Whether you’re looking for a finisher to build killer grip strength, a quick burner to grow massive shoulders, or just something test your mettle, the ‘Barry’s Dumbbells’ protocol has you covered – and all in just five minutes.
The drill comes courtesy of Tom Barry, a world-class strength coach at Westside Barbell Jiu Jitsu. It was originally devised to build strength endurance in fighters – a realm were the ability to keep squeezing, pressing and controlling long after your shoulders and forearms start burning is pivotal.
It’s only a five-minute protocol, so we’ll keep the brief just as choppy. Here’s how it works.
How to Do the Workout
Grab a pair of dumbbells and set a countdown timer for 5:00. Hold one dumbbell down by your side while continuously pressing the other overhead. At 2:30, switch hands, so the arm that’s been working gets demoted to the hang, and the one that’s been hanging has to start pressing. The key detail is this: the dumbbells are either being held or pressed for the FULL five minutes. There’s no putting them down, no shaking it off, no negotiation with the clock – so choose your weights wisely.
Why it Works So Well
What makes it so effective is the stacking of multiple challenges for your body to contend with. You’re racking up serious overhead pressing volume while simultaneously building grip strength, shoulder stability and an unshakable kind of muscular endurance. The dumbbell hanging at your side will quickly become the villain of the piece: your forearm flexors flare up, your traps start to throb, your obliques brace to stop you listing sideways. All while the pressing arm keeps grinding out reps: bouncing your torso around, giving your core even more to contend with. Five minutes doesn’t sound like much, but it’s likely to feel like forever.
Coaching Cue
The coaches at Conjugate Tactical Training note that as a benchmark you should aim to accumulate around 100 total presses across the five minutes. When you can hit that consistently, increase the load. Alternatively, they suggest going lighter and chasing maximum reps, or going heavier and simply trying to survive the full duration, even if the reps drop off dramatically. Adding that all options are ‘equally terrible’. You’ve been warned.
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
