Q: Hi I am trying to build serious muscle and strength , but: 1) have no gym nearby (nearest 80km) 2)have purchased dumbbells so that is all I have to work with at present please HELP!

A: You can accomplish quite a bit using your own bodyweight and some dumbbells for resistance. First, see if you can find a place to do pullups somewhere. It could be pullup bar installed in a doorway or something as simple as a sturdy horizontal branch on a tree. Pullups are probably the single best upper body exercise and they only require your bodyweight and a bar.

Second, remember that without excess calories and slow steady weight gain you will never build up much new muscle and your strength gains will be limited as well (though it's certainly still possible to get quite strong without building much new muscle). So you'll need to read my Nutrition article and put together a diet plan for yourself. You can use Fitness Guide to get a starter plan that you could then customize for your specific situation by keeping total calories and protein/carbs/fats about the same but changing specific foods and combining multiple meals into one as needed. Aim to gain about 1 pound of weight every two weeks. If you gain weight faster than that you'll gain too much new fat. The slower your weight gain the more likely it is to be new muscle and not new fat.

Finally you'll need to put together an exercise plan for yourself. Here's a starter dumbbell exercise program. For many or all of these exercises the dumbbells you have now will become too light once you can do more than the prescribed number of reps. To build muscle you need to keep lifting heavy, ideally using such weight that you can only do the given exercise 12 times (reps) or fewer in a row before being physically exhausted. So you might need to keep buying new dumbbells as you gain strength and your current dumbbells become too light for you. Some exercises, such as deadlifts, will require much heavier dumbbells than others, such as bicep curls. So you'll probably end up with 3 or 4 different weight dumbbells to fit all exercises. You'll also need to keep bodyweight exercises challenging. 20 pushups should become too easy sooner or later but you can make then harder by putting your hands close together and/or elevating your feet off the floor.

You could also start your fitness blog on my site in the Blogs section -- that way I can monitor your progress and suggest improvements (it's all free of course). Hope that helps, good luck!