The dumbbell swing is steadily becoming a regular movement in most high intensity fitness programs. If you do not know how to perform this simple exercise, then here’s a few steps to get you started:

Grab a dumbbell with one hand and squat down with a wide stance. The dumbbell should hang between your legs. Make sure to keep your chest out, head up, back straight, and abs tight.

Swing the dumbbell back through your legs and reverse the direction forcefully by extending the knees and thrusting with your hips to swing the dumbbell outwards.

Make sure to keep your arms straight and neutral throughout the movement. This means that you do not use the strength of your arms to swing the dumbbell.

The power is generated with your hips. When the dumbbell reaches should height, guide the dumbbell back towards your legs. Use that momentum to move into the next repetition.

Remember that you are not bending over when you go back down. Bend your knees and squat, at least half way, through each motion. This is how you will generate enough momentum to bring the dumbbell back up to shoulder level.

Watch your breathing. Once you complete a set with one hand, repeat with the other hand.

Sample Workouts

Here’s a few sample workouts you can do with the dumbbell swing:

Beginner Workout

• Perform the repetitions in a pyramid format. Perform 1 repetition, followed by 30 seconds rest. Perform 2 repetitions, followed by 30 seconds rest, all the way up to 5 repetitions.
• As you get stronger, you can either add weight, reduce the rest between each set, or perform more repetitions overall.

Intermediate Workout

• Dumbbell Swings, 10 repetitions
• Pushups, 10 repetitions
• Combination Crunch, 10 repetitions
• Rest 60 Seconds

Perform this workout as a circuit, resting very little between each exercise. You can rest 60 seconds at the end of the circuit. Start off with 2 rounds of the circuit.

Build yourself up to 5 rounds.

Advanced Workout

• Dumbbell Swings, 5 repetitions
• Pike Pushups, 5 repetitions,
• Burpees, 5 repetitions
• Rest 60 seconds

Perform this workout as a circuit. You will need to use heavier weights than usual. Start off with 2 rounds of the circuit and build yourself up to 5 rounds.

For more high intensity exercises and workouts you can do with dumbbells and your bodyweight, check out Gladiator Body Workout. Click here for more information.

Roman gladiators fought lions, bears, tigers, and each other to the death. They often fought barefoot, with little armor, and bronze weapons. The gladiator you see glorified in the movies are ripped to the bone with huge muscles and the athletic skills that match some of the best combat athletes today.

It would take months, maybe even years to turn the average guy into a tough gladiator. Luckily, you don’t have a need to fight lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!). However, training like a well conditioned athlete will prepare you for any challenge that may come your way – both physical and mental.

Get Tough like a Gladiator

The first step to turning into a Gladiator is to get mentally and physically tough. Circuits are your answer. Choose 3-4 exercises and perform them back to back with little to no rest in between each set.

Move from one muscle group to the next as smoothly as possible. Combining Dumbbells with Bodyweight exercises provide you with the opportunity to create easy, simple to perform circuits that are dangerously effective.

This is because there’s not complicated equipment to set up. And you don’t need spotters the way you would if you were using a Barbell. Also, Dumbbells very closely match some of the hand held weaponry used by Gladiators.

But don’t just settle into circuit training. Experiment with other forms of training such as interval training, supersets, trisets, pyramid training, inverse pyramids, ladders, etc.

There’s a million things you can try! But make sure to consistently make your workouts more and more intense. After a while you will reach a point in your workouts where you need something known as “mental strength” to get through them.

This is basically the part where you start talking to yourself to convince yourself to keep going.

Get in Shape like a Gladiator

Getting in shape like a Gladiator is more about consistency than some secret training routine. Try to train at least 3 days a week with a program that includes both strength and some form of cardio training.

The cardio training can consist of intervals, bodyweight cardio, or hard cardio such as sledgehammer swings, jump roping, or shadow boxing. Make sure your strength training routine revolves around compound movements.

However, the most important thing is to focus on strengthening your core. Your core consists of your abdominal and lower back region. Movements such as Dumbbell Swings and Planks should do the trick.

Get Strong like a Gladiator

Getting stronger is very important. If two gladiators are of the same height, weight, and skill level then it’s going to be the stronger one that over-powers the weaker one.

In addition, as you get stronger, your potential to improve power also improves. Explosive power is very important in all aspects of life – whether it be playing basketball with your buddies, or sprinting to catch your bus.

To get stronger, stick to compound lifts such as chest press, shoulder presses, deadlifts, squats, and rows. I bet you using just those five movements alone will help you get stronger.

