Handheld Dumbbells, Free Weights, Vinyl Coated Hand Weights

What are Dumbbells?

As one of the most widely recognized and utilized fitness equipment through the years, dumbbells are vastly popular not just for exercise, but for physical rehabilitation and therapy, as well. Because they are so inexpensive, just about anyone can incorporate them into their fitness and/or therapy routines. They don’t take up much space, either, so they can be great workout equipment to have at home, or take with you wherever you may roam.

They are usually formatted as a simple, graspable bar that has rounded weights on both ends. While they are often confused with barbells, which are much larger, carry significantly higher weights and must be lifted with both hands, a dumbbell is grasped with one hand. One dumbbell can be used in one hand for various exercise routines, or two dumbbells can be held, one in each hand.

Dumbbells can be manufactured with a variety of materials, including iron, cast-iron and concrete. The coatings used are important for disparate reasons. Neoprene coated dumbbells offer a softer texture and non-slip grip, while this material additionally resists splitting for longer lasting usage. Vinyl coated dumbbells offer a smoother texture and non-slip grip, along with tear-resistant qualities for durability. Both coatings help to prevent scratching and marring, while they are also very easy to clean and sanitize.

Most basic dumbbell sets come with 10 weights, which go from 1 pound to 10 pounds, adding another 1 pound increment for each weight in between. Dumbbell weights can also be purchased separately, in pairs, or in 5-packs. Most manufacturers offer color-coding, with specific colors indicating the size/weight of each dumbbell. Racks are additionally available for convenient and secured storage of the variously sized dumbbells.

What are the Benefits of Dumbbells?

Dumbbells remain one of the most versatile pieces of exercise and fitness equipment on the market today. Not only are they affordable for working out at home, they also provide a wonderful, cost-efficient solution to equipping a new fitness center or physical therapy practice. Because they can be used for so many purposes and in such diverse ways, dumbbells are generally considered to be the best fitness equipment you’ll ever use.

While many people still think of dumbbells as only being good for upper body workouts, there are a myriad of ways to workout with dumbbells for total, whole body exercise. They can help users to build strength, augment muscle mass, enhance balance, and increase caloric burn. Here are just a few ways that dumbbells can help you:

Complete, Challenging Workouts—aside from the usual biceps curls that people tend to think of when they think of working out with dumbbells, these helpful weights are also effective at working out your abdominal muscles (weighted crunches, side bends), back (deadlifts), and legs (calf raises, lunges). Working out with dumbbells additionally provides a more challenging exercise for your muscles than exercise machines or other fitness routines. While machines may offer one or two variations of movements you can do, and barbells offer a few more, there are literally hundreds of variations of movements you can perform with dumbbells.

This is important, because one of the biggest challenges to regular exercisers and weight lifters is the “plateau phenomenon”. Once your body is used to a regular workout, the challenge of the exercise has stopped, and your muscles respond by stopping growth. Dumbbell workouts enable users to keep updating and changing the workout as they grow stronger and healthier, which keeps the muscles engaged, challenged and developing.

Greater and Faster Strength Training—working out with dumbbells will be demanding, and test your muscles in ways that no other exercise equipment can. Because they allow for greater range of motion, they enable users to make movements that they cannot do on machines, or with other fitness devices. As an example, when one is working out with a barbell during a bench press, downward movement is restricted because the user’s chest gets in the way. Yet, dumbbells held in each hand can be brought down much lower for each repetition, which results in more muscle fibers being used that stimulates increased growth.

This lowering phase of the exercise is referred to as negative resistance training, which may grow muscle more effectively than the lifting, or positive phase of an exercise. Dumbbells enable much more negative resistance to occur than workouts with machines or barbells.

Healthier Heart Function—while many of us have heard about the studies that have demonstrated the positive benefits of weight training for reducing blood pressure and strengthening the heart, what you may not have read about is more recent research that shows increased cardiovascular benefits with dumbbell workouts. These benefits include an even higher oxygen uptake and a lower lipid profile from exercising with dumbbells over other weight lifting equipment.

Smarter Muscle Memory—because dumbbells require working out in three dimensions, they give your muscles a very different and much more complete workout than the static side-to-side or up-and-down motions that exercise machines offer. The wonderful result of this is that your muscles start learning how to function more efficiently in your everyday life as well as at the gym, or while you’re exercising. This helps to prevent injuries that can happen from everyday living activities.

Injury Prevention—exercise machines are great for targeting one muscle at a time to maximize growth. But they tend to miss the secondary muscles and supporting tissues which are every bit as important to strengthen and keep healthy as the larger muscles. Daily life requires us to move in a variety of ways, and working out with dumbbells will strengthen the entire body, including the tendons, ligaments and small muscles, along with stabilizing the joints. A stronger, more stable body foundation protects us from injury and helps prevent pain and soreness from overuse of the muscles.

Improves Balance—by virtue of their requirement to force each arm to lift its fair share, working out with dumbbells will help determine areas of the body that are out of balance, or where strength imbalances have occurred. Imbalance issues can result from a variety of issues, from working out with barbells to driving, or carrying a purse. When someone is working out with a machine or a barbell, they often (and usually unconsciously) compensate for weaknesses in one arm by using more of the other arm, which just makes the strength imbalance worse. But when someone is working out with two dumbbells in each hand, it requires each arm and side of the body to work independently, with each side getting the same amount of exercise.

Rehabmart is pleased to offer a variety of superior quality dumbbells and dumbbell racks from such renowned vendors as Body-Solid, Clinton Industries, North Coast, Hausmann Industries, and Fabrication Enterprises.

Hulet Smith, OT
Rehabmart Co-Founder & CEO

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