name goes here

Stupid question but does it make a difference? Overhead press, bench press, bent over row, bicep curl. The book I'm following mostly says barbells, but at the gym its alot easier to grab some dumbells, bars are often all being used.

sitnspin

The thing that comes to mind for me is that with dumbells, I'm in less danger when I'm lifting without a spotter. In a worst case scenario I can just drop them and I'm not getting a bar across the throat or chest.

I use a mix of bar, dumbells and machines for different exercises, but maybe one of our heavier lifters could provide better answers.

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GSPALLTHEWAY

use all 3... they provide variety, and thats what will get you overall looking and performing better... in order, the machines (easiest) barbells (next) and dumbbells (hardest) uses stabilerizer muscles which are best for sporting movements... however overall your best bet is mixing and changing into all 3 to surprise your muscles!

MTKrav911

Same here. You can do more isolation type exercises with dumbells, but naturally for strenght you need more weight which only a barbell set can get you.

Unless you're like Tank Abbot and grab two 150 lb barbells and do everything that way.

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"For a person with no forgiveness in their heart? His living is even worse punishment than his death!"

Miyagi

sitnspin

I'd also recommend a sandbag. I'm going to make my own soon, because they're awesome for strength, power, grip, and their floppiness means you'll work a lot of those little stabilizer muscles. Here's Ross' PDF on making one:

http://www.rosstraining.com/sandbagconstructionkit.pdf

Edit: Wait. Why is this in Nutrition and Supplements? Do not -- I repeat, DO NOT try to eat either a dumbell or a barbell. That's not the kind of iron you want in your diet. That is all.

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Crashsti

you can actually see for yourself the differances between using barbells and dumbells. load up a weight you can do for 10 reps on a barbell and perform a bicep curl. then try using the same weight with dumbells. one thing you'll notice is that with dumbells your strong side can't compensate for your weak side since the loads are not connected. personallyif i had to choose one tool over the others i would use dumbells, they offer a larger variety of exercises and take up less space.

MTKrav911

You know Crash you do bring up a great point. Once this ex-convict dude I knew was helping me out (he was actually a cool cat) on weight-lifting and he said he actually preferred everything be done with Dumbells. He was one cut up strong dude too so I listened to his advice and it worked out for where I wanted to get to physique and strength wise.

I still like I said though, use barbells for heavy strength type exercises, but for isolation, you're 100% correct in the difference regarding your strong side not compensating. It's almost like there's nothing there at all it's so weak.

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"For a person with no forgiveness in their heart? His living is even worse punishment than his death!"

Miyagi

Crashsti

certainly when your goal is to move the most weight a barbell is the right tool. it removes some of the variables in the movement and allows you to focus on moving the heavy weight and not on balancing two individual dumbells and still moving the weight. ideally you would want to mix it up between barbell and dumbells to get the best of both worlds. this is especially important if your a grappler or MMA fighter where you need to have strong independent limbs as there is no bar to connect your hands. you simply cannot afford to have an overly weak side.

name goes here

Sorry realised I've posted this somewhere else as well.

So I'm taking this to mean if I left a 60kg barbell one day, if I want to lift the same weight two days later and lift 60kg on a machine, its not the same thing.

Thanks, think I'll focus on dumbells I think.