Focus on lifting as a challenging enough weight. An adjustable dumbbell will be your best friend. Especially if you train at home. This way, you can easily add weight to your movements each week without having to constantly purchase a new set of dumbbells.

Get Big like a Gladiator

You may not want to get big and bulky, but getting bigger is just as important as mental and physical strength. For example, if two gladiators are of the same height, same strength, and same skill level, then the guy who’s going to be tougher to knock down and hurt will be the bigger guy.

Most of what you’ve already been doing – circuits, compound movements, consistent training – should help you get big. If you still haven’t packed on any size, then take a good look at your nutrition.

Protein intake is important. I don’t believe that there is a formula that tells you how much you should eat. However, gradually increasing your protein and caloric intake over time should help.

Keep it gradual. If you jump to eating 2000 to 4000 calories within a few days, your body will be unable to process all the food intake and you’ll end up feeling really bad.

If you’re serious about improving your body and transforming into a modern day gladiator, then I suggest you check out the Gladiator Body Workout. Click here for more information.

For some great dumbbell interval workouts, and information on how to lose fat by combining dumbbell and bodyweight training, check out the Gladiator Body Workout. Click here for more information.

P.S.

If you made it this far then you are definitely ready to grab this workout. Do not hesitate! You need to take charge of your health and this program is the perfect gift for anyone that cares about strength, mobility, health, and well being.

Click here to learn more about the Gladiator Body Workout

One of the best ways to help you with your intervals is to use the GymBoss Interval Timer. It costs just $19.95, and you can program it to help you keep track of any sort of intervals you may use. Click here to grab yours today.

In order to gain lean muscle mass, an overloading stimulus must be applied to the muscle. This means that you must place greater stress on a muscle today then you did in your last workout.

A second requirement for greater muscle gain is sufficient volume. Volume refers to the total amount of work you perform – the combination of exercises, sets and repetitions.

Rest is also an important aspect of mass gain. You must rest both during the workout, in between sets and exercises, and after your workout. The rest after your workout is more important then rest during your workout.

Finally, you must eat enough, and enough of the right foods to fully recover and grow from your workout. If these four aspects are not taken care of, you will not be able to pack on sufficient amounts of muscle.

Does Circuit Training Help you Put on Muscle?

Lets look at each of the training principles presented earlier to answer this question. Circuit training does provide an alternative method to place greater stress on your body, especially when one does not have access to heavier weights.

Sometimes, simply lifting heavier weights will not work, since your body requires both aerobic capacity and raw strength in order to lift an object. Hence,occasionally even a strong athlete must perform circuit training in order to improve their aerobic capacity.

But the real plus point with Circuit Training is that it allows you to perform more work, or volume, within a shorter period of time. We’ve all seen bodybuilders lift weight endlessly in the gym.

One of my bodybuilder friends used to spend 2-3 hours at the gym per day. But once he got a full-time job, this was next to impossible for him to do. For the average person, an abbreviated circuit-style workout may be a more practical method of packing on muscle.

It won’t turn you into Mr. Olympia, but it will make you bigger then you are currently.

The last aspect is rest. Rest is usually frowned upon in a Circuit routine. However, if your goal is to pack on muscle, you should rest a few second in between each exercise.

30-60 seconds of rest is more than enough. Most bodybuilders spend up to 3-5 minutes sitting around and “resting.”

With these points in mind, Circuit training seems like a very valuable method in packing on a decent amount of muscle mass. My suggestion is to always use a modified approach to Circuit training: focus on lifting heavy, resting (but not too much), and keep your overall volume in check.

For some intense muscle building workouts you can do in the comfort of your own home, check out the Gladiator Body Workout. Click here for more information.

Let me tell you something that may shock you – those gadgets you see on TV don’t work. You know the ones I’m talking about. Those ab belts. Those abdominal contraptions.

They do nothing but waste your time and money. Here’s the truth that you don’t want to hear: you actually have to work hard in order to get your six pack. Losing weight isn’t easy.

There’s no short cut. But if you stick to a full body workout using a dumbbell, then you’ll be one step closer to achieving your ideal physique. This is because the dumbbell provides you with the stimulus you need to succeed with your goals.

There are three things you must do to achieve your six pack: 1) build muscle all over your body (have you ever seen a guy with a six pack, who wasn’t muscular?), 2) strengthen your core muscles, and 3) Lose fat.

The last one is a given, but the first three people usually ignore. This is why that doing excessive cardio, dieting, and doing lots of crunches doesn’t work in helping you achieve a lean physique.

