Effective Exercises for Bumbbells

Dumbbells are perhaps the most versatile resistance-exercise tools, enabling you to train all your major muscle groups almost anywhere, including a gym, your home or a hotel room. Performing dumbbell exercises regularly can help you build muscle mass and increase your muscular endurance or strength, depending on your objective. Consult a personal trainer to develop a program that's tailored to your goals and needs.
Abdominal Exercises
Abdominal exercises, such as crunches and situps, don't require any external resistance, but you can use dumbbells to make the exercises more challenging, if desired. Start in the same position as the traditional crunch or situp, but hold a dumbbell or dumbbells in front of your chest as you execute the movement. You can also hold a dumbbell in front of your abdomen as you twist from side to side from a seated or standing position to work the oblique muscles on the sides of your abdomen.
Arm/Shoulder Exercises
Dumbbells are effective tools for building your arms and shoulders. You can perform wrist curls and wrist twists, for example, to strengthen your forearm muscles, biceps curls and triceps extensions to work the elbow flexors and extensors, respectively, and front, lateral and reverse dumbbell raises to build the deltoid muscles of your shoulders.
Back Exercises
The stiff-leg deadlift and side-bend exercises, along with the aforementioned trunk-twist exercise, build the muscles of your lower back. The stiff-leg deadlift entails lowering dumbbells from your thighs to your ankles and lifting them back up by flexing and extending your waist, respectively; the side-bend exercise involves flexing your torso from side to side while holding dumbbells just outside your hips.
The bent-over row and shoulder shrug are exercises that target your upper back. The first of these involves lifting dumbbells repeatedly from a standing, bent-over position; the second lifting your shoulders toward your ears while holding dumbbells at your sides.
Chest Exercises
The bench press and dumbbell fly are two dumbbell exercises that target the pectoral muscles of your chest. The first is just like the traditional exercise, but with dumbbells instead of a barbell, and the second involves lying on your back and arcing your arms away from each other from above your chest repeatedly.
Hip/Leg Exercises
The heel raise and squat and lunge exercises target the lower and upper legs, respectively. Performing heel raises involves holding dumbbells at your sides and lifting your heels off the floor as high as possible. Perform the squat and lunge just like the barbell variations, but hold dumbbells at your sides instead of a barbell across your shoulders and upper back.
Considerations
Perform each exercise two to three times per week, but not on consecutive days. Complete two to three sets of at least 12 repetitions each during each training session to build muscular endurance. Start with three sets of 12 repetitions if you want to increase your muscle mass or strength, then increase the number of sets and the amount of weight and decrease the number of repetitions over time, stopping at six sets of six repetitions to build muscle mass and at six sets of two repetitions to achieve maximal strength. Rest for one to three minutes between each set, depending on the intensity of the workout.