Bodybuilding blog

Dumbbells aren’t just for arms. Here’s how hand-held weights can work your thighs, hamstrings, calves and buttocks.

Saunter over to the dumbbell rack, make sure you have a bench nearby and take the time to check yourself out in the mirror. By concentrating on smaller weights and better form you are about to workout and reduce your risk of injury.

Squats

It’s not a pretty name for an exercise which should lead to leggy perfection, but it does sums up the move so precisely that it would take a good marketing team to rename it.

Start with two dumbbells (you can go fairly heavy on this one), one in each hand, at your sides, your feet shoulder-width apart, knees very slightly bent. The point of dumbbell squats is not to imitate Russian weightlifters so keep the whole movement smooth and controlled. No bouncing. No grunting.

With your shoulders pulled back, bend your knees and ease your body down as if you were slipping into a comfy chair.

Don’t go so far down that either your knees move further forward, then your toes, or your bum is so low that your thighs dip down instead of being parallel to the floor. Go too low and you risk overextending and straining your muscles. Smoothly raise yourself back up to the start position.

Taking the lunge

Start as with the squat, but this time take a long step forward so your front foot is now about a yard from your back one. Keeping your torso bolt upright, lower your body by bending your legs. Your front knee shouldn’t go past your toes (this is a sensible precaution for most exercises or stretches where you bend your knees). Even though you may feel a burning sensation down the length of your back leg it’s the muscles of the front thigh that should be doing the work as you now lift your body back up by straightening the front leg.

For a bit of variety, and to hit the calf muscles a little more, try to switch from forward lunges, where you step forwards with one leg before lunging, and backward lunges, where you, erm, step backwards with one leg before lunging.

When you’ve just done a hard session the temptation is to hit the shower/pub as soon as possible. The success of your next session is at stake, however, if you don’t take the time to cool down.

Warm-ups are primarily about ensuring the elasticity of muscle and connective tissue so as to minimise the risk of ripping any of it. Cool-downs, on the other hand, are mainly about getting rid of lactic acid and avoiding blood pooling in the muscles you’ve just worked so hard to pump full of the stuff.

Coming to an abrupt halt after exercise can also cause cramps, soreness (often due to lactic acid build-up), dizziness or even abnormal strain on the heart.

A good cool-down helps the body return gently to its pre-workout state with breathing and heartbeat falling to normal levels. Keeping moving also allows the blood to be pumped back from the extremities and muscles. As with warm-ups it’s important to distinguish cooling down from stretching. Going straight into static stretches isn’t going to help your circulation and won’t provide the most gentle route back to normality for heart and lungs.

Probably the best and simplest cool-down is walking. A good striding motion gradually slowed down to normal pace keeps all the limbs moving rhythmically and lets the lungs catch up. Psychologically it’s a great moment to review the session, give yourself a mental pat on the back and come back to the real world. The best time to stretch is after you’ve done five to ten minutes of cool-down because your muscles will still be at their most flexible. Pretty much every gym class these days has a cool-down section at the end, and there are usually a couple of timepressed people who see that as their cue to skip off a couple of minutes early. It’s understandable but not a good idea. Apart from anything else a proper cool-down contributes massively to the feeling of well-being and smugness after a workout and that feeling is to be encouraged if you want your healthy habit to last.

The cool-down is also a great time to reach for that water bottle, and maybe a sports bar or banana to start rehydrating and refuelling. Even if you’re only in the gym because you want to lose weight, that post-exercise refuelling session is the key to ensuring your metabolism bums fat reserves rather than trying to hold on to them.

Cool-down is also a great time to check your heart rate, either manually or with a heart rate monitor. Your heart rate can drop by 20-40 beats per minute in just a couple of minutes after exercise - and the speed with which it returns to normal is a pretty good indicator of how much fitter you’re getting.