5 Best Arm-Toning Exercises Using Dumbbells

Arm-toning exercises using dumbbells are a great way to build your upper arms. If you pick a combination of exercises that focus on your biceps, triceps, and shoulders, you’ll be able to build a great pair of upper arms with lean muscle.

Your upper arms have three major muscle groups—biceps, triceps, and shoulders. Now, all three muscle groups have divisions as well.

The bicep muscles have two heads—the long and short heads.

The tricep muscles have three heads—the long, lateral, and medial.

The shoulder muscles have three delts—anterior, lateral, and rear delts.

Your picks from arm-toning exercises using dumbbells should work on these various heads and delts of the muscle groups.

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What Are the 5 Arm-Toning Exercises Using Dumbbells?

In the case of arm exercises, you should remember that you can do isolation exercises targeted at a specific muscle group, but it’s difficult to do separate exercises for the various parts.

Therefore, when you’re doing bicep, tricep, or shoulder exercises, you’ll work on all parts of the muscle group, but the intensity will differ.

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1. Zottman Curls

Zottman curls are an interesting pick from bicep exercises that work on long and short heads.

To do Zottman curls, you need to do dumbbell curls, twist your forearms so your wrist faces outwards, and lower the dumbbells.

Before the second rep, twist your forearms again so that your palms face inward and you’re prepared for a dumbbell curl.

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2. Hammer Curls

Hammer curls are another pick from arm-toning exercises using dumbbells that can add intensity to your bicep workout.

Hammer curls are useful for toning the bicep muscles, adding strength, and pushing the muscle fibers to grow thicker and stronger.

You can find the guide to doing hammer curls here.

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3. Double Arm Tricep Extensions

For your triceps, extensions are an important set of exercises.

To do double arm extensions, lift the dumbbell overhead and hold it from underneath with both palms. Next, lower the dumbbell behind your neck, and reach a point where you feel the stretch on your triceps.

Once you feel that stretch, that’s your cue to push the dumbbell back to the starting position. Keep your elbows stable, ensure you’re pushing with your tricep muscles and not your palms or forearms.

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4. Tricep kickbacks

Tricep kickbacks can help you engage your tricep muscles and force the fibers to become thicker. Additionally, kickbacks play a huge role in ensuring your triceps form the much aspired horse-shoe shape.

You can find the guide to doing tricep kickbacks here.

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5. Front Raise + Lateral Raise

Coming to your shoulders, the anterior and lateral delts are usually worked on arm days and rear delts are worked on back days.

Keeping this in mind, it’s important to choose arm-toning exercises using dumbbells which double up on the anterior and lateral delts.

The front raise works on the anterior delts while the lateral raise works on the lateral delts.

To mix the two, you do a lateral raise and extend your arms sidewards. From here, move your arms so they’re extended in front of you and lower the dumbbells. From this position, do a front raise, again extending your arms forward, and following that push your arms sidewards and lower the dumbbells.

This entire cycle is one rep.

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Bottom line

For the best arm-toning exercises using dumbbells, always think in terms of the muscles worked.

Hence, you can build a workout routine where one exercise intensely works on each part of the muscle head. Ideally, you would do two biceps, three triceps, and three shoulder exercises.