A 20-minute dumbbell routine for women over 40 new to strength training. The instructor walks through six exercises: squats, chest flies, rows, shoulder presses, reverse deadlifts, and lateral raises, with form cues and weight guidance throughout. A warm-up with resistance bands and cool-down stretches bookend the session.
Chapters
Ahoy, sailors! Welcome to Beginner Workout A. This is going to be a great one if you're new to exercise, new to strength training, and you want to just kind of get your feet wet. This one and Workout B will be a great combination for you to do 3 to 4 times a week. So before we start any workout, we want to make sure that we are doing a nice dynamic warm-up. Dynamic meaning you're moving your muscles to warm yourself up. You're not just doing static stretches like this. Or like this. We're gonna be actually moving our body, getting those muscles that we're gonna be working ready and online. So here's what this looks like. And one of my favorite things to use for arm warm-ups is a resistance band, so any kind of stretchy band. Okay, first move is going to be a basic squat. What you're going to want to do is grab two dumbbells that are pretty heavy, heavier than you would use for any arm movements. And you're gonna do something called racking them, which is where we get 'em up onto our shoulders like this. And proper squat position is going to be feet a little bit more than hip width apart, toes slightly turned out. And what you're gonna wanna do is something called screwing your feet in. So if you think about externally rotating your femur, hip bones, all of that outwards so that your knees are kind of pointing at maybe like a 45-degree angle from straight ahead. So instead of your knees straight ahead, when everything kind of turned outward to either side, so that way when you squat down, your knee will be tracking roughly over your third toe. And then on the way up, you just go slow up and then squeeze at the top. So from the side, it looks like this. You wanna make sure that your thighs are parallel or as close to parallel as you can, uh, on the down move. If you have a hard time getting that low and your heels tend to kind of come up, um, what you can do is you can place a riser underneath your heels. Um, sometimes even a dumbbell, like the handle of a dumbbell will work to lift your heels up. That will allow for a deeper range of motion. So I'm planting my feet slightly hip width apart, toes slightly out, doing that external rotation. And you can almost see it in my thighs, right? So this is straight, externally rotating, down, knee over that third toe, back up, squeeze. All right. Next move is going to be a dumbbell fly. So you're going to grab, uh, significantly lighter weights. These are going to be working, um, your pectoral muscles. So, uh, I would start with something in the 5 to 8 range. And what we're gonna do is grab a bench, sit down, lay all the way back. This is your starting position right here. You're gonna slowly lower until your arms are about parallel with the floor, and then using your pec muscles, you're going to pull those dumbbells back together. So that's one rep. Alright, move number 3 is going to be a bench supported row. So again, grab a heavier dumbbell because you're going to be working your back mostly. These muscles are a little bit bigger. So what you're gonna do is the same knee and hand are gonna be on the bench. So left hand, left knee. This is your starting position. The move is going to originate from here, not from your bicep. So You're not doing this. Watch my shoulder activate. So we're activating and then pulling from there. Activate, pull. Activate, pull. So one thing that you wanna be aware of whenever you're doing any exercise really is the mind-muscle connection. So making sure that you are paying attention, you're not just zoning out and doing the moves, but you're actually focusing on the muscle group that you are working. There have actually been research studies that show that this will, uh, cause hypertrophy, which is muscle growth, faster than if you're just kind of zoned out and just going through the motions. So you're gonna do this on both sides. So once you've done your reps on this side, switch over to the other side of the bench and do the same move. From there. Okay, next up is a shoulder press. So again, just like the squats, we're gonna rack them, get them up here. Our palms are going to face forward, and it's very easy move. We're just gonna press, press up, dumbbells touch, and back down. Up and back down. All right, so next we're gonna work the hamstrings. So what we're gonna do is basically a straight-legged reverse deadlift. So a deadlift would be starting down here, picking up the weight and standing. A reverse deadlift, you start standing and then you put the weight down. In order to have it be a hamstring-focused RDL, we just keep our legs straight. Slightly bent knees, that would be a glute-focused one, which we will be doing in workout B. So straight-legged starting position. You're going to paint your thighs and you're not gonna think about it. As just bending over and getting the weights down to the ground that way. You're going to think about a wall behind you, and you're trying to touch the wall with your butt and just your butt. So you're going to see kind of like this. It's more of a hinge. And no, you do not have to go all the way down to the ground. If you stop anywhere between just under your knee down to your mid shin, Basically, anywhere you feel that hamstring activate, then you're good to go. Just make sure you only have a teeny tiny bend in your knee. You never really wanna lock out your limbs when you're exercising. And you're standing straight up from there. So that is a straight leg or a hamstring-focused reverse deadlift. Our last move for workout A is one of my favorite exercises for really nice toned arms. This is called a lateral raise. It's very self-explanatory. So all you're gonna do is grab your weights, um, probably gonna be a little bit lighter, and you're just gonna lift laterally and lower. So slight bend in your elbows, Um, your arms can be straight out at your sides. They can be a little bit forward. Same muscles get worked either way. So this is a lateral raise. And then at the end of our workout, we always wanna do a cool down. So cool down is where you're going to be doing those static stretches, reaching across, be a tricep stretch. Maybe a quad stretch, maybe a glute stretch. And of course you can hang on to a wall or keep your balance on whatever you've got near you. And that's it. And if you guys need suggestions on reps and sets, check them out in the description below.
