Welcome to the Men’s Health Dumbbell Club, your weekly plan for a fitter, stronger body, using just two dumbbells. With workouts lasting from 20-40 minutes, and designed to add lean muscle, build fitness and increase strength, your weekly dose of dumbbell goodness drops every Monday.
Click here to head back and check out previous weeks, or simply get stuck in to our latest offering — week 37 – and follow the programme from here.
New This Week…
We're headed into week three of our six-week, full-body AMRAP block (as many rounds as possible). This phase is engineered to help you add size while also boosting your fitness. Each workout is made up of a single, four-move, 30-minute block. It's as simple as it looks, all you have to do is work your way through 'circuit style', accumulating as many high-quality rounds as possible, resting only as needed to keep your form impeccable, your tempo controlled and your reps as high quality as possible.
Take notes of the weights you use and the reps you achieve for each movement, across the entire block – we'll be coming back to these scores in a few weeks time with the aim of measuring our progress. Each session combines upper and lower bod' movements, but across the week you can rest assured you'll hit your chest, back, shoulders, quads and hamstrings while also flexing those arms and jacking up your heart rate.
Coach’s tip: Use a pen and paper to track your workouts and try to avoid Instagram doomscrolling between sets. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, staying mindful of your breath and focussed on the reps ahead will help you to optimise your rest, and ultimately maximise your gains
Day One (W37/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 x 10-15
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. Reverse Lunge x 12-18 (total)
Drop your dumbbells to your sides (A). Keeping your chest up at all times, take a step backward with one leg, bending your front knee until the back knee touches the ground (B). Stand up explosively, pause and repeat with the other leg. Alternate back and forth.
3. Dumbbell Deadlift x 15-20
With your dumbbells on the floor, just outside of your feet, hinge down with a flat back and soft knees to grip them (A). Squeeze your lats and stand upright, picture ‘pushing the ground away’ with your feet (B). Take a deep breath and reverse the movement to the ground. Squeeze your empty fist to create tension on the opposite side. Avoid excessive rounding of the lower back throughout.
4. Hindu Press-ups x 15-20 reps
Assume a press-up position. Next push your hips up to the sky (A) and flex at the elbows, lowering your nose to the ground between your hands before shifting your weight forward. Push the ground away until your hips are on the floor and your torso upright (B). Reverse this movement and repeat, finding a rhythm.
Day Two (W37/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.
1. Floor Press x 10-15
Lay flat on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the ground, holding a dumbbell in one hand. Press the weight up above your chest, locking out your elbow (A). Lower the 'bell slowly until your upper arm is resting on the floor (B). Pause here before explosively pressing back up. Squeeze your empty fist to create tension on the opposite side.
2. See-saw Press x 20-24
Stand up and press both dumbbells overhead explosively until your arms are fully locked out. Lower one 'bell down to your shoulder while keeping the other locked out overhead (A). Explosively press back up, before lowering the other arm (B). Alternate in this fashion, keeping one 'bell secured overhead while the other is working.
3. Romanian Deadlift x 10-15
Stand tall with your dumbbells at your sides, and feet at shoulder width(A). With a slight bend in the knees, push your hips back and slowly lower the 'bells towards the ground (B), pinching your shoulders back and maintaining a flat back. When you feel a deep stretch in your hamstrings, pause and explosively return to and upright position.
4. Burpee Over ‘Bells x 10
Stand tall with your ‘bells on the floor next to your feet. Step back and hit the deck into a press-up position. Lower your body until your chest touches the floor (A). Stand back up and jump powerfully over the dumbbells (B) – driving through your hips when you take off. Land and immediately drop to the floor and repeat. The dumbbells keep you accountable for the height of each jump.
Day Three (W37/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. High Pull x 6-8 reps
Stand tall with your dumbbells at your waist, in front of your body. (A) Keeping your core tight hinge forward slightly before explosively standing back upright and pulling the dumbbells up towards your chin, driving your elbows up and back (B). Slowly lower back down to your waist under complete control. Avoid simply dropping your dumbbells back to your waist to build more muscle and avoid injury. If your dumbbells feel light, avoid the help from your hips and simply stand tall and pull the weights up to your chin.
2. Bent Over Row x 8-12
After your final high pull, 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. Single Dumbbell Bicep Curl x 15-20
Drop one of your 'bells, and 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. Complete 20-controlled reps.
4. Split Squat Jumps x 20
Step one foot backward and sink into a deep lunge, with your rear knee lightly touching the floor (A). Explode upwards into a jump, switching legs mid-air (B) to land in a lunge position with the opposite leg forward. Repeat the movement, alternating legs each rep and aiming to jump as high as possible.
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With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.