With the lockdowns of 2020 due to the pandemic, many people have found themselves at home with very minimal equipment to work out with. Whether your gym’s closed or you just don’t want to risk going. Even if this whole mess is history by the time you read this, for whatever reason you may still find yourself in the situation where all you have to work out with is a couple of 20lb dumbbells. So, can you build a better physique with just this basic equipment? Are 20 lb dumbbells enough to build muscle?
For anyone other than the most advanced lifters or athletes, there are hundreds of exercises that can be performed using just one or two 20 lb dumbbells. There are exercises available to you that train every muscle group and many of these can be modified in a way that maximizes the usefulness of this limited amount of weight. Light weights are easier on your joints, and have been shown to be nearly as effective as heavy weights for muscle growth. With a range of intensity-enhancing techniques, such as giant sets, super slow reps, and many others, you can definitely continue to build muscle and improve your physique while working out at home with this simple and affordable equipment. Of course, if your goal is to be a great powerlifter or weightlifter, training with a pair of 20s will not do you much good. But if you simply want to train for health and to continue to improve your physique by building muscle, there’s plenty you can do with these dumbbells.
What type of rep and set range should you use? Are there certain exercises, or certain types of exercises you should use to get the most out of a couple of 20lb-ers? You can certainly get a lot accomplished with just this small amount of weight, so let’s continue.
Can You Build Muscle With 20 lb Dumbbells?
Any amount of weight can lead to muscle gain in the right person. Those of different strength or fitness levels, ages, genders and other variables may need more or less weight, but all of them can make it work with a pair of 20lb dumbbells.
Let’s consider your starting point. A young adult beginner will be able to work everything pretty thoroughly with a pair of 20s. Whereas, for example, a healthy, 30 year old male who has been working out for years will have to work much harder to get continued results from that same set of dumbbells.
20lbs may even be too much weight for some beginners or for older, or out of shape trainees. But for the average adult male, and some females, 20 lb dumbbells will be a manageable weight for most major exercises.
Building muscle is caused by stimulating the muscle thoroughly, providing proper nutrition (protein), and allowing it rest time to grow.
Are 20 lb Dumbbells Enough Weight For Me?
A pair of 20s can give anyone other than elite athletes or extremely muscular gym rats a pretty good workout if you employ enough intensity-increasing techniques. Even those top-level guys can still work up a good pump using these relatively light weights if they keep rest short between sets and do a lot of sets. Add giant sets, supersets, super-slow reps, and going to failure, and you can definitely stimulate some muscle growth even in pretty advanced trainees.
Your gender is a big factor in the question of whether 20 lb dumbbells are enough for you (or too much). Age is another big factor, as are overall fitness, level of experience and strength, and which exercises you want to do.
The 20s are a good place to start for most people. Even if you can’t curl them, or do shoulder presses, you will be able to use them for squats and other big compound exercises, so long as you have already mastered air squats, or bodyweight squats, pushups, or other calisthenics.
Start with bodyweight exercises and when you are ready to progress, grab some 20s and take the intensity up a few notches. Since some exercises involve multiple, large muscle groups and others isolate smaller ones, a pair of 20 lb dumbbells may be considered a very light weight for some exercises and a challenging or even excessive weight in others. For example, holding a 20 lb dumbbell while doing sumo squats is only giving you a small amount of additional resistance, whereas for front raises or kickbacks, it could be much more challenging. So, depending on the individual, and the exercise, the 20s could be considered light or heavy.
Are 20 lb Dumbbells Enough If You’re Already Big and/or Strong?
So, what if you’re already in good shape? It’s unlikely that any pro bodybuilders are reading this, but you may have been working out for years and are already muscular and strong, but now your gym is closed and all you’ve got is a couple of dumbbells. Or you may be so shocked with the prices of weights and equipment that that’s all you’re willing, or able, to buy. If this is you, rest assured you can still get an effective workout for all your major muscle groups with a pair of 20s but you’ll have to work for it, and use a little bit more strategy.
Remember, weight is only one of a number of variables involved in intensity. So you’ll want to utilize a number of intensity increasing techniques to get the most out of these light weights. Here’s a few of these methods:
Super-Slow Reps. The simplest way to make a resistance exercise harder is to go s-l-o-w-e-r. If the weight is too easy for you in a given exercise, slow your reps down drastically to increase the muscle stimulation through the concentric (positive) and eccentric (negative) phases of the movement. Slow down every rep, and focus on feeling the muscle contract and then elongate instead of rushing to reach a predetermined number of reps.
Super High Volume. You’ll do high reps sets, and a lot of them. For instance, if you can overhead press 45 lb dumbbells for 3 sets of 10 reps at the gym, you’ll need to do 4-5 sets of 15-20 reps with the 20 lb dumbbells to make the muscles do a comparable amount of work. And, since it’ll feel light, you could even throw a few more sets on top for good measure!
