You may be wondering how to step up your ab workouts, look no further than these nine dumbbell ab exercises to strengthen and define your core.
If you’re not sure where to start with abdominal exercises, or just want to add a level of intensity to your core workout, incorporate one of the best adjustable dumbbells in some common abdominal exercises can help.
Dumbbells are versatile and easy to hold, making them a perfect addition to common exercises like sit-ups, cycles, and even planks to increase the level of difficulty. If you’re looking for a toned tummy, better balance, or just want to improve your core strength, then dumbbell exercises may be the right choice for you.
We’ve asked some of the top fitness experts what their go-to dumbbell ab exercises are and how to perform them.
Emily Rutherwood is a studio manager at Oxford Circus FS8 (opens in a new tab). Rutherwood began her career in the health, fitness and wellness industry as a qualified massage therapist before applying her interest in body biomechanics, injury prevention and movement to becoming a qualified personal trainer. She also teaches Barre and Pilates in Senior Trainer and Head Trainer roles.
Jay Conroy is a certified personal trainer and health coach, as well as a fitness model. He has been featured on Men’s Health and is a semi-professional footballer for Isthmian Division One South side Three Bridges.
Jay Conroy
Personal trainer, instructor and educator at Gymbox in central London. Aaron has now been training for around 9 years, 6 of them at Gymbox. He coaches gymnastics, weightlifting, and CrossFit through athletes 1-2-1 and online. He loves to take your average gym member and make them competitive and strong. At the risk of upsetting some, he says “Unpopular opinion, but I like the assault bike…”
Why add dumbbells to your abdominal workouts?
Adding weight to your ab workout is an easy way to increase resistance and increase the difficulty of your sets without doing a lot of reps. Dumbbells are easy to hold, hard to drop, and can be found in every gym worth its salt. You can also incorporate these exercises into your home exercise routine if you want to purchase a dumbbell for personal use. if you are learning how to build muscle then dumbbell abdominal exercises will come in handy and you will develop a stronger core.
A strong core is vital for stability when performing daily activities or more challenging workouts and can help support your overall physical strength. Abs are a component of core muscles, but most of these exercises also engage deeper supporting muscles and back muscles, making them good for overall core strength and abdominal definition.
We spoke to three fitness experts: Emily Rutherwood, a personal trainer and studio director at Oxford Circus FS8 (opens in a new tab), Jay Conroy, personal trainer, trainer and ambassador for Bio-Synergy (opens in a new tab) and Aaron Cook, personal trainer, manager and coach at Gym (opens in a new tab). Each PT has given us their top three dumbbell ab exercises to help you step up your core workout this
9 dumbbell abdominal exercises
1. Dumbbell Dead Bug
(Image credit: Emily Rutherwood)
(Image credit: Emily Rutherwood)
- Lie on your back with your knees above your hips
- Hold the dumbbell in a neutral grip above your chest keeping your knees above your hips.
- Keep your spine neutral to extend one leg toward the floor.
- Return to the starting position and alternate sides with control.
2. Overhead crunches
(Image credit: Jay Conroy)
(Image credit: Jay Conroy)
- Engage your core and spine against the ground with your hands raised above your head
- Slowly bend your spine until you can’t lift your body any higher off the ground by keeping your arm locked out and raised above your head.
- The key is to always point your arm straight up towards the ceiling.
3. Russian Twist
(Image credit: Aaron Cook)
(Image credit: Aaron Cook)
(Image credit: Aaron Cook)
- You will start from a tall sitting position with your feet tucked slightly behind your butt. The dumbbell will rest in a cup position on the sternum (sternum)
- To increase the intensity, you can lift your feet off the ground, but to maintain control I prefer to keep contact with the ground even slightly.
- A common problem seen with the Russian twist is that the arms and shoulders initiate the movement (much like the party game ‘pass the pack’). Instead, we should focus on rotating through the trunk while keeping the dumbbell in the center of our chest.
- Twist through the trunk looking left and right while maintaining a tall spine
4. Dumbbell knife
(Image credit: Emily Rutherwood)
(Image credit: Emily Rutherwood)
- Lying down, hold the dumbbells in a neutral grip above your head and extend your legs.
- Exhale and curl the dumbbells with your feet forward.
- Lower your shoulders and legs, extend your arms above your head while keeping your spine neutral
5. Dumbbell cycling
(Image credit: Jay Conroy)
(Image credit: Jay Conroy)
- While lying on the ground, raise your legs as if you were about to start riding a bike.
- Hold your dumbbell in both hands at each end using your opposite elbow to touch your opposite knee
- Now, in a cycling motion, kick out with one leg as you bring the opposite knee up towards you and hook the opposite elbow to touch it.
6. Dumbbell Plank
(Image credit: Aaron Cook)
(Image credit: Aaron Cook)
- A perfect hollow body plank position is rule number one: Press into the ground so your shoulders are rounded, your pelvis is tucked under, and your legs are long and tight.
- With this move, you’ll have a light to medium load dumbbell around torso height parallel to your body.
- With the arm that is furthest away, reach under your body to grab the dumbbell by twisting slightly through your torso while keeping your hips and legs tight.
- You will then place the dumbbell on the opposite side of where you started with the least deviation from your plank.
7. Oblique kneeling/standing dumbbell
(Image credit: Emily Rutherwood)
(Image credit: Emily Rutherford)
- On your knees/standing, hold a dumbbell in one hand and place the other hand behind your head
- Bend sideways and lower the dumbbell toward your hips.
- Exhale and squeeze your upper ribs toward your hips to return to the starting position.
8. Static lunge with twist
(Image credit: Jay Conroy)
(Image credit: Jay Conroy)
- Get into a low, hard lunge position while leaning as tall as possible with your upper body.
- Raise your hands fully to the side keeping your arms as straight as possible.
- If you turn left, keep your right hand on top of your right.
- As long as you don’t move your legs or lower body, turn and face the other direction, except turn your hands so now your left hand is on top and your left hand is on the bottom.
9. Dumbbell Finger Touches
(Image credit: Aaron Cook)
(Image credit: Aaron Cook)
- We start by lying on our backs with our legs perpendicular to the ground trying to reach the sky.
- Here we will make sure that the quads and glutes are engaged with the toes pointed.
- You will then pick up your dumbbell and hold the dumbbell over your shins with your shoulders lightly flat on the floor.
- You will then begin to lift the dumbbell as high as you can towards your feet before lowering yourself back down with control.
Seeking to discover the ins and outs of Why are core muscles important? We have the answers and can suggest other ways to strengthen your midsection muscles without weights, like this one core yoga routine.
