5k dumb-bell exercises at home

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pano2013
pano2013 Posts: 8
in Fitness and Exercise
in the last 2 weeks I have started doing some 5kg dumbell exercises at home from the HASFIT website in addition to my stationary bike work. I've really noticed a difference in some areas of my body and some of the routines on the video seem to incorporate the weight training and en element of cardio at the same time.

i'm not really trying to gain in size and am focused more on losing fat and gaining some muscle. i feel this is working.

1: would these kind of exercises continue to be beneficial if i didn't change the weights?
2: would increasing the dumbell size make me gain weight or are reasonably light free-weights unlikely to do this?
3: Is 30 minutes of bike cardio + 15 minutes of reasonably fast various dumb-bell exercises ok for my purposes?

I'm 5,11" 87kg and looking to get to 80kg on an 1800 calorie per day eating plan...

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  • KarenJanine
    KarenJanine Posts: 3,497 Member
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    To progress the weights need to increase, you'll only be ably to go so far with a single pair of DBs.

    They will not make you gain weight unless you are eating a surplus, which at 5'11 and 87kg 1800 is not likely to be. You may initially gain a small amount of water weight in those muscles if you're just starting out with strength training.
  • pano2013
    pano2013 Posts: 8
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    Thanks Karen. If I was to increase the weights could it help me build up a little muscle mass or do I need to go to the gym and do 'proper' weight training (which I hate!)?
  • KarenJanine
    KarenJanine Posts: 3,497 Member
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    Even if you were to join a gym and do more weight training you would not build much mass while eating a deficit. You may get some newby gains in the first six months or so but beyond that you would need to eat a surplus to gain mass.

    You can still increase strength without gaining mass though so it depends on your ultimate goals as to whether to up your strength training regime.
  • Katerina67
    Katerina67 Posts: 21
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    You will have to increase your weights so it takes a lot of effort to do the last couple repetitions of a set, and some people recommend to choose the load that won't allow you complete the last set with this load (and then you switch to a lighter weight and finish your set). With time you'll find out that the weight you are lifting now is not enough for you. So if you want to do weight training at home it's better to have ajustable dumb-bells or a set of different weights. Also, your muscles will develop at a different speed, so you'll need different weights for different muscles. And there are different approaches to the weight liftings, you can use the same load through the all sets or you can use different loads for different sets and change the number of reps (sometimes I like to combine low weight-more repetitions with higher weight-less reps approach).

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