There's no doubt that free weight exercises should be prioritized in your workout to optimize muscle development and strength. However, when it comes to free weight workouts, you have two choices: Barbells or Dumbbells.
While both are effective ways to gain muscle, it's less clear if one is better than the other when it comes to optimizing muscle development. To find out, we must weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Pros of Using Barbells
Maximized Mechanical Tension
Mechanical tension is the primary driver of muscle growth and development. To maximize the mechanical tension, you need to perform heavy compound movements and get stronger with them over time. Barbells enable you to maximize mechanical tension to a much larger extent than dumbbell can.
Enables You To Lift Heavy
A 2011 study from the Journal of Sports Science disclosed that subjects could lift close to 20% more weight with the barbell bench press than the dumbbell press. A similar study from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research showed that the subjects could lift about 10% more on a standing shoulder press using a barbell than dumbbells. And the simple reason behind this is that barbells require less stabilization as compared to dumbbells.
More Effective Progressive Overload
If you've gotten to the stage that you're using dumbbells to lift significant amounts of weight, you've probably noticed how strenuous it is to get into position. You've already wasted a lot of energy before you've even completed your first rep. Compare this to barbells, where all you need is a small lift off to begin a set on the bench press. Furthermore, with only 2.5 lb increments on each side, barbell movements can be overloaded. Dumbbells, on the other hand, usually involve 5 lb jumps in each hand as you advance. Therefore, using barbells makes week-to-week progressions easier and keeps you from hitting plateaus too soon.
As you can see, barbells allow you to progress quickly and effectively than dumbbells due to these minor but significant factors. As a result, there is more mechanical tension and, ideally, more muscle growth and strength as time goes on.
Pros of Using Dumbbells
Now it may seem that the barbells are the clear winners here from the points above. . However, we need to look at what dumbbells have to offer before concluding.
Greater Muscle Activation
Dumbbells appear to induce higher muscle activation than barbells, which is one of their most important advantages in muscle development.
The dumbbell press, for example, consistently triggered higher pectoralis major activation than the barbell bench press, according to a 2016 study of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
Greater Range of Motion
When you perform a dumbbell press, you can slightly more horizontally adduct than compared to having your hands fixed on a barbell. This helps you get a more significant range of motion that results in better muscle activation. It also allows you to move the dumbbells in a more natural path that suits your body structure rather than clinging in a relatively fixed direction with the barbell.
Minimizes Muscle Imbalances
Apart from muscle activation, another significant advantage of dumbbells you're probably aware of is that they can help reduce muscle imbalances. Since each arm works separately, the body can't support one side over the other when pushing or curling. If you are struggling with any imbalance already, you can use dumbbells to perform isolation exercises with the weaker part to balance it out.
Barbells vs Dumbbells: Who's The Winner?
If you were expecting a straight answer - Yes or No, let us tell you that you are not getting one. It's because the answer is much more complicated.
Both barbells and dumbbells have their pros and cons. If you blatantly ignore one in favour of the other, you'll still be missing out on one set of benefits.
Instead, combine the two for the best results in muscle development while avoiding possible imbalances and injury.
How To Incorporate Both?
It would be best if you focused on beginning your workouts with some heavy compound lift with a lower rep range of 4-6; that would be best achieved with barbells. Later on, you can incorporate dumbbell movements with a slightly higher rep range somewhere between 8-12.
For example, for a chest or push exercise, beginning with a lower rep barbell bench press and then progressing to an incline dumbbell press with a slightly higher rep range would be an excellent way to incorporate both.
And the same method can be applied while training other muscle groups to ensure that you get the best of both worlds. So, you can see, incorporating both is better than one or the other when it comes to maximizing muscle growth and strength. But the key here is how you implement them in your training.
References
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27433992/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7675616/+
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308749889_Maximal_Strength_Performance_and_Muscle_Activation_for_the_Bench_Press_and_Triceps_Extension_Exercises_Adopting_Dumbbell_Barbell_and_Machine_Modalities_Over_Multiple_Sets
One Comment