Life throws a lot of curveballs at us sometimes. It’s always when we’re making our best gains in bench press numbers that we’ll tweak our shoulder tendon during warm-ups and lose three months of progress while recovering. It’s always when our diet is going so well that our job will throw us a bevy of new duties which will disrupt our eating schedule. Finally, it’s always when we finally seem to find that perfect workout plan that our gym access disappears and we’re limited to a nice set of 40 pounds dumbbells in our garage, until the gym remodeling or our financial problems subside. It’s at these times that we need to make adjustments to our training protocols and find ways to continue making progress – or at the very least maintaining our recent gains – until a sense of normalcy returns.

You can still convince your legs to grow using only a pair of moderate weight dumbbells. Here are some movements which will lead to a very effective leg pump, without any barbells.

Front Thighs
Begin your workout with bodyweight sissy squats. These will help to maintain some of the mass you gained from barbell free weight squats. Follow this movement up with standing dumbbell squats. Use high repetitions in the range of 20 to 30 if necessary. You should be completely spent after this movement. Still, there is more work to be done. Finish your quadriceps off with alternate leg dumbbell lunges. Enjoy the stretch this gives not only to the front thighs, but the glutes and hamstrings, the next muscle group we will be targeting.

Hamstrings
Stiff-legged dumbbell deadlifts using very slow movement are quite effective for hamstring stimulation.

Calves
Standing dumbbell raises from an elevation position, such as a step or door jam, are very effective. Use one leg at a time and enjoy a full range of motion.

You’ll want to return to using free weights as quickly as possible. Routines like this are very good for maintaining hardness in the legs, but as any trainer worth his salt will tell you, heavy barbell training is the key to large legs with very wide quad sweep. Compared to your normal training routine, movements should be completed in a slower, more deliberate manner. There isn’t as much room for error as you receive with normal barbell movements, where the case is usually such that if you can move the weight, you will grow. Using dumbbells, you have to really focus upon every second of the movement.

Keep in mind that medium dumbbells are not adequate for stimulating the chest, back, or shoulders into too much meaningful growth. However, the legs are unique in that in addition to the meager weight you are moving (say, 40 pounds for this example), you are also carrying the brunt of your bodyweight. If you are limited in terms of equipment for back, chest, or shoulder day, combine the movements so the body part is trained 2-3 times per week, and locate some parallel and wide-grip bars for resistance.

If you like this article, click here to share: