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Unplugged

Home Dumbbell Workout for Mass, for Beginners, 3 Days a Week

An unplugged set is played in a small room on acoustic instruments, for the people right there. “Unplugged” brings training home: dumbbells, a bench and three full-body workouts a week. Clear some space around your bench and start with the intro week.

  • GoalMass Gain
  • LevelBeginner
  • WhereHome
  • Workouts24
  • One workout~46 min
  • ForEveryone
Start it in the appThe app calculates the weight of every set from your 1RM

Who it’s for

  • You’re starting to train at home
  • You have dumbbells and a bench
  • You want to build muscle

How it works

  1. 013 workouts a week, 5 exercises each; chest, back and legs work in every session, 9 sets a week per muscle group
  2. 02Base, 4 weeks: weighted exercises for 12 reps, with the load rising week by week
  3. 03Build, 4 weeks: 10 reps, with the load moving in a wave and a step back in week 3
  4. 042 minutes of rest between sets; toward the end of each stage, the reps in reserve shrink
Method

Light weights at home

At home you only have dumbbells, and light weights build muscle when the set ends not far from failure. The weight is recalculated from how you rate your sets, and toward the end of each stage the reps in reserve shrink.

Weekly volume

Counts sets where the muscle is the main target of the exercise

  • Chest9 sets3 workouts
  • Back9 sets3 workouts
  • Shoulders6 sets2 workouts
  • Quads6 sets2 workouts
  • Arms6 sets2 workouts
  • Abs6 sets2 workouts
  • Hamstrings & glutes3 sets1 workout

Weighted sets end at least 2 reps short of failure

What the research shows

3

  • Light and heavy weights produce the same muscle growth; heavy weights build more strength

    Schoenfeld et al., 2017

  • Muscle growth does not depend on the weight used; max strength improves more with heavy weights

    Lopez et al., 2021

  • The closer a set ends to failure, the more muscle growth; the link with strength is weak

    Robinson et al., 2024
The studies tested the principles; the program itself has not been tested in this form.

Workout A

5 exercises · ~46 min

The whole first workout. Tap an exercise to open its technique with photos and video.

  1. 01Dumbbell LungesQuads3 × 12weight from 1RM
  2. 02Dumbbell Bench PressChest3 × 12weight from 1RM
  3. 03One-Arm Dumbbell RowMiddle Back3 × 12weight from 1RM
  4. 04Dumbbell Shoulder PressShoulders3 × 12weight from 1RM
  5. 05CrunchesAbs3 × 15bodyweight

All workouts in the program

24 sessions over ~7.5 weeks, 3–4 per week. Workouts A, B and C repeat in a loop, 8 times each. The other workouts and the weight for every set are in the app.

Workout intensity

The load of each session: higher means harder. average per round A–C

hardereasierWorkout 1 (A)Workout 2 (B)Workout 3 (C)Workout 4 (A)Workout 5 (B)Workout 6 (C)Workout 7 (A)Workout 8 (B)Workout 9 (C)Workout 10 (A)Workout 11 (B)Workout 12 (C)Workout 13 (A)Workout 14 (B)Workout 15 (C)Workout 16 (A)Workout 17 (B)Workout 18 (C)Workout 19 (A)Workout 20 (B)Workout 21 (C)Workout 22 (A)Workout 23 (B)Workout 24 (C)Round 1: averageRound 2: averageRound 3: averageRound 4: averageRound 5: averageRound 6: averageRound 7: averageRound 8: average

Workout number

AtletIQ app

Program weights — from your 1RM

1RM is the weight you can lift once. Enter it for the base exercises and AtletIQ will calculate working weights for all 24 workouts of “Unplugged”.

  • The weight of every set comes from your 1RM
  • All workouts of the program in order, with rest between sets
  • Progress for every exercise
Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play