I swapped dumbbells for ankle and wrist weights for a week—here’s how it improved my workouts
As a certified personal trainer, I love introducing my clients to new and interesting fitness tools. While ankle and wrist weights might not dominate your gym floor, they’re great for adding variety to your gym routine and engaging your muscles in different ways. Recently, the dreadful weather in my area has kept me from getting to the gym. Rather than doing my usual heavy dumbbell circuits, I decided to stay warm indoors and pull out my ankle and wrist weights for a change of pace. I hadn’t used them in ages and I was amazed at the impact they had on my workout. Here’s why I’ll be incorporating them more often. My hips and glutes felt stronger My usual workout routine features squats, lunges and deadlifts with dumbbells, which are fantastic for building lower-body strength. These moves target large muscles in your lower legs, so you need to use heavy weights to make them challenging. As wrist and ankle weights are lighter than dumbbells, I switched out these exercises for leg lifts and kickbacks. These …