Can I build muscle mass at home?

jim180155 wrote: »

Dumbbells are great, but yours are too light to do you much good. To build muscle mass you want progressive overload and want to "lift heavy." "Lift heavy" means different things to different people and part of that is because people are at different levels of strength. Generally speaking, you want to lift in the four to ten rep range, so that your muscles are exhausted or nearly exhausted when you finish your fourth, fifth, ... tenth rep. That will cause micro-tears in your muscle. When you rest, provided that you are eating properly and getting enough protein, your muscle fibers will repair themselves and come back just a little bit stronger and a little bit bigger than before.

Note that your muscles don't care what you're lifting. It could be a barbell, a dumbbell, the back end of a car, or your own body. Given that you aren't ready to start in a gym and you don't have any real equipment at home, I'd suggest bodyweight exercises. Here's a link that's free and will give you all the info you need to start a long term program:

startbodyweight.com/p/exercise-progressions_12.html

Note that if you click on the individual exercises on the page, you'll get a progression for that exercise. The exercises listed are compound exercises which are a good way to build overall strength quickly:

Squat progression
Pull up progression
Handstand push up progression
Leg raises progression
Push up progression
Dip progression
Horizontal pulls progression
Plank progression

These progressions will give you the progressive overload that you need to build muscle long term. Instead of adding another plate or a bigger dumbbell the way a weightlifter would, you change positions so that you're progressively making each exercise more difficult. For example, you might start with pushups against a wall, then on your knees, then a standard pushup, then diamond pushups, then uneven pushups, then finally one-armed pushups. If you stick with the program, you won't need a gym for a long, long time, if ever.

I'm doing some of these bodyweight exercises along with weights, since I already had the weights. I also use a weighted vest to make some of the moves more intense.

cwolfman13 wrote: »

You will very quickly out grow those dumbbells...my guess is that your purse weighs more than your dumbbells. I would personally look into more body weight workouts and supplement some movements with the dumbbells and maybe invest in some resistance bands.

You can make great progress with body weight where your physique is concerned...the difficulty is in keeping it challenging enough so that your body has to continue to adapt..this means not only identifying which exercises you should do, but identifying variations of these exercises to progressively overload your body's capabilities.