30 Dumbbell Moves to Add to Your Routine

With a busier work schedule the past two months it's been necessary to make my gym workouts a little more efficient. 

This means less selfies, less music switching, less chatting. 

More lifting, more sweating and more adventure in my workouts. 

I'm a creature of habit when it comes to working out in a gym. I don't often try anything new because there's the small bit of fear to do something and fail while others are potentially watching me do it. Box jumps? Pull ups? More than 90lbs on the squat rack without a spotter? It's all a little scary for me. 

It's essential that you have a few key moves in your repertoire that you can feel comfortable doing in any gym setting. 

Hello - Dumbbells! 

There's so many different things that you can do with dumbbells and the great thing is that they're not just for your arms. You can do squats, lunges, rows, curls, presses - there's really no limit AND it's a standard piece of gym equipment that you can vary to your individual strength. 

Overall, a pretty low investment for high resistance potential.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out this article with 30 new (or familiar) moves you can do with the dumbbell set you feel most comfortable with. 

30 Dumbbell Exercises for your next workout

Some of my immediate favorites:

Get after it! What are your favorite dumbbell moves?

Favorite Arm Workout

Okay guys, today is the day that I am going to share the only arm workout that I did to get these arms that I'm so proud of. 

Haha, what's that - you don't know what arms I'm talking about? 

Boom. 

Okay so they're still a ways off from where I want them to be - but the real proof that tells you how far I've come is that fact that I don't have any "before" photos of my arms. They actually hadn't seen the light of day for a few years and that's why now they're coming out and want the world to see. 

So these arms. They are getting stronger every day because I'm getting into push-ups and lifting "real weights", but I want to talk about their foundation.

The very basic workout that got rid of the "extra" and allowed me to start seeing my muscles for the first time in a long time.

This treadmill.

And these hand weights (5lbs).

Actually, these hand weights (3lbs) until I out-grew them.

And what did I need? Just 6 songs. Two slower, two medium and two fast. 

I've always called it my "Ace of Base" workout because all 6 songs were tracks 1 - 6 of the Ace of Base "The Sign" Album because these songs just work. But since doing the workout so often I have found other great songs that "just work" like Waves, #Selfie and I'm in the House to name a few slow, medium and fast songs. 

And what do I do?

Songs 1 & 4 I walk at a quick pace, doing alternating arm curls with every left step forward.

Songs 2 & 5 I walk at a quick pace, doing alternating arm punches with every left step forward.

Songs 3 & 6 I walk at a quick pace, doing alternating arm punches/arm presses with every left step forward.

Let's see that again:

I hope you didn't hate my first vlog. 

How about you go check out some other ladies who actually know what they're talking about when it comes to getting buff in the link up below!