the size of a commercial gym, and 3 cardio machines.

Unfortunately, due to space, cost, or both, this is not always feasible. This leads to thinking that a commercial gym is the only option.

Well, I’m here to present an alternative - the best of both worlds. At-home workout convenience without blowing your budget.

Let’s talk about the equipment you need, and then we will jump into how to maximize it for muscle growth, also known as hypertrophy.

Dumbbells? That’s It, Seriously?!

Yes and no. Could you do 80% of the training plan I’m about to lay out with just a pair of dumbbells? Yes. But, optimally, we would like you to have the following for this plan:

Adjustable bench
Light pair of dumbbells
Moderate weight pair of dumbbells
Heavier pair of dumbbells

Let’s talk about what we are looking for with each.

The adjustable bench is super helpful. It opens up a bunch of options for your home gym space, many of which we will mention later on.

A light-weight pair of dumbbells will be helpful for exercises such as shoulder raises, triceps extensions, and biceps curls. Your shoulder muscles will feel incredible after some lateral and rear delt shoulder raises. For men we are looking at a range between 15 and 30 pounds and for women between 10 and 15 pounds.

We are also going to want a moderate-weight pair of dumbbells.

These will be our most used dumbbells. As such, if you can only choose one pair, this is the one. We can adjust reps as needed if this is the only dumbbell pair you own. These will be used for everything from split squats, lunges, overhead presses, incline bench, etc. For men, this weight is between 35 and 50 pounds, and for women, we are looking at somewhere between 20 and 35 pounds.

Finally, we are going to want a heavy pair of dumbbells.

Now, of course, heavy looks different for everyone. If you are brand new to training, the moderate weight pair of dumbbells suggested above are probably already heavy enough. However, if you have some training under your belt you are going to want a heavier pair. This pair will be used for exercises like goblet squats, bench press, rows, farmer’s carries, etc.

Designing A Training Plan

Okay, so you’ve got your equipment. Now, let’s put it to work.

There are some general guiding principles we need to discuss before we look at exactly what the dumbbell training plan looks like.

The goal of this is to allow you to take more ownership of your training.

The plan to follow is great, and you could do it for years and years. However, you, at some point, are going to want to make changes. Typically, this will be because a certain movement just doesn’t feel quite right, you get bored with the same thing, or you are aware that variety is good.

I want to give you a framework to think through so that you can make those changes on your own.

Let’s go through a few principles.

#1) Throughout the course of the week, you want to train your full body.

This can look very different, but we are going to focus on two different ways to split up your training.

Our goal when training should never be to “only” train glutes, “only” train core muscles, or "only" train chest. Looking at you, gym bros and high school boys. Hey, I’m not hating; been there and done that.

But there is certainly a better way. We want to focus our efforts on training every major muscle group every week. Preferably, we want to train each muscle group at least twice per week.

Principle #1 summed up - don’t skip leg day.

#2) Rest, rest, rest

You cannot make the most of your hypertrophy gains without proper rest and recovery, full stop. Don’t listen to anyone who says otherwise.

Rest is critical for your muscles to heal. This means that how we order our training days matters. You don’t want to do all three of your full body lifts back-to-back-to-back.

In an ideal world, you are taking at least two days of rest between training muscle groups - if you perform incline bench press on Monday, ideally, we wait until at least Thursday before incline bench pressing again.

Incline bench pressing Monday and then again Tuesday is not only going to not be optimal for hypertrophy, but it also is going to put you at an increased risk of injury.

Plus, if you are training hard enough, you will not feel like doing incline bench for at least two days afterward - your upper chest muscles will be lit up. The same principle applies to squats, rows, etc.

Now, the good news here is that doesn’t mean you can’t train on the “rest” days, you just train different body parts. For instance, if Monday is an push/pull day, Tuesday can be a lower body day. This allows your push/pull to rest while your lower body is being pushed.

You do want to take complete rest days to allow your entire body and nervous system to take a break. Typically, 1-3 of these per week are great.

#3) Muscle growth requires consistency

I’m sure you’ve seen the crowds of people at the gym on January 1, and then by March 1 it's down to 60% of the crowd.

Probably, the biggest needle-mover for muscle growth is consistent, quality training over a long period of time.

Now, consistency here looks like a few things. First, consistency in showing up and training. Second, consistency in sleep. Now, you don’t have to be perfect, but aiming for that 7-8 hours a night is a great start. Finally, consistency in your diet. Again, you don’t have to be perfect to build muscle. However, you do generally need to increase the amount of food you eat.

Building muscle generally means gaining weight. Don’t be afraid of this, adding muscle is a great reason to see an increase on the scale. In order to do this well, only add about 300-500 calories to your diet daily and ensure you are eating about 0.7g of protein per pound of body weight.

#4) Prioritize compound lifts

A compound lift is just one that uses multiple major muscle groups. Take the squat, for example. The squat is going to train your glutes, adductors, hamstrings, quadriceps, and core. The opposite of a compound lift would be an isolated movement - think a biceps curl.

Now, I think biceps curls can be great, however, they are not the priority of a training plan. Here’s why - here’s a list of the major muscles that a biceps curl trains: the biceps.

