You don’t need to commit hours to your training to get great results, and you don’t need a gym membership either. As someone who enjoys working out but mostly prefers endurance sports, I like to get my strength done quickly and easily, and 20-minute dumbbell workouts are perfect for this.
I find that 20 minutes is the sweet spot for my strength sessions — it’s long enough to do a variety of moves to work the whole body, but not so long that the time commitment feels off-putting.
This 20-minute dumbbell workout from fitness trainer Kat Boley is a great example of the kind of session I love. It contains just five moves but manages to hit the upper body, lower body and core, and you just need a set of dumbbells to do it.
I’d opt for a reasonably light set of dumbbells the first time you do the workout, because some of the moves don’t need much weight to make them challenging. Boley herself is using 15lb weights for reference.
If you have a set of the best adjustable dumbbells, you can switch up the weight as required to make each exercise difficult but not impossible.
Watch Kat Boley’s 20-minute dumbbell workout
The workout is made up of five moves, one of which is an exercise you do twice, once on either side of your body. You do 10 reps of each move and complete three rounds of all five exercises for the workout. Rest as required, but try to keep the breaks minimal between moves and take a longer rest after a full circuit.
To work out all areas of the body in just five moves, Boley uses combination exercises where you do two or even three movements to work more muscles. That means you’ll need to pay close attention to the form guide for those moves — you can watch each of them by swiping through Boley’s Instagram post.
Here are the five exercises you’ll be doing:
- Row to bicep curl to torso twist with high knee — 10 reps
- Lunge pulse with overhead press (left side) — 10 reps
- Side plank pulse — 10 reps each side
- Lunge pulse with overhead press (right side) — 10 reps
- Single-leg raise with bridge — 10 reps each side
It’s a full-body session that will tire out your legs with lunge pulses while also working your arms, back and shoulders, and it hits the abs and obliques hard with the side planks and leg raises.
I’d say it’s a session anyone can give a go, but this is not the easiest workout and if you’re a beginner, you might want to try doing it without any weights at first. It’s easy to then progress the difficulty by using heavier weights, or pushing to do your reps faster with less rest.
The key benefit for me with short workouts like this is that they’re easier to fit into a busy schedule, meaning there's a greater chance you’ll be able to do two or three training sessions a week.
Whatever your fitness goal is, consistency is always key to achieving it, so if you can do this workout regularly, or mix it up with other short dumbbell workouts, then you’ll quickly start to notice the strength and fitness benefits.
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