You’re reading Here, Try This – our month-long plan encouraging you to try something new every day.
YouTube, Instagram and workout apps have become our friends for the past 10 months. Unable to go to the gym – or not wanting to risk it even when they were open – we turned our exercise routines virtual, jumping up and down in front of our TV to online HIIT or yoga routines.
Now we’re in 2021, why not take your workouts up a notch? Adding just one piece of exercise kit can transform your body – and it doesn’t even have to cost a lot. We asked Alice Liveing, bestselling author and qualified personal trainer, what she’d recommend.
“If you’re looking to get fitter and stronger this year, then investing in a set of dumbbells could be the way to go,” she tells HuffPost UK.
Liveing says dumbbells are an “extremely versatile piece of kit”, used to add resistance to exercises in order to help gain strength. “With all the home workouts that have become so normalised this past year, dumbbells are one of the best pieces of kit to train with both at home and at the gym,” she says.
And the best thing? They’re pretty cheap. You can pick up a pair of dumbbells for under a tenner – they get more expensive the heavier weight you get. If you’re invested, you can get cast iron dumbbell sets, which allow you to add, change, and adapt the weight you put on the bar – these start from around £30 for a complete set.
Once you’ve got your set, you can choose from a wealth of YouTube workouts that focus on only needing yourself and a pair of weights.
Joe Wicks, for example, has lots of 20 to 30-minute workouts using dumbbells and it doesn’t matter if you’re a complete beginner – he demonstrates each exercise using the dumbbells, giving hints and tips on how to do it best.
To get you going, Liveing shared three of her favourite exercises that use dumbbells with HuffPost UK. Happy squatting!
1. Goblet squat
“Place your hands in a cupped position under one end of the dumbbell. Draw the weight in to your chest keeping your elbows tight to your rib cage, and then from here complete your squats keeping your chest high and your heels glued to the ground the whole time.”
2. Chest press
“Lying on the floor with your knees bent or on a bench with feet on the floor, with one weight in each hand place your arms at a 45 degree angle and then press both arms up ahead before slowly lowering to your start position.”
3. Reverse lunges
“With one weight in either and, step back in a lunge position keeping the torso sightly forwards over the front leg before driving up to standing and repeating on the other side.”
This new year, we focus on fun, not denial (because we’ve all had enough of that). Follow our month-long plan, with a new Here, Try This idea each day, spanning easy ways to engage your body and mind, inspiration for your food and home, and tips for boosting how you feel – inside and out.