Barbell Weight Sets vs. Dumbbells

Training with free weights has a lot of advantages over training with machines. However, once you’ve decided that you want to use free weights you have to decide if you want to train with dumbbells or barbell weight sets. If you’re going to a gym you can have either whenever you want them, but if you’re planning on buying a workout set for your home, choosing one or the other is a huge investment.

In the end, each has its own strengths and weaknesses and its is best to use both as part of a varied workout routine. However, if you need to decide to buy one or the other, which one you pick will be determined by what type of training you want to do. Here are the major differences between barbells and dumbbells and what it means for your workout.

Dumbbells Work Each Hand Independently

If you are training with dumbbells, each hand is forced to work independently. This means that you can’t cheat with your stronger arm to make up for weakness in the other arm. By forcing your body to work both arms evenly, working out with dumbbells ensures that both sides are of equal strength. If for some reason one side of your body is much stronger than the other, perhaps due to a recent injury or surgery, it may be best to workout with dumbbells so that the other side of your body catches up.

Barbells Work Your Major Muscles Better

If your goal is to grow the major muscles in your body, namely your chest, back, and legs, you’ll get a much better workout using barbell weights as opposed to dumbbells. Barbells spread the weight out evenly over your body, allowing you to lift more and better engage your stronger muscles and work them to exhaustion. This is why if you’ve tried to lift the same weight with dumbbells that you do with a barbell, you’ll find it near impossible. Being able to lift more weight results in more mass, quicker to your larger muscles.

Dumbbells Work Stabilizing Muscles

Because they work independently and aren’t as evenly balanced, dumbbells require your body to engage more of the smaller stabilizing muscles to keep the weight in balance. This sounds good, but it can be a double-edged sword. Engaging your stabilizing muscles ensures that you’ll get a great, even workout, but they are also much smaller muscles than your large muscles. This means that they fatigue much quicker. When the fatigue, you’ll fail, sometimes without working your larger muscles to exhaustion.

This is not to say that you won’t get big by using dumbbells, but it may take a little bit more time. Instead, ideally try to switch up your workouts, doing dumbbells presses one week and barbell presses the next.

For Leg Workouts, Barbells Are Unbeatable

If you’re planning on doing heavy leg workouts (and you should, because you can add up to ten percent more upper body strength by doing squats), you can’t beat barbells. It is possible to do squats and deadlifts with dumbbells, but if you want to go heavy and build strength, you need a barbell.

This is because you legs are so big that once you have been lifting for a small amount of time, you most likely won’t be able to hold the weights that you need to work your legs in your hands. You’ll end up getting a forearm workout instead of a leg workout!

Which Is Best? You Decide

Between barbell weight sets and dumbbells, neither is perfect, but when they are used together, you’ll get a killer weight routine. This is great for use in a gym, but if you’re buying your own home fitness equipment, you will have to decide which is best for you. For size and mass gains for your large muscles, barbells appear to do the job the best. However, you can get a great workout by using dumbbells as well that ensures you’re working all of your body’s muscles. What is best for you is a matter of personal choice.

Next Page »