A 20-minute strength workout for women over 40 using dumbbells and a resistance band. The instructor walks through six exercises: reverse deadlifts, lat pulldowns, incline chest press, sumo squats, triceps pulldowns, and calf raises, with form cues and modifications for each movement.
Chapters
So before we start any workout, we wanna make sure that we are doing a nice dynamic warmup. Dynamic meaning you're moving your muscles to warm yourself up. You're not just doing static stretches. 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 reverse deadlift, similar to the one in Workout A, except this time we're going to be bending our knees and make it more glute focused. So, uh, same starting position, feet a little bit more than hip width apart, toes turned out just slightly, and we're going to to paint our thighs again, but this time we're going to bend our knees a little bit, and you will feel your glutes activate more as opposed to your hamstrings. Painting thighs, knees bending, and up. Painting thighs, but touching that imaginary wall, knees bending, and up, and squeeze. So when you're doing this move, You want to be looking 3 or 4 feet in front of you. You don't wanna be head up like this. You don't wanna be head down like that. You wanna just think about your spine being in a nice neutral angle. And you're gonna think about those knees bending, your butt touching that imaginary wall, and weight's going about to your mid shin ideally, and back up. We don't wanna go too far down because then we wind up using our back to lift that weight up and that can lead to injury. So between just below your knee and mid shin is plenty. And then use that whole posterior chain, your lower back, your glutes, your hamstrings to pull yourself back up. Okay. Our next move is going to be a lat pull down. So the way to set this up is choose your weight, adjust the thigh pad to your height, have kind of a wide grab on the bar, scoot in nice and close, and lean back ever so slightly to where you're basically pulling straight down. You don't wanna lean back so far that you're doing this, right? And again, mind muscle connection. So the starting move, you're gonna wanna just kinda set your shoulders. So kind of roll them back and down and then pull from there and keep those lats activated. Those muscles are right around your shoulder blade. You're not using your biceps, right? You're not just pulling with your arms. We are originating this move from back here. Next move is an incline chest press. So you're gonna want an adjustable bench and probably on the second setting if it's got a bunch of notches on it. And all we're gonna do is have a seat. Uh, once you get to the point where your weights are pretty heavy for this exercise, um, a really good way to kind of kick the weights up onto your shoulders to rack them is to just give them a little push with your thigh. So kind of just boop, boop, kick them up, and then you're kind of set to go. So incline chest press, our hands are going to be palms facing forward, and it's going to be basically that same move that we did in Workout A. Um, it's just going to work a slightly different muscle group. So just push straight up and back down. And on any move, your exhale is going to be on the push part. It's going to be on the part of the move that's more difficult. So think about it as when you're down here, you're inhaling, prepping, adding a bunch of oxygen to your muscles in order to do the hard part, which is push. And that's when you exhale. So you out, exhale as you're pushing up. Inhale down, exhale up. Next move is a sumo squat, and you can do this with either a kettlebell or a dumbbell. Doesn't matter whatever you've got. Because you're only gonna be using one. So with a dumbbell, it looks like this. You're gonna have your legs pretty, pretty wide, pretty far apart. I would say, hmm, maybe 2 feet apart. And you're going to straight back. Don't lean forward as you go down. Straight down. Let that weight just kinda kiss the ground and back up. So same as any squat, you really want your thighs to be parallel with the ground at the bottom of the move. And push up and squeeze your buns at the top. Kettlebell, it's the same idea. Feet the same, back straight, slowly lower the ground, thighs parallel, and back up. Do not let your back round. See this a lot with beginners learning squat, uh, form is as they go down, they lean forward. So think about your back just kind of sliding against a wall. There's that wall again. It's down, up, down, and up. Okay, our next move is going to be a triceps pulldown. So if you've got this machine at your gym, you're going to want to put it on the highest setting, so all the way up at the top. You're going to grab the rope, palms facing inwards, and just pull down. So you don't want to lock out your elbows, just barely bent is your ending position. Your starting position, you don't want it to be way up here either. It's kind of a smaller range of motion. So you're gonna go from basically a 90 to just not locking out your elbows. And you're gonna keep your elbows tight to your sides like so and really focus on using that tricep. That's the back of your arm right here. Use that muscle to do this move. So there's another way you can do this if you do not have access to a gym. Uh, it's just called an overhead tricep press. So I'm gonna show you that one real quick. Okay. So an overhead tricep press, you're gonna grab a dumbbell, whatever feels comfortable, cuz this move is a little bit awkward to kinda get set up for. You're gonna swing it over your head. And this is gonna be your starting position. So elbows just slightly bent. And basically, you're gonna think about your elbows not moving. You're basically the top half of your arm not moving. And all you're gonna do is just bend your elbow and straighten. You can do this with one dumbbell. You can do this with two dumbbells. If you are not comfortable swinging a dumbbell over your head, that is That's totally okay and acceptable. So what you'll do instead is grab 2, and it's gonna be the same starting basically. So up, up, up. There you go. Okay. Our last move for workout B is going to be calf raises. So you can do these with the weights at your sides. You can do them racked. It's up to you, whatever feels more comfortable. But, uh, use heavier weight if you can. This will also help with your grip strength too if you keep them down here, which is very, very important and is actually a marker of health and longevity is your grip strength. So it's something to, uh, train as well. Um, but you'll see all I'm doing is just lifting and lowering, lifting, lowering. Ideally, you don't wanna go all the way full relax. At the bottom. Just going to kiss or even hover if you're able. And you'll start to feel these, uh, kind of throughout the entire back of your leg, not just your calf. And that's how you know it's working. And then at the end of our workout, we always want to do a cool down. So cool down is where you're going to be doing those static stretches, reaching across Maybe a tricep stretch, maybe a quad stretch, maybe a glute stretch. And of course you can hang onto 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.
