How The Right Dumbbell Increments Build Strength Safely

For anyone developing their own home gym, a significant and relevant question is how much pain you are prepared to put up with to get to the levels of fitness, strength and conditioning you aspire to.

Many will happily sweat a lot and feel tired at the end of a big workout, but pain is the final frontier. However, it does not do to push it too far: pain has a useful function in telling you something is wrong. You might have an injury, or you could be about to get one.

This is an important judgment at various points. What may be obvious when you stand barefoot on a piece of Lego is another matter when building up muscles through work like weights. A bit of pain can be a barrier to push through as you challenge yourself to lift more weight, but too much could bring about strains and tears.

When using dumbbells, it is important to avoid injury, as this can mean you lose the gains while you recover, often spending weeks out of action. That is why you need a clear strategy that works for you, putting your body first rather than your ego.

The Role Of Equipment In Avoiding Injury

Some of injury avoidance is about the basics for beginners, such as knowing the right grips, but also being willing to listen to your body and respond to pain by stopping your lift.

Above all, you need not overdo it by lifting too much, too soon. Slow and steady really does win the race.

This is where equipment like 32kg adjustable dumbbells with 2kg increments can come in very useful. This product enables you to work your way all the way from 2kg to 32kg, enabling you to go from someone resembling the man in the Mr Muscle adverts to an athlete with an appreciable pair of biceps.

With these small increments, you can recognise the need to go slow and steady and act on it. Indeed, if past attempts to build up your strength using dumbbells have led to injuries because you have pushed ahead with larger increments or added more weight too soon, this may be just what you need to be successful and injury-free this time.

Different Injury Types

In trying to avoid weightlifting injuries, it is important to note that there are several injuries you can suffer, even if the muscles in your arms themselves are the most obvious place.

Once again, some of these are caused by technical flaws. For example, spinal disc injuries can be prevented by keeping your back curved and your core engaged. Injuries to the IT band ligament on your thigh can be avoided by aligning your knees and toes.

Knee injuries are another common issue, as not aligning them with your feet and hips during the squat can place extra strain on the front area of the knee, causing pain in that vicinity. Tennis elbow is another common problem, caused by excessively tight gripping.

However, even these injuries may be related to the weight you are lifting as well as the techniques involved. For instance, heavier weights may make you feel compelled to grip the dumbbells harder.

What is notable about many of these injuries is that they can sometimes be caused by other activities, with the IT band often injured in running, while tennis elbow occurs in, not surprisingly, tennis. However, this fact also highlights the reality that there are many non-weightlifting exercises you can do to build these joints and muscles up to reduce injury risks.

Other Exercises Can Support Your Weight Training

Indeed, this may be something you do as separate exercises alongside your weight training, with an integrated training programme that aids general fitness but can also incorporate other sporting and general fitness activities.

By doing this, you can increase the resilience in your spine, knees, elbows and elsewhere to help those parts of your body cope as you work your way incrementally up the weight scale.

In this sense, both what you do with the weights themselves and your exercises to strengthen other joints will combine to help you become the weightlifter you have the potential to be. That might not put you in the Olympic Games, but it will certainly take you further than you might otherwise have gone and with a lot less pain.

We have many other dumbbell options in stock, including ones with larger increments and these may be something to move onto once you are comfortable with 32kg lifts. But if your attempts to do weight training so far have been blighted by injuries, or have just seemed too hard whenever you want to make the next step, the 2kg increments may be perfect for you.