POWERBLOCK 24 UPGRADE
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While there are limitations, they won’t bother someone just starting out. This is a fantastic pair of adjustable dumbbells for beginners at an unbeatable price. Are The PowerBlock Sport 24 Dumbbells Worth It? It’s a minor issue and not one at all if you plan to only do straight sets – but in that scenario I imagine a pair with a dial would get the job done quicker. This tended to take me 20 seconds although during one transition the clip wouldn’t slot in and it took me a minute. Ideally, there should be as little rest as possible, but for the front raise/shrug combo I wanted to switch from the lightest to the heaviest setting.

The only downside was how tricky it was to switch between weights in the middle of supersets. The Sport 24 also have slightly shorter handles, but I found them comfortable to grasp and the textured thermoplastic rubber (TPR) had more than enough grip even for fully loaded bells. I tried it in the Fiit workout but needed an open-grip hex dumbbell.

POWERBLOCK 24 UPGRADE

If you count yourself as someone with big hands and thick wrists, it may be worth upgrading to the Sport 50, which has a bigger diameter (1.49 vs 1.18in/38 vs 30mm).Įven if you upgrade to a PowerBlock, I think the caged design means you’ll have to discount alternating dumbbell snatches, swapping hands mid-air. It was also a minor irritation when performing moves like the woodchop or halo that required holding the grip of one dumbbell in two hands, but in both cases it wasn’t so annoying that I couldn’t finish the set.

However, the position of the narrow-grip dumbbell press-up meant one of my wrists scraped the side rail as I lowered, to the point that I switched to the usual hands-on-floor position after the first set. The flat, stable base of the Sport 24s meant I had no problems with renegade rows or dumbbell press-ups. (Image credit: Jonathan Shannon / Future) The movement, and therefore the noise, was minor, and I didn’t get the impression that the clip holding the plates in place was loose, even when moving it next to my head, as in overhead triceps extensions, or whirling it in a circle around it, as in the halo.

POWERBLOCK 24 FREE

There was noise performing arm exercises with the free weight travelling in an arc as I flexed my elbow – enough to be heard upstairs – but apparently it sounded as if I was ironing. They were silent during the up-down movements in the chest and back dumbbell workout. I feared that, even though the plates nestle neatly together, the dumbbells would make a racket but mostly they didn’t. However, when I shifted to one dumbbell only for a goblet squat it was too light. Squatting while holding 48lb – a dumbbell in each hand – was a challenge, and at the lighter end, 3lb was a good starting point for the shoulder-focused workout. I confess to being something of a weightlifting novice and spend most of my time running and playing sport rather than hefting iron, so the weight range was usually always more than enough for me. Since the exercises in our plan are done with a controlled tempo, I also completed a dumbbell shred on Fiit (the best workout app in our opinion) to get the weights moving more dynamically. That means I tried seven types of presses, three types of rows, three dumbbell curls and 12 more besides, including a woodchop and halo – if ever a weight plate was going to come loose it was when I was making a chopping motion or passing it around my head. (Image credit: Jonathan Shannon / Future) How I Tested These DumbbellsĪdjustable dumbbells are ideal for completing our dumbbell home workout plan, so I tried all four workouts using the PowerBlock Sport 24.

Powerblock 24