High Frequency. If you’re using lighter weights than you typically would, you will be unlikely to get sore unless you really do a ton of volume. If you don’t have time to do 10+sets of every exercise, try working out more often. If you do a moderate amount of sets, enough to get a pump but not so much as to cause soreness and require multiple days recovery, you can workout the same muscles even on consecutive days, meaning more volume over the course of a week.
Giant Sets. To maximize efficiency, giant sets involve sets of different exercises performed one after another with no rest in between. An example could be 20 reps each of the following: squats, lunges, good mornings, calf raises. These exercises can all be focused on nearby or antagonistic muscle groups, or they can train distant, unrelated muscle groups. This keeps you moving and allows you to have less wasted time during your workout.
These also have the benefit of keeping your circulatory system working too as blood is needed in different body parts in rapid succession. Involving more muscle groups in a single exercise, or set, will contribute to an elevated metabolism and allow your body to burn more energy, so giant sets may even help you lose fat.
Supersets. Supersets are similar to giant sets, but they only involve 2 exercises at a time. Typically these exercises work opposing muscles, e.g. biceps and triceps, quads and hamstrings. For example, perform 10 dumbbell curls with each arm, then do 10 skullcrushers (lying triceps extensions), repeat for 3-4 cycles, rest, then move on to the next exercise or pairing.
Complete Exhaustion/Failure. Training to complete failure on each set (after a warm up, of course) will tire your muscle out, and stimulate growth better than anything else. Keep going until you can’t squeeze another rep out, then pause for a second or two until you can do one or two more, then repeat until you can’t even get a partial rep. This is complete failure and you’ll only be able to get 2-3 sets like this on a given body part. It is important to maintain good form throughout. If you start cheating by swinging the weight around or using poor form, the exercise ceases to be effective and your chance of injury rises sharply.
German Volume Training. This technique has been around for quite a while and is known to be a great way to gain muscle mass, quickly. It involves one exercise per bodypart, and typically 10 sets of 10 reps with minimal rest between sets. (Think seconds, not minutes). You may want to tweak the rep range upward to 12 or 15 depending on your strength level. This will add up to a large amount of volume in a short time. Try to do one set per minute, on the minute (for 10 mins) for a great pump and impressive results in minimal time. Focus on big compound movements like squats, rows, overhead presses etc.
How Heavy Should Dumbbells Be To Gain Muscle? Can Light Weights Build Muscle?
All you really need to stimulate muscle growth is to forcefully contract the muscles and increase the intensity in one way or another. The exact amount of weight you use is not really important, it’s how you use it. After all, you might go to failure on the overhead press with 5 reps using 60lbs dumbbells, but you could also go to failure with 15 reps with the 20lbs dumbbells. The weight needn’t be heavy. Of course the term Heavy is relative to the individual. What’s light to one person is heavy to another. So it is impossible to say that everyone needs at least Xlbs because individual people vary so much. However, virtually everyone can get some use out of the 20lbs, and I’d say it’s pretty minimal, at least for men.
There are thousands of workout styles and many different training philosophies out there, but there were traditionally two basic schools of thought in muscle-building training techniques: high volume, and high intensity. Of the famous bodybuilders who ascribed to, and helped popularize them Serge Nubret and Arnold Schwarzenegger were known to practice high-volume training. Not to say that Arnold didn’t train heavy, but he didn’t train heavier than necessary, and he certainly did a ton of sets during his long workouts. Serge Nubret, in particular, was known for using fairly light weights and doing crazy things like 20 sets of leg extensions within his leg workout.
On the high-intensity side were names like Mike Mentzer and Dorian Yates. These amazing bodybuilders preferred short, infrequent workouts with a very small number of very heavy, very intense sets.
Now I’m not debating the fact that heavy weight is great for muscle growth, but the point of this blog post is to discuss how you can work out with just a set of 20lbs dumbbells. But the point remains, you need to either go heavy, or if you can’t you need to make up for it with volume (more sets and reps).So let’s focus on the high volume approach, as this is what you’ll need.
It has been shown that high reps with light-moderate weight are just as good as low reps with heavy weight for building muscle. Check out this study from the Journal of Applied Physiology which explains that loads as little as 15% of your 1RM (one rep max) will stimulate muscle growth. It’ll just take more volume to get there with the light weights.
The light weight, high reps approach has other benefits as well, namely that it is much easier on your joints, there’s less risk of injury, and you’ll burn more calories – as long as you’re doing more overall volume.
Can I Train Legs With 20lb Dumbbells?
There are a ton of lower body exercises that you can do with just one or two 20lb dumbbells. There are 4 major muscle groups in your lower body that you will want to train directly. These are the glutes, the quads, the hamstrings, and the calves. These can all be trained effectively using just these dumbbells.
