Arm Workout with Dumbbells: 8 Best Exercises for Bigger Guns

At Home Dumbbell Arm Workout – Introduction

What’s the best arm workout you can do with dumbbells at home?

Exercisers who train at home are often led to believe they have to make do with substandard exercises, equipment, and workouts.

After all, if you are serious about getting fit, losing weight, building muscle, or gaining strength, you need to hit the gym, right?

The truth is that you can achieve almost any fitness goal by training at home, and you don’t need a lot of state-of-the-art equipment to do it.

That’s because your muscles neither know nor care what equipment you use.

They just know work and tension.

Providing you push your muscles close enough to failure, they’ll adapt by getting bigger and stronger.

Training at home is the ultimate in fitness independence.

You can work out whenever you like and don’t need to waste time traveling to a commercial gym.

Plus, once you’ve set up your home training emporium, there are no fees to pay, and the shower queue is invariably shorter!

In terms of equipment, you can get a great workout using nothing but your body weight.

Calisthenic exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and lunges are hard to beat.

But, for variety, adding adjustable dumbbells and a workout bench to your home gym will increase the number of exercises you can do tenfold.

Dumbbells are perfect for training your biceps.

This article reveals some of the best dumbbell arm exercises and provides you with a 15-minute dumbbell arm workout you can do at home.

Biceps Anatomy 101

While you don’t need a detailed knowledge of biceps anatomy to build bigger arms, many people find this stuff fascinating.

Feel free to skip this section if you aren’t one of them!

The biceps brachii (usually just biceps for short) is a two-headed muscle located on the front of your upper arm.

It’s also biaxial, which means it crosses two joints – the elbow joint and the shoulder joint – and affects both of these articulations.

The primary function of the biceps is elbow flexion, meaning that it bends your elbows.

The second function is forearm supination, where the palm of your hand is turned upward.

The final function of the biceps is shoulder flexion.

However, this movement is relatively weak, and the anterior deltoids do most of the work.

Because the biceps have three functions, you must perform various exercises to build maximal muscle size.

This is because, within the biceps, different groups of fibers do different jobs.

While you have likely heard of progressive overload, this phenomemnon is known as the neuromechanical matching principle.

The most underrated muscle-building principle

The good news is that there are lots of different biceps exercises you can do with nothing but a pair of dumbbells.

So, rather than just “making do,” home exercisers actually have the perfect biceps-building training tool!

The 8 Best Dumbbell Biceps Exercises

Build bigger biceps at home with the best dumbbell exercises for your biceps!

1. Dumbbell supination curl
2. Alternating dumbbell curl
3. Dumbbell concentration curl
4. Dumbbell spider curl
5. Zottman curl
6. Hammer curl
7. Iso-dynamic dumbbell biceps curl
8. Dumbbell biceps 21s

Top Dumbbell Arm Exercise Descriptions

#1. Dumbbell supination curl 

The supination curl is one of the best biceps exercises around.

It trains the main two functions of the biceps to provide an excellent mass-building dumbbell workout.

How to do it:

1. Hold your dumbbells down by your sides; palms turned inward.
2. Pull your shoulders down and back, and brace your core.
3. Bend your arms and, as your elbows reach a 90-degree angle, rotate your hands, so they are palms up.
4. Curl the dumbbells up to your shoulders.
5. This should be one smooth movement.
6. Lower the weights, unwinding your wrists as you descend.
7. You can do this exercise seated or standing as preferred.

#2. Alternating dumbbell curl 

Some people find curling two dumbbells at once tricky.

All that weight can pull you forward onto your toes, putting strain on your lower back.

Or, maybe, you’ve just got one arm that is stronger than the other.

Doing dumbbell bicep curls with an alternating arm action fixes both these problems and allows you to focus all your attention on one arm at a time for a stronger mind-muscle connection.

So, do your curls with an alternating arm action, i.e., curl and lower one dumbbell for a rep, and then do your next rep with the other arm.

Continue alternating arms for the duration of your set.

#3. Dumbbell concentration curl 

Concentration curls let you focus 100% on one bicep at a time.

You don’t need a lot of weight to get a great workout from concentration dumbbell curls.

And, as you only need one dumbbell to do it, it’s an excellent exercise for anyone with limited training resources.

How to do it:

1. Sit on the edge of a flat bench or sturdy chair with a dumbbell in one hand.
2. Lean forward and let your arm hang down.
3. Press your triceps into your inner thigh and place your other hand on your knee for support.
4. Bend your elbow and curl the weight up to your shoulder.
5. Keep your triceps in contact with your leg throughout.
6. Extend your arm and repeat.
7. Switch arms and do the same number of reps on the other side.

