Dumbbell sizes for women

If the dumbells are challenging to you, but you are able to keep good form for the rep range you wish to increase strength in, they are right for you.

They're are many different strength levels for lifters and the only one that should matter to you is yours.

Ditto on what others have said above about comparing yourself, but it is natural to be curious so here are some thoughts based on my own very limited experience, FWIW.

Just in my observations of new members joining a "body sculpting" class that I am in at my fitness center at work, 8.8 lbs is a fairly robust amount of weight for a beginner. Most use 3 or 5 lb dbs to begin. Of course, different lifts are going to require different sized weights. In the class, our instructor tells us when to use our heavy vs. light weights (10 lbs vs 6 lbs for me) and we do 30 seconds worth of reps. Some days I feel sassier and grab 12 lb weights, and other days I need to take it easy and I will have 3 lb pink weights along with my usual set. I started with the 3 lbs as my lights and 5 lbs as my heavies.

For my "real" lifting (a program drawn up by my nephew, who is a trainer) I have 24 different workouts with about an hour of lifting for each workout. It's supposed to be a 6-week program, but I can generally fit in 2-3 "heavy" days a week, in addition to my class and aerobics days. I keep meticulous records and move on to a heavier weight when the current weight is no longer challenging and I can maintain good form. For 12-15 reps, currently I am going to use anything from 6 lbs for lateral raises to 40 lbs (combined) for chest presses to a 30 lb db for a single-arm row (I have been lifting since February but took the summer off; last June my single arm rows were at 35 lbs, lats at 10 lbs, and presses were the same; that was after 4 months of lifting).

However--I started off with 5 and 10 lb weights for the first few weeks, as that is what I had on hand till I stole an entire set of dbs from my brother in law.

As I have lifted, I have moved from wanting to measure myself by the amount of weight I was lifting ("more is better") to measuring myself by my ability to keep meticulous form...quality over quantity. The more I do it, the more I am interested in the "craftsmanship" of the lift.

Again, this is just one perspective, and I am nowhere near as seasoned as others on this site, but as a fairly recent beginner myself, I thought it might be of interest to you. Good luck with your lifting program! I have been extremely pleased with my results from lifting.

If you can do more that 8 or 10 reps per set then they are probably too light.
Definitely too light if you can do 12 or more reps for all 3 sets.
Add 2.5lbs or 5 lbs, whatever you have available as the next heaviest, and check the number of reps again.
For now, use a given weight until you can manage 12 or more reps for all 3 sets and raise the weight again.
The commonly accepted range for weight training is from 8 to 12 reps per set.

This is the basics of "progressive overload". Anything lighter is usually a waste of your time.
These methods are for any weight lifting exercise really, doesn't matter if it is dumbbell or barbell.
It also doesn't really matter if you are old or young, man or woman.

By using this method you only have to worry about comparing yourself to yourself.
Keep a log and track your workouts; day, exercise, number of sets, reps, amount of weight, etc.
You will know how much weight you are aiming for every time and for how many reps.
When you look back at your log 12 weeks from now, you will see your progress.

Some people like me prefer heavier weights (you raise the weight after 5 or 6 reps per set, for example) but no one I work out with -male or female- regularly goes above 12 reps per set.
Sticking with 8 to 12 reps per set is a fine starting point.

If you are doing 3 sets of 20 reps then you are using "pink dumbells" -ones too light to be useful for a given exercise- unless perhaps you are 70 years old and have lost all of your muscle mass or you are in some sort of PT program.

I use a wide variety. I have 15s that I use for lawnmower/heavy pants but all the way down to 3s right now for superman fly. I probably use the 8s most, for curls and overhead presses and triceps. If you get to 12-15 reps and feel the fail happening then that's your weight. You're at the top end of managing that weight, giving yourself a little push, presuming you are trying to build a little muscle.

cqbkaju wrote: »

If you can do more that 8 or 10 reps per set then they are probably too light.
Definitely too light if you can do 12 or more reps for all 3 sets.
Add 2.5lbs or 5 lbs, whatever you have available as the next heaviest, and check the number of reps again.
For now, use a given weight until you can manage 12 or more reps for all 3 sets and raise the weight again.
The commonly accepted range for weight training is from 8 to 12 reps per set.

This is the basics of "progressive overload". Anything lighter is usually a waste of your time.
These methods are for any weight lifting exercise really, doesn't matter if it is dumbbell or barbell.
It also doesn't really matter if you are old or young, man or woman.

By using this method you only have to worry about comparing yourself to yourself.
Keep a log and track your workouts; day, exercise, number of sets, reps, amount of weight, etc.
You will know how much weight you are aiming for every time and for how many reps.
When you look back at your log 12 weeks from now, you will see your progress.

Some people like me prefer heavier weights (you raise the weight after 5 or 6 reps per set, for example) but no one I work out with -male or female- regularly goes above 12 reps per set.
Sticking with 8 to 12 reps per set is a fine starting point.

If you are doing 3 sets of 20 reps then you are using "pink dumbells" -ones too light to be useful for a given exercise- unless perhaps you are 70 years old and have lost all of your muscle mass or you are in some sort of PT program.

After reading this, I realized I mistyped above--I checked my workouts and the only things that go above 12 reps are bodyweight exercises (incline pushups, bodyweight squats, etc.) On my metabolic days, the reps go up to 12 for certain exercises and 10 for the rest, and on my strength or density days, they are more in the 7-9 range to failure. They all just feel like they go to 15 reps.

In the class, we are probably doing 15 reps in 30 seconds or so, and it likely doesn't accomplish much, but it is a bit of fluffy fun that is not as fluffy as "dance aerobics". I will use the pink weights when I've pushed it really hard with my real lifting on the previous day, ha ha. (Yeah...I should probably drop that class).