You must make resistance training a part of your overall fitness plan. But why a dumbbell and not a barbell? Well, barbells are good to, but dumbbells are cheaper and easier to learn.

The other advantage of dumbbells is that it provides a greater range of motion. This means that it closely mimics the movements that you perform in work and daily life.

For more information on getting a six pack with a Dumbbell, check out Gladiator Body Workout. Click here for more information.

Many women are told not to workout with weights. This is absolutely false. One of the biggest misconceptions is that women who lift weights will develop bulky, ugly muscle mass.

Trust me, it’s very tough to build lean muscle mass. It takes a combination of proper exercise, diet, and hormonal processes. The fact is that women just do not have the same amount of testosterone that men do to build the kind of bulky muscles that men have.

On top of that, women also have high levels of the hormone estrogen. Estrogen is a fat-storing hormone, which is why women often find it more difficult to lose weight then men.

However, weight training, done properly, can help women lose weight, and maintain it in the long term. Women will build lean muscle mass, however the muscle mass will help them increase their metabolic rate and shape their physique.

Your metabolic rate is the rate at which your body burns calories. Hence, the higher your metabolic rate, the more calories you will burn at rest. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat, which means it requires more calories to maintain a pound of muscle than a pound of fat.

Weight training can also help shape your physique. Bodybuilders do this all the time. But women can learn some things from bodybuilders without having to worry about building huge muscles, as I mentioned earlier.

When bodybuilders want to bring up a particular body part, they engage in a specific program to target that muscle group and to improve it. This is why they perform split training routines.

Now, I’m actually an advocate of full body workouts. However, once you have developed a good base of fitness, it’s a good idea to spend some time training a particular muscle group just to improve upon it.

Developing a basic dumbbell workout is quite easy. What you want to do is choose 3-10 exercises that train your entire body and organize them into a routine using a variety of training methods.

For beginners, a simple straight set method is sufficient. A straight set refers to the act of simply performing an a set of an exercise, resting, then performing another set for the desired number of total sets.

More information on how to develop your own dumbbell workout can be found in Coach Lomax’s Gladiator Body Workout program. Click here to learn more about this program.

In my opinion, a good, full body dumbbell workout is the best way to get your 6 pack. Most people perform tons of cardio and abdominal exercises when trying to get their 6 pack.

However, what people don’t understand is the role that your abdominals play in daily life. Contrary to popular belief, your abdominals are not there just to look good. They are their tostabilize the rest of your body.

In sort, it prevents your upper body from separating from your lower body. Imagine your body divided into different pieces. If you wanted to lift something, and your arms worked independently from the rest of your body, then your ability to lift an object would diminish.

Why? simply because there’s less muscle working to lift that object. However, if you were to use your arms, your legs, your back, and your abdominals to lift the object, you could lift a lot more.

That’s how power lifters lift heavy weights. It’s not just training their chest, or their triceps, or their back, or their legs. It’s about training the entire body, and working as a unit.

You must teach your body to work together. Athletes that have the best set of abdominals are usually ones that participate in spots that requires them to use their entire body at once.

Football, basketball, and tennis players all exhibit incredible bodies developed by spending time in the gym, training their abdominals and core region to allow them to move fast, tackle strong, and to handle the stress of the court.

There’s only one guy who’s teaching people how to train effectively with a dumbbells and bodyweight training to improve your sports, work, and daily life. CoachLomax’s workouts help you improve both your physique and your fitness.

Click here to learn more about Coach Lomax’s Gladiator Body Workout.

Due to responsibilities at home and the work place, most women prefer to workout in the comfort of their own homes. Hence, dumbbell training is the best option for women.

I want to show you one dumbbell movement that will help you create short, intense dumbbell workouts. Short workouts allow you to stay in shape without spending a lot of time working out.

Dumbbell Clean, Front Squat, Thruster

• This exercise trains 80% of your body. It’s actually three movements in one: the clean, front squat, and shoulder press. For the first part of the movement, stand with your feet shoulder width apart and palms at your sides, holding a dumbbell in each hand.
• Dip down by bend your knees slightly, then reverse the movement, shrugging your shoulders and using momentum to bring the dumbbells towards your head.
• Flare out your elbows as the dumbbells move higher along your body. Bring your elbows out and under the dumbbells. The ending position should be with the dumbbells raised at shoulder level in front of your body with your elbows point out in front of you.
• From this position, squat down as low as possible. Make sure to keep your back straight, chest out, and abs contracted. Front the squat position, stand up As you stand up, lift the dumbbells straight out over your head.
• You should end the movement with the dumbbells pressed out over your head and standing straight up. Return to starting position and repeat. The front squat and press portion of the movement will be easier to master than the clean portion.
• But with practice you will be able to master this part of the movement. The main idea is to explosively lift the dumbbells off the ground and up to shoulder position.

