The Men’s Health Dumbbell Club – Your Three-Day Dumbbell Plan For Full-Body Muscle
Welcome to the Men’s Health Dumbbell Club, your new weekly plan for a fitter, stronger body using just two dumbbells.
With workouts lasting from 20-40 minutes, which are designed to add lean muscle, build fitness and increase strength, your weekly dose of dumbbell goodness drops every week.
You can head back to check out week one/ two / three / four/ five or six or simply get stuck in to week seven below. Make sure to share your progress with us on social media!
New This Week…
This week we’re staying strong with the push/pull/legs approach, but moving into another ‘repeat and beat’ phase to fully leverage the progressive overload principle and shoot for surefire muscle growth. You’ll be repeating workouts from week 5, this time armed with your ‘score card’ from each session. Your aim? Beat your total reps, sets and rounds, using the same weights (and impeccable form) for each movement.
Go into each workout with a ‘you vs you’ mindset, knowing that every extra rep you manage to eek out is not only a sign of progress on paper, but a sign of gains in strength and fitness as well as pending gains in muscle mass.
If you can increase your total reps on a movement by 15-20% consider that your pass to crank up the weights next time around. Keep your form sharp, your rest brief and fight for every muscle swelling rep.
If this is your first week in the club, still take careful notes of your reps and come back to this workout in a few weeks time to test your progress.
Coach’s tip:
As with previous weeks, use the short reprieve between each movement to quickly jot down your reps, take a swig of water and gulp down some air before getting back into the fray. This will keep you focussed on the workout, avoid mind wandering and doom scrolling and help to keep your head in the game.
Day One (W7/D1)
After a thorough warm-up, grab your dumbbells, set a countdown timer for 30-minutes and work your way through as many high-quality rounds of the following circuit as possible. Rest as necessary to keep your form on point, but push yourself hard if you want to see results.
At the end of each round, make a note of how many reps you performed for each movement, creating a running tally for the entire workout. Keep this safe, we’ll be referring back to your score in the coming weeks.
1. Front Squat x10
Clean your dumbbells onto the front of your shoulders (A). From here, drop into a front squat by pushing your hips back and bending at the knees until your thighs pass parallel to the ground (B), before driving back up explosively. Keep those dumbbells secured high, with a strong, upright torso throughout.
2. Dumbbell Deadlift x10 reps
Drop your dumbbells to the floor, just outside of your feet. Hinge down and grip them with a flat back and neutral spine (A). Engage your lats and stand upright, ‘pushing the ground away’ with your feet, keeping your chest up and black flat throughout (B). Lower them back to the ground in.
3. Tempo Goblet Squats x10
Hold a single dumbbell close to your chest (A). Sink your hips back and slowly over a count of four seconds descend into a squat (B). Your elbows should come in between your knees at the bottom. Drive back up explosively. Repeat. Pay attention to that tempo, it matters.
4. Sumo Squat x10
Finally lower your dumbbell to below your waist, holding the handles with both hands and straight arms. Spread your feet apart to get into a wide ‘sumo’ stance (A). From here, squat down, keeping your torso upright until the dumbbell touches the ground (or as close as you can get). Explosively stand back upright (B) and repeat. Try not to rest at the top of each rep— aim to keep the tension, that burn is the key to new muscle growth here.
5. Split Squat Jump x20
Step one foot backward and sink into a deep lunge, with your rear knee lightly touching the floor (A). Explode upward, jumping into the air and switching legs mid jump (B) to land in a lunge position with the opposite leg forward. Repeat the movement, alternating legs each rep. Keep this movement as fast paced as possible, focussing on maximising the height of each jump.
Day Two (W7/D2)
As with day one, perform a thorough warm-up and work your way through as many rounds as possible in 30 minutes, noting your efforts as you go.
Push Press x3
Clean your dumbbells onto your shoulders, palms facing in. Take a breath and create tension in your core (A). Dip at the knees and use your legs to help (B). Press your dumbbells overhead. Lower with a controlled tempo to your shoulders and repeat. If your weights feel a little too light, don’t use any drive from the legs and focus on a strict press from the shoulders.
2. Double Hang Snatch x6
Hinge down and grab your dumbbells from on the ground between your legs, keep your knees soft and back flat (A). Explosively drive up through your hips and knees, generating momentum to help pull the dumbbells directly overhead in one fluid movement (B). Once locked out overhead, lower the bells to between your leg (but avoid touching the ground) and quickly repeat.
3. Push-up on Dumbbells x9
Drop to the ground and assume a long-arm plank position. With your core tight and hands below your shoulders stacked on top of your dumbbells (A), bend your elbows to bring your chest to the floor (B). Keep your elbows close to your body as you push back up explosively.
4. Hands Elevated Press-ups x12
Chest gently simmering, let's turn up the heat, place your hands on your box or bench, elevating the angle and making the next set slightly easier (A). At the same tempo as before, flex at the elbow and lower towards the box until your chest just touches it (B). Power back up until your elbows are locked out.
5. Tricep Dips x16
Chest suitably fried, turn around to hit those tri’s. Sit upright on a bench or box, support your weight with your arms and walk your feet outwards, shifting off the edge (A). Lower your body until you feel a stretch across your chest (B). Push back up hard. Try a count of three down and one back up.
Day Three (W7/D3)
Once again, perform a thorough warm-up and work your way through as many rounds as possible in 30-minutes, noting your efforts as you go.
1.Renegade Row x8-12 (each side/ 16-24 total)
Drop into a press-up position with your hands on your bells and midline tight (A). Shifting your weight onto your left hand, row the right dumbbell towards your hip (B). Pause briefly, then lower the weight under control. Repeat on your left side (each row equals one rep).
2. Bent-Over Row x8-12
Stand tall with your dumbbells at your sides, hinge forward until your torso is almost parallel to the ground and allow the dumbbells to hang just below your knees (A). Maintaining a flat back, row both dumbbells towards your hips (B), squeeze your shoulder blades together and lower under control to the start before repeating.
3. Dumbbell Hang Cleans x 8-12
Stand up and hold your dumbbells at your side. Hinge at the hips to lower them to your knees (A). Stand back up with a slight jump, using the momentum to pull the dumbbells on to your shoulders (B). Stand up straight, then lower under control to your sides and repeat.
4. Single Dumbbell Bicep Curl x 15-20
Drop one of your ‘bells, grip the remaining bell with both hands, holding the outer heads with palms facing each other (A). With minimal momentum, curl the dumbbell upwards until it’s beneath your chin (B). Squeeze here and lower the weight under control, fighting it all of the way.
5. Laying Leg Raise x (as many as possible)
Lay flat on your back, with your heels just off of the ground, your dumbbells on the floor behind your head- gripping them as an ‘anchor’ (A). Keeping your feet together, curl at the stomach, lifting your legs towards the ceiling until your hips peel from the floor (B). Pause here for a second before slowly lowering. Once you start, keep your feet off of the ground throughout, once they touch down- your set is over.
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