It depends on what I'm doing and where I am at with my diet. If I am eating in a surplus I can overhead press 35lb dumbbells for 3-5 reps but around 30lbs is my 8-10 rep range. I can bench with 35-40lb dumbbells as well but I train specifically for powerlifting so what I can do right now is heavier.

When I started out I didn't know anything about how much I should have been lifting so just focused on being able to do either more reps with each workout or more weight. Sometimes a jump from the 8lb weight to the 10lb weight felt like too much, so I would just try to do more reps at 8lbs until I could do 10lbs.

I think in terms of deciding what weight to use you have to determine what your goals are. Hypertrophy or power? It will help narrow down a more ideal amount of reps/sets and then you can choose the weight that suits that range best.

when i started lifting the woman running the course i took refused to even discuss general strength standards. it really pissed me off; like it was info a newbie like me couldn't be trusted with. and it still kind of pisses me off two years later.

i don't think that woman realized i had no information at all about what was 'normal' and what wasn't. i think people should be given information and allowed to do whatever they want to with it.

so here you go: http://lonkilgore.com/freebies/freebies.html

Tania5078 wrote: »

I just wanted some sort of standard to compare myself to. I dont want to push myself and then get hurt but then again i dont want to waste my time with "small" weights

exactly. you need a frame of reference if you're going to own your own lifting experience and it really ticks me off when people perpetuate a kind of helplessness and dependency by withholding info. i don't think people realise how completely absent any concept relating to strength can be from a woman's life by the time she considers lifting.

if a guy showed up at my knitting guild and wanted to get some general idea what an average gauge was for his needles and yarn, he'd be super-pissed if people went all 'oh grasshopper, don't worry your cute little head about it. that kind of knowledge is not for the likes of you' instead of just telling him.

Sued0nim wrote: »

I'm sorry define frame of reference, why would my lifting weights have any reference to OPs because we both have boobs?

it was a general comment about cultural channelling based on gender. maybe your personal mileage is different, but when i was crossing that mental threshold into the weight room, it really came home to me.

i don't think there's a man in the western world who hasn't been subliminally aware, for practically his entire life, of where he stacks up on a stanine graph over strength. even if he doesn't think in numbers, he has some consciousness of how strong he is relative to his immediate peers. because guys do it, guys talk about it, guys use strength as one of the marker points in identity. and even if they don't do it themselves, they're aware on some level that the culture itself uses strength as one of the stacking-and-sorting markers.

so strength is a thing in the life of men more or less all their lives. my point was just that this simply isn't the case for women, culturally. and i don't think most people realise just how totally absent it is. so they don't always realise what a huge threshold a new female lifter is stepping across when she picks up a weight.

i used knitting as a parallel because i think it's about the equivalent i think of myself as pretty gender-neutral in my attitudes, but it's hard to ignore the almost visceral shock my brain got the first time i saw a man holding needles and knitting a sock. so even now, when i think about what it's like for a girl to step into weights, i equate it in my mind to the kind of cultural threshold a man would have to cross if he wanted to knit.

it's not only identity and masculinity/femininity/blahblahblahblah. it's sheer information. not even just that - it goes as far as not knowing the terminology for asking the questions that bring the info.

I don't think that a 1RM chart is useful for a beginner lifter. Especially not a beginner lifter who is using dumbbells for unnamed arm exercises or unnamed lifting program. How is "an untrained beginner woman who weighs 200 pounds should be able to barbell squat 85 pounds 1 time" supposed to help in that situation? Is the OP supposed to go out and buy two 42.5# dumbbells? Is she wasting her time with 8.8# dumbbells? Should she squat 10 times with 8.8# dumbbells in order to equal about 85#? Those are just a few questions that I can imagine the chart bringing up.

I think it's important to explain that different exercises require different weights and that the goal is to progress. Also, get on an established program rather than making one up and you will know when to up the weight. And if you must get an idea of where you are, use a chart like Bret Contreras's, which he based on the women who he has trained and which includes a few dumbbell exercises.

jemhh wrote: »

I don't think that a 1RM chart is useful for a beginner lifter.

sure, these are good points. and i'm not the op so shouldn't just be pasting my own experience on top of hers. but i was a new lifter once and finding those charts was incredibly useful to me. no, i don't follow them, and no i never set my own programming according to them, but even so. being prevented from finding them, and even having it almost denied that there was any such thing was actively non-useful too. so o.t. but just as a kind of a represent for other people like me:

it might be a difference in thinking styles. i admire people who can just plonk themselves down in a landscape and build their own context out of a linear sequence of single workouts, but i'm not one of them. i always struggle to explain to some people why i want - even need - certain kinds of information even though i'm not going to 'use' it in a way they would (apparently) recognise. it's like they pre-decide for me what uses i'll make of the info if i get it, and then they pre-emptively move to block me from getting the info in order to 'save' me from doing something i'm not even going to do. then i try to tell them i'm not thinking any such thing and they say 'oh well, there you go then, you see? you don't need to know that.' somehow, for some reason, finding those charts threw a sort of framework of context around what i was planning to do, and all of a sudden i knew which direction i wanted to go and what i was going to do about going that way.

tbh, it took me a year to even consider looking for a trainer because this 'don't ask just do' mindset seems so prevalent among the trainers i was observing, at least around here. when i got lucky, i knew i was in the right place by the second session. someone else made a helpful suggestion about something or other, and i heard mr trainer-dude telling the guy 'yeah, that cue won't work for her. she's an analyzer.' that's a trainer i can work with because he accepts how my mind works, he doesn't make assumptions about what i need to know, why i want to know it, or what i'm going to do if he answers the questions i ask.

just sayin'. bit of a soapbox subject and not really directing it at you specifically.