The Best Piece of Gym Equipment for Most of us, mere Mortals

I love kettlebells, barbells, cables, and bodyweight exercises.

But I stand by the fact that the best bang for your buck equipment is the dumbbell.

While other pieces of equipment offer benefits for compound OR isolation exercises, grinds and ballistic exercises, a set of humble dumbbells allows you to train every muscle with multiple exercise selections, and is equally as effective for training muscles in isolation as it is training compounds.

And yes – dumbbells can work great for ballistics. The dumbbell snatch, clean, clean & jerk, and swing are all fine exercises and are much less technical than their barbell and kettlebell counterparts (I concede that this makes them less fun, though).

If you have adjustable dumbbells (or a fully stocked gym of dumbbells), an adjustable bench, and a pullup bar – your training and gaining potential is limitless.

If your bench has a leg curl attachment, even better.