I am moving to a more rural area to live with my Fiance in a few months. There isn’t a single gym in the town except the community centre and thats basically just a bar and a few 20kg plates and a treadmill.
Where we will be living is based on the location it gives us, but its a bit small and too small for a power rack and bar. I also have to travel frequently so dumbbells might offer a good solution and they are portable. I have been looking for work arounds and I found a local company that made custom loadable dumbbells that go all the way up to 80kg each dumbbell and a pair costs about 800. That gives me a total of 352lbs if both sides were loaded fully.
I was thinking of a one day on 2 days off perpetual full body routine looking something like this:
1.Chest or shoulder press or dips
2.Row or Chinups or Shrugs
3.RDL or Lunges or Goblet squats
Ive also got a 20kg kettlebell I just bought second hand. But to get really heavy ones here its extremely expensive. And im mainly interested in doing bodybuilding and strength stuff and I don’t fancy trying to teach myself the clean and snatch etc as im gonna be kinda pressed for time as im going to be working and studying.
If your move to this area is long term and you don’t expect to have more room at home in the future, I’d try to make friends with the people who run the community center and then see if they’ll let you put some of your own equipment in there. I’ve done this before with barbells, a sled and a band deadlift platform. And one lifter I knew convinced the gym to let him put his monolift in there.
If you need to train at home and will be doing that long term, I’d consider the following:
Iron Master Dbells, Power Blocks or something like that.
An old backpack plus some smaller plates (not bigger than 25s) to load into it.
Some bands
Some sliders
It sounds like you already have a chin and/or dip station so if you add the stuff above to that you can do a lot, you’ll just have to be a little creative.
I have some adjustable DBs that go up to 32kg but they are too light now and they are the compact types. This is what the 80kg ones look like, reckon theyll be a pain to use?
Its sort of an older person rehab place, like they hold daily classes for the old ladies and gents so they need the floor space unfortunately. I offered to buy a rack and flooring but they don’t want anything that can’t be moved everyday, mornings and afternoons.
They look cooler than what I’m used to. It’s just hard to get them into place with the collar on the end - it digs into your knee when you’re kicking them up. Plus you could get a whole rack setup for that price; I know you don’t have the space, it just makes it hard to stomach!
All told, though, we make do with what we have to. Depending on where you’re currently at development-wise, tons of dudes have built physiques that make me question my manhood with a backpack, sandbags and pullup bars.
Too light for what? Were I in your shoes I think I’d invest elsewhere before I spent $800 on adjustable dumbbells if I already had a set that goes up to 32kg each. You can do a lot with dumbbells that go up to 32kg, especially if you are a beginner, which it seems like you are.
Too light for rows and squats now. I also can bench the entire stack and shoulder pressing 28kg And im up to 22kg for curls so i dont know how id use them for progressive overload. Only things i can still do with them for tge forseeabld future is lateral raises.
I’m having a hard time reconciling this post with your starting point ~2 months ago. But to answer your question, if you get a backpack and load that up with weights, you can use your dumbbells for higher rep work or your dumbbells plus the backpack for heavier work.
Can you take your dumbbells to the community center? Or if not, can you do 1-2 days of lifting there? Having access to that barbell and plate will help.
If I was severely space limited this is what I would consider doing:
Squat Stands (24” x 25” each stand)
Vertical Plate Storage on Casters (footprint 24”x24”)
Barbell (Store on end in a corner somewhere)
As many plates as possible
Olympic Dumbbell Handles
2x Sets of Oso Mighty Collars
FID Bench
Just been pricing it up mate, its extremely expensive to get it delivered to where i am in Europe, unfortunately thats why ive not gone for the rogue wall fold up rack too, it ends up being double the cost to get it delivered here.
That’s a shame. Wonder if there are any places like Rep, Rogue, Titan, etc in your area. We are spoiled in the US with lots of options. Easy to forget it’s not that way everywhere else. Good luck.
Those dumbbells would be a lot nicer if you could get them with knurling. Be hard to hang on to them if you use the out in a garage in the summer time.
You could build an excellent physique and a ton of strength with a pair of 80kg dumbbells and a pull up bar. The kettlebell is icing on the cake.
Doing three exercises 2 or 3 times per week is not very much work unless you do a ton of sets and/or push the intensity extremely hard. It’ll probably get you the majority of the health benefits of lifting and will allow you to get stronger, but I wouldn’t expect it to have a huge impact on your physique. That said, it’ll be better than nothing for certain.
There are a near-infinite number of ways to structure a full body routine using only dumbbells and bodyweight. A good place to start would be to find any full body routine using other equipment, and then sub out the exercises you can’t do with dumbbell or bodyweight alternatives.