The first and most important exercise type is the squat. There are countless variations of squat that you can do to alter the focus and effect of this important exercise.
Squatting with a dumbbell in each hand held at shoulder height will simulate a front barbell squat and will train your quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes. Another great variation is the goblet squat, where you hold a single dumbbell in front of your chest with both hands. Either of these are great for high rep burn-out sets. The Sumo squat is another style of squat, in this variant you hold the single dumbbell hanging between your legs. It necessitates a wider stance with the toes pointed out. This places more emphasis on the hamstrings and less on the quads.
Lunges are another great leg exercise that can be modified in many ways and has the added benefits of being unilateral, that is, one leg is worked at a time. Lunges will train all the same muscles as squats, with a little more quad isolation. These can be performed holding one or two dumbbells. If you hold a dumbbell in one hand while doing lunges, this will add a great stabilization requirement also.
Good mornings, or straight legged deadlifts are great for working the hamstrings and glutes, along with the lower back. These can be performed while holding the dumbbell(s) in a number of positions.
Calves should never be overlooked, so be sure to do calf raises with every leg workout. A good variation to start with will be a one-legged calf raise holding a dumbbell in one hand and using the other hand to hold something for balance. If you can balance while doing this exercise without holding on to something – that’s great,you should do that for added benefit. If not, try to work up to being able to do this.
There are many possibilities for lower body exercises, any bodyweight exercise you can think of, if you have a free hand, you can hold a dumbbell to increase the resistance.
Another affordable option to take your home workout to the next level is to get a set of quality resistance bands. These are typically cheaper than weights and have many other advantages over them.
I Don’t Have Much Time To Workout: What Exercises Will Do The Most Good In The Shortest Time?
If you’re short on time, you’ll want to pick the exercises that will stimulate the most muscle groups and give you the best results. The dumbbell clean and press will work nearly every muscle you have from your calves up to your triceps and biceps. This exercise involves explosively taking the weight from the floor to shoulder level in a power clean movement, then pressing them overhead. Since you are moving the weight such a long distance, and involving so many muscles, this exercise will be very draining, regardless of the weight used.
Other exercises you should include might be bent-over rows, squats, and lunges. These compound movements stimulate a number of different muscle groups and will send the blood and nutrients to different parts of the body.
If you’re even remotely experienced in the gym, 20lb dumbbells will not be worth your time to bench press, even with super slow reps it’ll be too light. Chest flyes will be a chest exercise for which the 20s will be better suited. However, you’ll need a compound exercise that centers around the pecs, so you’ll need some push-ups and/or dips to make sure your chest keeps growing. If you have hex dumbbells, they can be used as push-up handles to increase the range of motion thereby making your push-ups more challenging. You can also just use one as a handle, with the other hand on the floor, for staggered push-ups. These train your muscles in new ways and also help prepare you for stabilization training.
If you’re really short on time, try doing giant sets to failure. That is, perform a giant set of, for example, clean and press, squats, rows, and pushups, and go to failure on each exercise before moving directly to the next one. Rest for 1-2 minutes, then repeat 2-3 times and you’ve exhausted most major muscle groups pretty well and got your metabolism revved up to the max.
Another way to make the most use of your is to lift for time. For example, set a timer for 10 minutes, every minute do 10-15 goblet squats, followed by 10 overhead presses. This way, different muscles get trained during the same short time period while being allowed to rest for 30 seconds or so while the other group is being trained. This also works well with directly opposed muscle groups, e.g. lunges and good mornings, or push-ups and bent-over rows.
Here’s a sample of a basic, time-saving workout you can do with 20 lb dumbbells to maintain muscle and boost your metabolism. It should take about 15-20 minutes and can be performed 3-6 times per week, depending on how you feel. If you’re stiff or sore, give it a day or two. If you’re really pressed for time, split this into 2 workouts, each with 3 exercises. Remember to warm up first!
| Exercise | Total Reps |
| Squats w/ dumbbell in both hands | 50 in as few sets as possible, if you do 50 in one set, do two sets. |
| Stiff-legged deadlift | 50 in as few sets as possible. |
| Clean and press | 50 in as few sets as possible. |
| Bent over rows | 50 in as few sets as possible, if you do 50 in one set, do two sets. |
| Pushups | 50 in as few sets as possible, if you do 50 in one set, do two sets. |
| One legged calf raises | 50 per leg in as few sets as possible, if you do 50 in one set, do two sets. |
*optional dumbbell held against chest.
It’s totally possible to get a great workout for every body part with a pair of regular 20lb dumbbells, so grab a pair and get to work in the comfort of your own home. Don’t get discouraged if your gym is closed for now, or you can’t get there for whatever reason, just make sure you have this basic equipment and you’ll be prepared knowing you always have a back up plan.
Be sure to check with your doctor before starting out on any new workout or fitness plan to make sure you are healthy enough for that level of activities.
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