For a better explanation of this, and other dumbbell exercises you can do at home, check out the Gladiator Body Workout. Click here for more information.

Circuit training actually was made popular as an effective training strategy in the 1970s. However, 4 decades later, and many people are still wondering what the hell circuit training is, and how it can help them with their goals.

Well, Circuit Training can be anything you want it to be. In the 19070s it was performing 10 more exercises back to back, non-stop. This kind of training helped increase lean muscle mass, improved aerobic capacity, and reducedbodyfat.

These days, Circuit Training has evolved into hundreds of different variations and methods. But it all points back to one main simple idea: increase your heart rate and it’ll tax your aerobic and anaerobic energy systems at the same time.

The following is an old-school style, 30- minute Dumbbell conditioning circuit for fat loss:

• DB Front Squat, See-Saw Press
• BW Rear Lunge
• DB Bent Press
• BW Butt Lift Leg Raise
• DB Alternating Hanging High Pull
• BW Plank
• BW Steam Engine
• DB Bulgarian Squat
• DB 1 Arm Floor Press
• BW Reverse Squat

Perform 10 repetitions of each exercise. Start off with one circuit, and build yourself up to 3-5. Time each workout so that you can keep the total time of the circuit workout under 30 minutes.

As you can see, I’ve also included some bodyweight exercises into the mix. Actually, combining your dumbbell training with bodyweight exercises is probably one of the best training ideas out there.

Dumbbell and Bodyweight training compliments one another. While dumbbell training has been traditionally used for strength and mass gains, bodyweight exercises have been used for fat loss and general conditioning.

But when you combine these two training methods, you can get a full body workout that will help you burn fat and build lean muscle mass at the same time. It’s an incredible idea!

One of the few coaches out there who has successfully combine Bodyweight and Dumbbell exercises to develop incredible workouts is Coach EddieLomax . He has a set of 6, 4-week training programs that will help you increase your general fitness, lose fat, and build strength and size.

His Combo Package includes another set of 12 programs. On top of that he has a special report called the “Build Your Own Workout” which teaches you how to construct your own routines based on your goals.

On top of that, I’ll be sending you my own bonus, a set of 3 intense dumbbell and bodyweight workouts programs, when you grab a copy of Gladiator Body Workout today.

Click here to learn more about this incredible program.

High frequency training is simply the act of training at a high frequency level. Most training programs involve a 3-4 day per week routine. Hence, a high frequency training program often involves 5 or more times per week.

Now, keep in mind that 5 times a week does not necessarily mean 5 days a week. You can do 5 times a week by training twice, two days a week, and once, one day a week. It all depends on how quickly you can recover from your workouts, and how much time you have available to you.

The primary benefit of high frequency training is faster results. We’ve all heard the old adage – practice makes perfect. Hence, the more you workout, the better you will get at your training.

High Frequency Training (HFT) my not be the best form of training for the average individual who lacks time as it is, but it may be good for the athlete who needs to hit a particular target.

For example, HFT is perfect for an individual who wishes to improve their overall strength. I’ve seen programs that tell you to pick two core lifts, and perform these lifts, or variations of the lifts, more than 3 times a week.

HFT may also aid with increased mass, although realize that simply training more does not mean that you’ll get bigger. HFT must always be balanced with recovery. The more you workout the higher your energy needs will be.

If you do not eat and sleep enough, you will burn out and over train. And in my book, over training is worse than under training. Trust me, I’ve been there.

The High Frequency Training Solution

Modifying a regular strength and mass program into an HFT program is surprisingly simple. Lets use the following program as an example:

Traditional Strength & Mass Schedule:

• Day 1 – Workout A
• Day 2 – Rest
• Day 3 – Workout B
• Day 4 – Rest
• Day 5 – Workout C
• Day 6 – Rest
• Day 7 – rest

Modified HFT Strength & Mass Schedule:

• Day 1 – Workout A
• Day 2 – Workout B
• Day 3 – Workout C
• Day 4 – Workout A
• Day 5 – Workout B
• Day 6 – Rest
• Day 7 – Rest

* For the following week, perform Workout C on Day 1, and repeat the cycle.

One of the best programs for strength and size is one included in the Gladiator Body Workout. Click here for more information.