We all know time is limited, so lets prioritize movements that will hit multiple muscle groups - like the squat.

#5) Push, pull, squat, hinge, lunge, carry

This is one of the most important things to think about when designing a full-body dumbbell workout plan. These six movement patterns are arguably the six most important expressions of strength we need as humans.

Every training plan should include a mix of the above.

Let’s take a typical week of two days of upper body and two days of lower body dumbbell workout training.

For the push/pull day you want to ensure you are training pushing and pulling movements. Examples of pushing movements include bench press, pushups, overhead press, incline press, etc. Examples of pulling exercises include pull-ups, chin-ups, rows, lat pulldowns, etc. Now, another thing to consider when designing an upper body training program is the direction of the press and pull.

Ideally, aim for one horizontal press (bench press, push-up) and pull (bent over row) and one vertical press (overhead press, push press) and pull (pull-up and chin-up).

On your lower-body days, this is a chance to hit a squat, hinge, and lunge movement. Squat movements include all variations of squats and squat positions (front, back, goblet, etc.). For hinge movements -make sure you have a slight bend in the knee and your arms straight - think deadlifts, RDLs, etc., and for lunges, we are thinking, of course, lunges, but single-leg (unilateral exercise) movements like Bulgarian split squats are also great here.

As far as carries, they can be included in either day. The same goes with any abdominal muscle training.

Alright, let’s jump into some specifics here. We will start with the split dumbbell workout plan.

Upper/Lower Split Program

This program will have you lifting four times per week. Your goal is to get two upper body days and two lower body days.

Some reasons I really like this training style:

#1) It is really easy to ensure adequate recovery between training. The scheduling lines up really nicely with this plan. You can perform a lower body training session Mondays and Thursdays and a push/pull training session Tuesdays and Fridays. Each training session is at least two from the last, ensuring you feel at your best and ready to hit a great dumbbell workout.

#2) Now, this is personal experience, but I’ve found I can recover better. Three full-body dumbbell workouts beats me up a little bit more. Even if it’s the same overall volume.

#3) It allows you to work out more. Maybe this is crazy, but training puts me in a better mood. It allows me to let off some steam from the day. So, I definitely appreciate the extra training day (and so do other people around me, I’m sure)

Alright, what would a typical week look like on an upper-body and lower-body split?

Lower Body #1 (Monday)

A1 Goblet Squats 3x15-20

B1 RDL 3x10

C1 Reverse Lunges 3x10 each leg

C2 Planks 3x60 sec.

D1 Suitcase Carry 3x1 min each side

Upper Body #1 (Tuesday)

A1 Bench Press 3x10

A2 Single Arm Row 3x10

B1 Single Arm Overhead Press 3x10

B2 Rear Delt Flys 3x12

C1 Hammer Curls 3x10

C2 Close Grip Pushups 3x10-15

Lower Body #2 (Thursday)

A1 Bulgarian Split Squats 3x8

B1 Kickstand RDL 3x8

C1 Side Lunges 3x10

C2 V-Ups 3x15

D1 Farmer’s Carry 3x1 min

Upper Body #2 (Friday)

A1 Incline Bench Press 3x10

A2 Incline Row 3x10

B1 Push-ups 3x15-20

B2 Gorilla Row 3x10

C1 Lateral Raises 3x12

C2 Biceps Curls 3x10

C3 Skull Crushers 3x10

Alright, a couple of notes here.

So, the first thing you may notice is all of these letters and numbers. So let’s break down the meaning of these.

You are going to go in alphabetical order, so start with the “A” dumbbell exercises.

If there are two “A1” and “A2” dumbbell exercises are to be supersetted. A superset just means you will rotate between the two dumbbell exercises. So on upper body day #1, you will perform a set of bench press and then a set of single-arm rows. You will continue to alternate until you finish all three sets.

The first number after the exercise - the 3 in “A1 Bench Press 3x10” - is the number of sets. The 10 is the number of reps. So for bench press, you are going to do a total of 30 reps. You will rest after each 10-rep increment.

The dumbbell exercises listed above are very common in the health and fitness space. If you are unfamiliar with any, feel free to do a quick Google search. There are tons of helpful videos detailing exactly what each movement should look and feel like while maintaining proper form. They will have tons of helpful cues to point you in the right direction like "arms straight", "shoulder blades back", "feet shoulder width", etc.

Okay, let’s look at a 3 day full body workout program. As you’ll notice, many of the same movements can be found on both plans. That’s because these are some of the best dumbbell exercises. We just want to reorder and rearrange them to best fit your schedule.

One of the biggest pros to the three-day full-body program is that you can train for 3 days and get similar results.

You can also superset dumbbell exercises very easily. For instance, on day 1, we have goblet squats supersetted with overhead presses. These two dumbbell exercises primarily work very, very different muscle groups so besides just being out of breath, you shouldn’t have a lot of trouble alternating between the two.

Both types of dumbbell workout training - the full body workout and the upper/lower split - will help you build muscle. Feel free to try both and see which you prefer. The best one is going to be the one you can stick with.

Here is a 3-day full-body program: