Dumbbell Exercise Archives - www.oldtimestrongman.com

The Dumbbell Pullover

Posted on Monday, September 24th, 2012 by John Wood

Dumbbell Pullover, Paul Wynter

If there’s one exercise that rarely gets its due it is the dumbbell pullover, demonstrated here by 1960 and ’66 Mr. Universe winner Paul Wynter. When done correctly, it can add a great deal of muscle to the upper body, especially when combined with high-rep breathing squats.

Hans Zdrazila

Posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 by John Wood

They say a picture is worth a thousand words… if you are paying attention to this one, your take away should be that the overhead dumbbell press is an exercise worth adding to your training. Core strength? Yeah, you can see his abs through his shirt. The man at the other end of those awesome dumbbells is Hans Zdrazila, Czechoslovakian weightlifter who took home the gold medal in the middleweight class at the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan (with a 445.5 kg total, btw).

Fred Winters

Posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 by John Wood

Fred Winters

Fred Winters, of the New Westside Athletic Club of New York, won the Silver Medal in the Dumbell Lifting portion of the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri. The competition consisted of nine individual dumbbell lifting events with the tenth event being an original feat of strength of the competitor’s choice.

Above is the result of Section #6 of the contest “Pushing up slowly one dumbbell with one hand from the shoulder to arm’s length above the shoulder” which Mr. Winters won with a lift of 126-1/2 pounds.

Fred was in the lead after the all dumbbell events and for his choice feat he performed six one-arm pushups with 105 extra pounds of weight strapped to his back… An impressive feat, but only good enough for second place.

The Dumbbell Bench Press

Posted on Sunday, October 9th, 2011 by John Wood

Reg Park Dumbbell Bench Pres

An exercise that rarely gets its due is the dumbbell bench press. It can be performed in much safer manner than the barbell version and builds just as much (if not more) upper-body strength and power.

The Dumbbell Bench Press was one of Reg Park’s favorite exercises. Here’s Reg using 140 pounds in each hand — an impressive poundage if you can do it once… Reg lifted it for 5 sets of 10 reps in a typical workout.

The Bowmill Exercise

Posted on Monday, September 5th, 2011 by John Wood

If you were looking for dumbbell exercises from back around the time of the Civil War, here’s one you might have run across: “The Bow Mill Exercise,” as discussed by Dio Lewis in 1864:

“The Bow Mill Exercise: The apart position is taken from which the dumb bells are made to describe a circle, the circumference of which shall be as near as possible to the floor, and as high up on the right as possible, and thus is followed by another circle of the same description to the left.”

Les Willoughby

Posted on Saturday, August 27th, 2011 by John Wood

Les Willoughby

Les Willoughby, the great light-heavyweight British weightlifter, is shown here about to perform the 2-dumbbell press, one of the seven best power-building exercises. His best performance in this lift was a press of 230 pounds for two reps. He could also barbell press 245 lbs., snatch 242-1/2 lbs. clean & jerk 330 pounds and just may have done some squatting in his day.