Outgrown your light dumbbells? Try this simple trick to make your workouts more challenging

If you've outgrown your light dumbbells but are waiting for payday for a Black Friday dumbbell deal to upgrade to a heavier set, I've found a little trick you can use. Fitness trainer Danica Osborn adds a mini looped resistance band to this six-move shoulder workout to make it more challenging.

Osborn told her 735,000 Instagram followers: “This is a fantastic full shoulder and rotator workout. Great for stabilizing and strengthening, and especially good if you're limited by the weights you have at home. A band will really kick things up a notch!”

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How to do Danica Osborn’s workout

Osborn holds 5lb dumbbells and the ends of the band in each hand. As she moves her hands apart, the band adds extra resistance. If this combination still isn't enough to challenge you, try taking longer to complete the movements.

Be sure to warm up for at least five minutes before trying this workout—try the bodyweight movements in this shoulder warm-up on our sister site Coach—and spend the same amount of time cooling down.

Benefits of adding resistance bands to your weights

Looping a resistance band around your light dumbbells can make exercises more challenging by increasing the load. And if you want your muscles to get bigger and build strength you need to keep pushing them with an increase in intensity (using a heavier load or slower tempo), frequency (more workouts per week) or volume (increasing the reps)—a principle known as progressive overload.

If you don’t keep increasing the challenge, your muscles will quickly adapt and your workouts won't result in any increases in strength. But by adding a band to your light dumbbells you make the exercises much harder, causing your muscle fibers to break down and grow back stronger.