Home Gym Buyers Guide: Choosing Dumbbells

In this part of my Home Gym Buyers Guide series I go through the in and outs of what to look for when choosing what type of Dumbbells you want for your home gym.

I cover the different types and their pros and cons including Olympic Handles, Fixed Hex Dumbbells, Spinlock Dumbbells, Powerblocks and Bowflex Dumbbells. Obviously the best case scenario would be your own personal full rack of dumbbells, allowing you to pick whatever specific weight you want, training with them and put them back (or throw them on the floor like most gym rats). Cost and space are a big factor in this choice however, so it's usually more effective to go for a compact solution. I chose olympic handles because they have a great range of weight handling ability and are fairly cheap to buy in comparison to other solutions. Since making this video there are now 2" / Olympic spin lock collars available whereas in the past this was only used by the smaller 1" bars. This is a very good and safe choice as the weights cannot come loose with spin lock. Things like Bowflex and Powerblocks I personally wouldn't recommend simply because they are very limited in terms of weight available and you will out grow them in strength very quickly.