Getting Small with PowerBlocks: DIY Microloading for Big Results

Resistance training is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. The flexibility of old-school free weight exercises, with their natural transferability to real-world movements and increased recruitment of stabilizer muscles when compared against modern machine exercises, offers a superior workout for most fitness enthusiasts. With just a pair of dumbbells, an individual has all the tools to complete an effective full-body workout.

One drawback to dumbbells is that they are often sold in increments of 5 pounds. In order to make consistent gains utilizing progressive overload techniques, this frequently means moving up a total of 10 pounds for many exercises. For an average-build, middle-aged guy like me, this can be quite challenging, not to mention downright discouraging. My selectorized PowerBlock Sport 9.0 dumbbells help combat this by offering incremental increases of 2.5 pounds between some of the weight settings. For example, you can move from 15 to 17.5 to 20 pounds. You can do the same starting with 25 and advance to 27.5 and 30. But there is no 22.5-pound option, nor are there selections for 32.5-lb, 42.5-lb, 52.5-lb, etc. As a result, my experience has been that I tend to stall at 40, 50, 60, or 70 pounds, depending on which exercise I'm performing.

Hard to see here, but some weight increments are 2.5 lbs, others are 5 lbs

There are products on the market designed to overcome this inherent shortcoming of dumbbells. The two products I've seen use magnets to attach additional weight to the ends of dumbbells. These options are both expensive, though not quite as expensive as buying your own rare earth magnets, some Loctite or J.B. Weld, and four 1.25-pound weight plates (two plates on either end of both dumbbells for a total of 2.5 pounds per hand). To get four 1.25-pound plates with integrated magnets, I found, would set me back $50 on Amazon. This was not a viable option, so I opted for Plan B, which set me back about $6.50 at Wal-Mart.

 2 strips of Velcro stuck back-to-back makes a great strap

I needed only some fastening tape (commonly referred to as Velcro) for this simple project. I cut two eleven-inch pieces and stuck them together sticky side-to-sticky side, creating a quick and easy strap when the Velcro is folded back onto itself. I made four of these, two per dumbbell, with the idea being to hold a 2.5-pound barbell plate to the bottom of each PowerBlock.

Weight plate attached to the adder weight housing of the PowerBlock

The 2.5-pound plate does not fit perfectly along the bottom of the PowerBlock. The plate is a little too large to fit between the bottom lips of the handle core and flush against the two tubes housing the adder weights. However, I have found that if I place the weight above the lip nearest my pinkie finger, I experience no problems with plate movement throughout the duration of the exercise.

   Two straps securely hold the weight

Two Stage II PowerBlock Sport 9.0 dumbbells provide the equivalent of 56 individual dumbbells, ranging between 2.5 and 90 pounds. Factoring in my do-it-yourself microloading method increases this equivalency to 74 individual dumbbells and ups the range to 92.5 pounds, which is more than enough weight for me. 

These smaller increments make it easier to advance when you hit a brick wall. My personal sticking point recently has been with making the leap from 40-pound dumbbells to 45-pounders on the shoulder press. So today I strapped on the 2.5-pounders and created a pair of 42.5-pound dumbbells. As it turned out, my wife just happened to be standing by with a stool and a camera to capture me experimenting with my design. What great luck! But the camera batteries were dead. Now that's more like the luck I'm accustomed to. I wanted the picture to *prove* my design worked. Finally, by about the 3rd set, and after thoroughly trashing the Rayovac brand, Tara got the picture I needed to complete this post.

Pressing up the crude, but effective, 42.5-lb DIY PowerBlocks