Do Concentration Curls the RIGHT way – Improve Your Biceps

#4. Dumbbell spider curl 

This is a lesser-known biceps exercise, but don’t let that put you off – it’s a very effective arm builder.

However, you will need an adjustable bench to do spider curls.

How to do it:

1. Set the backrest on your bench to around 30 degrees.
2. Lie face down on the bench with your head uppermost.
3. Hold a dumbbell in each hand, palms facing forward.
4. Let your arms hang down, so they’re straight.
5. Without swinging, curl your dumbbells forward and up until your forearms are above parallel to the ground.
6. Extend your arms and repeat.

Dumbbell Spider Curl

#5. Zottman curl 

This is an old-school exercise named after Philadelphia strongman George Zottman, famed for his massive biceps and forearms.

Like supinating curls, the Zottman curl involves various anatomical functions to create a very effective biceps exercise.

Zottman Curl

How to do it:

1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand by your sides, palms facing your legs.
2. Pull your shoulders down and back, and brace your core.
3. Bend your elbows and curl the weights up to your shoulders.
4. As you raise the weights, rotate your wrists so that your palms are turned upward.
5. Curl the weights all the way up until your biceps are fully contracted.
6. Next, without lowering the weights, rotate your forearms, so your palms are facing downward.
7. Keeping your hands pronated, lower the weights toward the starting position.
8. As the dumbbells near your legs, turn your wrists so your hands are neutral.
9. That’s one rep – keep going!

#6. Hammer curl 

Hammer curls not only work your biceps but the brachialis and brachioradialis muscles too.

These smaller muscles contribute to the size of your upper arms by “propping up” your biceps from below.

Hammer curls also strengthen and build your forearms.

How to do it:

1. Hold your dumbbells down by your sides; palms turned inward.
2. Pull your shoulders down and back, and brace your core.
3. Bend your elbows and curl the weights up toward your shoulders.
4. Do NOT rotate your wrists.
5. Instead, keep your hands neutral.
6. Extend your arms and repeat.
7. You can also do this exercise using an alternating arm action and seated or standing as preferred.

#7. Iso-dynamic dumbbell biceps curl 

This exercise is a great option when you only have light weights to train with.

It keeps your muscles under constant tension, which makes even lighter dumbbells feel much heavier.

It’ll also give you an excellent arm pump!

How to do it:

1. Seated or standing, curl your dumbbells up to your shoulders.
2. This is your starting position.
3. Keeping one arm stationary, slowly lower one dumbbell down to your side and then curl it back up again.
4. Next, do the same movement with the other arm.
5. Continue alternating arms for the required number of reps.
6. Make this exercise more challenging by contracting the stationary biceps as hard as possible.

#8. Dumbbell biceps 21s 

21s, also called matrix training, is one of the most effective ways to increase time under tension to build muscle mass with light weights.

It’s called 21s because each rep is divided into three ranges of motion performed for seven reps each.

How to do it:

1. Hold your dumbbells down by your sides; palms turned inward.
2. Pull your shoulder blades down and back, and brace your core.
3. Bend your arms up to 90 degrees and then lower them again.
4. Repeat for seven reps.
5. Next, do seven reps from 90 degrees to full arm flexion.
6. Finally, do seven full range of motion reps to total 21.

Dumbbell Arm Workout at Home

While you can build bigger biceps with any of the exercises described above, you’ll get better results if you follow a more structured training routine.

Do this workout twice a week on non-consecutive days, for example, Monday and Thursday.

Remember, though, that your biceps are only one-half of your arm muscles, and you must train the back of your upper arm as well.

Meaning that you must train your triceps too.

Otherwise, your arms will never reach their full size and strength potential.

Before you start, to prevent any risk of injury, make sure you spend a few minutes warming up your biceps, elbows, and shoulders.

However, if you’re the workout it as a finisher after a back workout, you can probably just dive in.

Please note: Reps are for illustration purposes only.

Try to select weights that take you to within 1-3 reps of failure in the prescribed range.

But, if you feel like you can do more reps, keep going until you are unable to continue with good form.

For hypertrophy, proximity to failure is more important than the number of reps performed.

At home arm workout with dumbbells

Dumbbell Arm Workout at Home – Wrapping Up

Show me an exerciser who says they don’t care about their biceps, and I’ll show you someone not being too honest!

Almost everyone who works out flexes their biceps from time to time and wishes their arms were bigger and stronger.

While some people are lucky enough to build impressive biceps just by doing chin-ups, rows, and other pulling exercises, others need to take a more direct approach to arm training.

Use these exercises and the workout to build biceps you can be proud of without fancy gym equipment.

All you need is an adjustable incline bench and a set of dumbbells at home.

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