The Best Dumbbell Exercises For Explosive Strength (Real World Athleticism)

The Best Dumbbell Exercises for Explosive Strength (Real World Athleticism)

When we think of explosive strength, we tend to think of being able to throw a better punch, jump higher or sprint faster. It also allows us to catch ourselves when we stumble or slip on some ice.

Step out onto the street only to see a speeding car heading straight for you. Explosive strength allows you to get out of the way in the nick of time.

I first became familiar with this type of exercise early in my fitness journey. When I started doing metabolic circuits at home back then, they were part of a program I was doing by Men’s health called “The Spartacus Workout” these were done with light weights and high reps, giving you a crazy cardio workout.

They also can be done with heavier weights, and we’ll explore a program in this video that tests our explosive strength to see where we rank.

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The first exercise we’ll look at is the dumbbell hang clean. These moves are a little more complicated and require a bit of practice. So start with a lighter weight until you’re comfortable with the exercise.

To begin this move, you have your hips back and the dumbbells just below the knee. As you drive your hips forward, you explode up and fully extend your body as you shrug the weight up. Keeping the dumbbells close to your torso. Then drop down under the weight into a part squat.

You’ll know you’re using your arms if the weight goes out and away from your body as it goes up. Often this is accompanied by not fully extending the hips in an attempt to make it easier to get under the weight.

Once you’re comfortable cleaning the weight to your shoulder, this puts you in position for a great upper body power move called the dumbbell push press.

The difference between a shoulder press and a push press is that you use your legs by dropping down into a quarter squat and then extending them to help drive the weight up overhead. This allows us to use more weight than when doing a strict press.

These two exercises work naturally together, creating a full-body movement called the dumbbell clean and press. When you receive the dumbbells to your shoulders after doing a clean, your knees are already bent in the perfect position to press the dumbbells overhead.

You can do this as a unilateral exercise.

The setup is the same, except you hold the single dumbbell between your legs. Then you drive it up into position with your hips and legs and press it overhead with the help of your quads.

In the following exercise, we’ll look at the dumbbell snatch, and use it to test our explosive strength. The difference between a dumbbell snatch and a dumbbell clean and press is the dumbbell goes from the start position just below the knees to the top position with the arm fully extended in one fluid motion.

Men's Journal has a challenge that tests our explosive strength using a dumbbell snatch.

They recommend taking a month to learn the move before doing the test and give us a 3-week program to help prepare us after we have mastered the exercise.

Before one of your regular workouts every week, you’ll do a few sets of dumbbell snatches. In the first week, perform 5 sets of 5 reps with a weight that you can move very fast for each rep—allowing 60 seconds between sets.

For the second week, do 6 sets of 3 reps with 60 seconds rest again.
For the third week, you move to 6 to 8 sets of only 2 reps.

Week 4 is the test. After a good warm-up of at least 4 one rep sets, do 2 to 3 working sets of 3 reps, working your way up to the heaviest weight you can.

The rating goes like this if you can only press 25% of your bodyweight, you need work. 35% is okay. 45% brings you into the world of strong, and 55% of your body weight or more gives you freak status.

https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/dumbbell-challenge-test-your-explosive-strength/