If you're new to lifting, it can be hard to choose which dumbbells you need for your workouts - but finding the right weight is essential. Too much and you'll set yourself up for injury, too little and you won't be getting much benefit from your efforts. Of course, you also need to consider your current level of strength and experience to avoid injury and maximize gains. Dumbbells range in weight from 1/2-pound up to about 50 pounds. When you're starting out with a dumbbell routine, you're going to have to play around with different weights in order to find the ones that fatigue your muscles. The right dumbbells for a beginner to use are ones that make the exercise feel challenging but doable. Toward the end of your sets, you should feel fatigued but not so much that your form breaks down. To figure out what that is, you can think about your repetition maximum (RM), or the maximum weight you can move in a given number of reps.

If you're planning to do 10 reps, you should be lifting a weight heavy enough to really max out your strength by that final rep. That's roughly your 10RM. Always start with body-weight exercises and become an expert on form before adding in dumbbells (or any other weight). Don't worry. You don't have to do the math. Just keep things gradual. There's really no way of saying exactly how heavy dumbbells should be, because it varies so much by person. For instance, someone who is new to lifting but already generally healthy and active may be able to start with 25-pound dumbbells for a compound lower-body exercise like a sumo squat. Meanwhile, someone who is rehabilitating an injury may need to start with 5- or 10-pound dumbbells. If it feels heavy when you pick it up, it's probably going to be too heavy to do a full set. If it feels easy to lift, do a test run.

Try to do 10 reps, focusing on how you feel and how easy it is to maintain proper form. If you aren't able to complete all of your reps with good form, www.PrimeBoosts.com try smaller dumbbells. If you can easily perform 10 more reps with good form, choose heavier dumbbells. If you have experience with exercise machines, know that dumbbell exercises are more unstable - you don't have a large piece of equipment making sure the movement stays within a specific range of motion - so the exercises might feel more difficult. But instability can also mean risk. For example, if you squat 135 pounds total, you'll likely want to grab a pair of 50-pound dumbbells (100 pounds total), which is about 20 percent less in total weight. Use the guidelines below to figure out your perfect weight. You should be able to finish all of your reps with good form. If you're fatiguing halfway through a set, choose a lighter set.

Selecting dumbbells is a bit of a Goldilocks experience: Too light, and you won't give yourself the challenge you need. Too heavy, and you won't be able to complete your reps with proper form. So how do you find the perfect pair? To find the right dumbbell weight for you, you'll need to first consider the types of exercises you'll be doing with the weights. Ideal Dumbbell Weight for Lower-Body Exercises vs. Thanks to the large muscles like the glute and quads, Visit Prime Boosts most people are stronger doing lower-body exercises than upper-body exercises. Which means you'll likely be able to use heavier dumbbells for exercises like squats, deadlifts and lunges than for shoulder presses, Prime Boosts bent-over dumbbell rows and scaption raises. If you're doing a workout that involves both upper- and lower-body exercises, you'll want to have a heavier set and a lighter set nearby to use depending on the exercise. Because, for example, a 30-pound dumbbell might be appropriate for a squat, but way too heavy for a shoulder press.