Q: I realized I had asked a question I already knew the answer to in Q 231. I think I was just worried about not having access to machines & heavy weights. I only have two 3-pound DBs to work with. But if I can somehow get my hands on different size weights, would it possible to build small muscles in one area and large muscles in another? For instance, say you want large quad, hamstring, and calf muscles but small muscles in the shoulders & biceps. If it is possible, how? I love your site by the way! Very motivational & informative.

A: Thank you! Very glad my site is helping you. To answer your questions, yes, absolutely, with just several sized dumbbells you can have very good workouts for all the major muscle groups in your body! I just put up a sample dumbbell-only program and you can change my other workout programs to substitute nearly every barbell exercise with an equivalent dumbbell one. And the best news for you is that your body will naturally do what you want as far as muscle size. If you train your whole body with any good resistance program, then the major muscles such as quads and hamstrings will naturally grow even bigger and the smaller muscles like biceps and shoulder muscles will grow bigger too, but slower, so your overall proportions won't change much. Calf muscles can be a little tricky -- they are not a naturally very big muscle and for most people they won't grow huge from weight training, but they can get quite big from a lot of running! But for pretty much every other muscle, as long as you train them all, devoting most time to big muscle groups and less time to smaller ones (such as in all my sample programs), they will all grow in proportion achieving exactly the effect you're looking for.