In my One-arm Dumbbell Exercises instructional video, I demonstrated four dumbbell exercises that you can do in the comfort in your own home to increase your strength endurance, burn fat, and build muscle mass.

However, if your primary goal were to increase your maximal strength and power, you would have to use a slightly different approach to training.

The first change that you want to do is increase your rest periods. I was resting a minute after each circuit. For power, I can still combine all four exercises in a circuit, but would have to rest 3 minutes for full recovery.

This is because you need to recover fully when working on maximal strength qualities. Otherwise, if you’re using heavy weights and your form fails, you risk injuring yourself.

Frequency is another factor that you must change slightly. Based on your level of fitness, you may need a day or two of full rest before you do another power and strength dumbbell workout.

I like to work different fitness qualities every day to keep my body guessing and to also help aid recovery. For example, one day I’ll do some heavy strength training, then the next day I’ll do some light dumbbell work, then the following day I’ll either rest or experiment with a new exercise.

The idea is to feel it out. Most people can handle one or two really intense workouts per week.

When you’re working on strength and power, the only really good way of making your workouts progressively intense is to add weights. However, since we are talking about home training here, we may be limited to how much resistance one has access to.

Hence, another really good way of developing an intense workout and also helping to make you stronger is to gradually decrease your rest intervals, as you get better. So you may start out with a 3-minute rest in your first week, then drop down to 2 and a half-minute, etc.

This will force your body to recover faster.

Another way to increase your strength and power if you’re limited in weights is to gradually increase your sets. However, there will be a point where you will have to purchase heavier weights.

How many sets can you increase until the workout gets too boring or too long? However, I’d be very surprised if I came across a trainee performing 10 sets of an exercises using maximal weights and resting less than 30 seconds between each circuit.

The two exercises that are the best for developing power are the dumbbell clean and the dumbbell swing. These two exercises have the greatest carry over to sports and lifestyle fitness.

The overhead squat is your key to developing maximal strength. If they say that the barbell squat is the king of all exercises, then the one-arm overhead dumbbell squat is the king of all dumbbell exercises.

The optimal rep range for developing maximal strength is one to three reps, and the optimal rep range for developing power is 4 to 6 reps.

If you’re looking for an effective dumbbell routine to help you improve your size and strength, as well as allow you to burn fat and increase your athletic fitness, then I suggest grabbing a copy of Superior Dumbbell Workout.

Click Here to Grab your Copy Today!

Tags: dumbbells routine, overhead squat, size, strength, superior dumbbell workout