Since dumbbell exercises generally do not isolate muscles, “cheating” can be very tempting. Cheating involves using body movements that help you perform a dumbbell exercise more easily.
An example of cheating would be to sway your upper body forward and back when doing biceps curl. Although the dumbbell exercise will be easier to perform that way, you are effectively cheating yourself out of gains in your target muscle groups.
It is therefore recommended to use and maintain good posture when performing dumbbell exercises. In the biceps curl example, try to keep your upper body very still when doing the exercise to minimize cheating.
Another benefit to using dumbbell exercises in your workout routines is that they only require you to have access to a pair of dumbbells and a workout bench. Using only these two pieces of equipment you’ll be able to perform hundreds of exercises and target every major muscle group in your body.
Dumbbells are available in different sizes and models but basically you’re faced with the choice of getting a set of dumbbells where every dumbbell is of a fixed weight or getting an adjustable weight set, where you can add different weight configurations to your dumbbells.
A set of fixed weight dumbbells will be costlier but will afford you the greatest ease of use whereas adjustable weight sets need to be adjusted each time you’re doing a dumbbell exercise.