Dumbbells

Survived GI Jessica’s M, T, Thursday beach drills and did a light workout on my own on Wednesday. Rest tomorrow and then, this Saturday, will be my first, “let’s go for lean muscle not longer endurance” workout with dumbbells. The book I spent a small chunk of my stimulus check on claims there are thousands of things to do with dumbbells. Here and I thought all you had to do was lift them up and put them back down again. Wrong again.

Well, kind of. It turns out that there are thousands of different combinations because the author likes exponents. To work on your arms, for example, you can do a regular curl. That is, lift the weight with your palms facing up. Or you can do a “hammer” curl which has your thumbs facing up, or finally a reverse curl where the back of your hands face up. So we have three ways to lift for the arms. But we can also repeat those same three ways while standing, sitting, leaning over, standing on one leg, tap dancing, peeing while standing (guy) or sitting (gal)… etc. So if we have ten body positions and three ways to lift, it’s ten to the third or, presto, three thousand completely different exercises.

Helpful, yes, and I’d recommend the book if you are looking at trying free weights. It’s the “Ultimate Dumbbell exercises” by Matt Murphy.