The Only 5 Dumbbell Exercises Older Adults Need for Total-Body Strength

Cardio exercise gets plenty of credit for keeping your heart healthy. But regular weightlifting has its own benefits, especially for older adults.

But it can be more than a little confusing to figure out how to start a strength-training routine, and it takes some practice to perfect your form and prevent injuries.

To help you get started, keep reading for weightlifting benefits, the top five dumbbell exercises for seniors and expert tips for building strength safely and with confidence.

The perks of resistance training include improved strength, energy, mobility and, according to a January 2018 ‌Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise‌ (MSSE) study, a lower risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Weightlifting is even linked with a reduced risk of some forms of cancer, per September 2019 research in the ‌MSSE‌.

Plus, by helping you stay stable on your feet and strengthening your bones, resistance training can help you avoid falls. If you do take a tumble, it can slim your chances of breaking anything, says New York-based certified personal trainer Carolina Araujo, CPT, founder of Fit With Carolina.

The squat is a staple of day-to-day life (think: getting up from a chair, sitting down on the toilet). That's why it's so important to strengthen your squats, Araujo says.

This exercise targets your leg muscles, including your quads, glutes and hamstrings, according to the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). But it also works your core to help improve your overall stability.

Just like the squat, the chest press is a compound exercise, working multiple joints and muscle groups at once. The upper-body move strengthens your chest, shoulders and triceps, according to the American Council on Exercise (ACE).

By doing the strength move with dumbbells, you load and work both sides of your body separately. That means you train all of the important stabilizing muscles in your chest, shoulders and arms — and can cut your chances of shoulder and elbow pain.

Whenever you bend over to get a pen off the ground, you're doing a deadlift.

Practicing your deadlifts with dumbbells strengthens your glutes, hamstrings, core and lats. It'll also help you learn proper form for everyday feats of strength. Picking up a pen may feel easy, but when you're lifting a heavy box off the floor, using proper form is critical to side-stepping injury, especially in your lower back.

The deadlift is one of the most functional dumbbell exercises for seniors, Araujo says.

Our shoulders often lose strength and mobility as we age. The dumbbell scaption is a great exercise to change that, and does so without aggravating sensitive joints. It tends to feel more comfortable than lateral, or side, shoulder raises.

Forward motions, like driving a car or typing on the computer can take a toll on your posture, according to the NASM. Over time, this can cause lower back pain or a hunched upper back, Araujo says.

But strengthening your back muscles can help. The dumbbell row strengthens the muscles up and down your spine and around your shoulder blades to help improve your alignment. It also works your deep core muscles, which can further relieve back pain, she says.

Although strength training offers many benefits, rest is still important. If you're new to lifting weights, aim for two to three total-body workouts each week, Araujo recommends.

"Between your dumbbell workouts, you can do some cardio exercise, like walking or biking, but don't neglect your recovery," she says. "The last thing you want is to get injured because you did too much too fast."

In the first few months of strength training, your workouts shouldn't last much longer than 30 or 45 minutes.

This is where you get into the details of starting a weight-training routine: As a general guideline, to build muscle, you should do at least 3 to 5 sets of 6 to 12 repetitions of your resistance exercises, according to the NASM. Araujo recommends you start doing each move for 4 sets of 10 reps.

Between each set and exercise, rest between 90 and 120 seconds. But if you feel like you need more rest, take it!

The weight you use will vary by exercise. After all, most people can squat more weight than they can lift with scaptions. Wondering how heavy weights should be for seniors? Most older adults can start with 15-pound weights for lower-body exercises and 5- or 7.5-pound dumbbells for upper-body movements, but you should adjust based on your comfort and ability, Araujo says.

Most importantly, pick a weight you can comfortably control, she says. If you finish a set and feel you could do another straight away, you can probably increase the weight a bit. If your form gets shaky toward the end of a set, your dumbbells are probably too heavy.

To build muscle and strength over time, you also need to consistently increase the weight you're lifting or the number of sets and reps you're doing (aka progressive overload), per the NASM. If your dumbbell exercises start to feel easy, that's a sign you're ready for a change in your routine.

Every training session should begin with a warmup and end with a cooldown, Araujo says. Although they're easy to skip, these parts of your workout are just as important as all the dumbbell-lifting in the middle.

Warm up with a few dynamic stretches, like clamshells and inchworms. Or, to make things even simpler, run through your dumbbell workout using just your body weight, Araujo says.

Then, save the last few minutes of your exercise session for a few cooldown static stretches. These will help to gradually bring your heart rate back down and promote recovery, Araujo says.