Adjustable Dumbells

Let’s take a look at the new kid on the block, Bayou adjustable dumbells.  This is a company that is well-known for its wide range of quality home gym products ranging from free weights to mini trampolines to saunas.  It seems only natural that they would take a little trip into the world of adjustable dumbells, and from a consumer standpoint more is better!  The more companies that offer products in this market, the more competition there will be for the mighty dollar, the lower the prices will go.  That’s capitalism at its best.

Like I said, Bayou Fitness has a great reputation, so I had high expectations that their dumbells would not dissapoint.  And, the first impression of the Stamina 50lb Versa-Bell II once the set was delivered was certainly positive.  They have solid metal plates that are well-machined, and the pro-style grip is a nice touch as well.

There are 4 plates on each side that weigh 5 lbs each, and the bar tips the scales at 10lbs.  It stands to reason that the lowest weight you can get is 10lbs (the bar with no plates), and via 10lb increments you can get up to 50lbs.  Pretty straight forward.

I found the dial mechanism that selects which plates get picked up to have a solid feel.  You generally don’t want your weight equipment to feel cheap or rickity, so it was nice to “click” it around a few times and feel like I was dealing with a high quality mechanism.

One potential drawback to this design is that you can’t increase the weight in increments of 5lbs.  You’re forced to jump from 20lbs to 30lbs, or 30lbs to 40lbs, and so on.  While this might bother some people, I didn’t find it to be a major obstacle.  When I’m taking a client through their training session, I usually find that weight selection is as much mentally driven as it is physically.  If someone is convinced that they can only increase by a given weight increment, that’s a limit they’ve placed on themselves.  Think about the old trick of telling your training partner that they’re only benching 390lbs, and when they’re not looking slipping an extra 12.5lbs on.  More often than not, I’ve found people that believe they have hit a plateau at a major weight level to discover it’s all in their heads.

All in all, Bayou adjustable dumbells are a quality product and with Bayou Fitness’ reputation, I would have no problem recommending these weights to one of my clients.

If you haven’t seen these, you owe it to yourself to check around online or run down to your local sporting goods store and take a peek.  If you’ve read my article on old-school adjustable dumbells, you know the ups and downs, and what you can expect if you pick up a pair of these for yourself.  If you haven’t do yourself a favor and take a peek.

Things have come a long way in the past few years.  If you think about a full rack of dumbells, with a range of weight from, say, 10 lbs to 50 lbs, you have 9 sets of weights.  That makes 18 total dumbells, and a total of 540 pounds.

For one thing, that takes up a lot of space.  18 dumbells probably need a rack, and the rack is going to be big.  Not to mention the dumbells themselves.  Further, the most you’re ever going to use of these weights will be 100 lbs at a time.  Think about it - one 50 lb dumbell in each hand.  So all the rest of that iron is just sitting there doing nothing.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could use just a portion of that 50 lb dumbell and not have to pay for all the extra dead weight?  Last time I checked, steel is expensive.  It’s a shame to pay for something you’re not using.

Interestingly, you can do exactly that.  There are adjustable dumbells that allow you to do just that and are still easy to change and modify along the way.  All it takes is a click here and there, or the turn of a dial, and the weights that you want to use stay on the bar.  The ones that you don’t want will sit nicely on their stand while you perform your exercise.

These weights allow you to do exactly what we discussed before - have a 100 pounds of weight and use any combination of weights contained therein.  Now, they’re expensive, so don’t expect to pick them up for the price of a standard set of 100 lb dumbells.  But you’re really getting the use and functionality of 540 lbs of weights, so you would expect them to cost a little more.

These probably aren’t the best solution for a commercial situation where you have a clientele who are using the weights.  In that situation it’s an advantage to have more sets of independent equipment that people can use.  For the home gym, they’re perfect.

If you look around today at sporting goods stores or surf some fitness websites, you’re going to see a lot of modern adjustable dumbells that have different types of locking mechanisms to add and remove plates.  These mechanisms do not require that you actually take a plate off, rather, you simple select the weight you desire and lift.  The plates come with it.

Contrast that with our friends to the left here, which although are still a new set of adjustable dumbells, are very old technology.  Old, inconvenient, and cumbersome.

If we look at their construction, it’s quite basic.  Two bars that are threaded on each side to accept a collar.  This collar screws onto the bar and compresses the plates against a shoulder that rests just outside the grips.  You can add just about any amount and configuration of plates that will fit on each side of the grip.  It’s so simple it’s almost genius.  But not quite.

The problem comes when you want to change weights.  Don’t get me wrong, the whole contraption is very secure and safe.  There’s probably no safer way to secure weights to a bar.  The problem comes when you want to shuffle weights.  Adding plates onto the outside is relatively simple, as long as you don’t mind having them stacked randomly.  those of you who are OCD and demand that your largest plates be on the inside will soon find this to be an unacceptable situation, and start removing smaller plates before you put on the larger ones.  This takes time, and is tedious.

When taking plates off, you can’t simply strip off the 5 lb plate on each side if there’s a smaller one closer to the collars.  You’ll need to take the smaller weights off the adjustable dumbell, remove the larger one, then add the smaller plate back on before tightening the collars.  Again, messy.

Working out is enough of a hassle that I like to minimize as many interruptions as possible to get maximum return on my time invested.  I think most people will agree.