At-Home Dumbbell Workout for Full-Body Fat Blasting

While hoards of people flock to the gym to use the treadmills, rowers and high-tech resistance machines, you can rest safe in the knowledge that a home workout is all you need to blast fat. Training with weights is highly underrated when it comes to burning calories and torching fat; all you need to start your home fat-blasting workout is a set of dumbbells.

  1. Schedule

    • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a minimum of two strength-training sessions per week, but if you're aiming for optimal fat loss results and aren't performing much in the way of cardio, three to four times per week is better. Total-body workouts work more muscles than splitting your body up into sections, so they burn more calories and more fat. A full-body dumbbell session performed every other day, to give your muscles one day to recover between workouts, is your best option.

    Exercises

    • Just as working more body parts per session burns more calories, so does working more muscles per exercise. Multijoint dumbbell moves such as squats, lunges, clean and presses and rows should be your bread and butter. As a starting point, pick two lower-body and two-upper body moves per session. These could be reverse lunges with the dumbbells at your sides and squats holding the weights at your shoulders for your lower body, and floor presses -- like a bench press but lying on the floor -- and single arm rows for your upper body.

    Training Techniques

    • As a beginner, simply performing each exercise back to back for three to four sets of eight to 12 repetitions will be ample. To ramp up your training, though, start training in a circuit style. Circuit training gives you better results in less time and challenges your whole body, notes trainer Charlotte Andersen on the "Shape" magazine website. Strength coach Marc Perry recommends a dumbbell complex, where you perform six reps each on dumbbell front squats, lunges, bent-over rows and curls to presses. The dumbbells shouldn't leave your hands once you've started the circuit, and you only rest when all the exercises have been completed. Aim for five rounds in total.

    Consideration

    • The exercises you perform and the number of sets and reps you complete do matter, but the key to burning total-body fat is your training intensity. Each session, aim to do a little more than last time by upping your reps, decreasing rest time or using heavier weights. This means you'll either need adjustable dumbbells or a few different sets of fixed dumbbells. Diet is key, too -- to lose fat you must take in fewer calories than you burn. If you're unsure of any dumbbell techniques, hire a qualified trainer to give you an in-home session before you start, and always check with your doctor prior to beginning any new workout program.