We Reviewed the Hammer Strength Pro 100 Adjustable Dumbbells | Deep Dive | Men’s Health Muscle
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00:00The backbone of any great home gym is your pair of adjustable dumbbells, but
00:05most adjustable dumbbells have two main problems. One, they are not nearly durable
00:10enough to carry you for the life of your training, and two, they just aren't heavy
00:14enough to really let you push and as you advance they're not going to carry you.
00:17Today though we're going to test a pair that may address both of those issues.
00:21That is the Hammer Strength Pro 100 adjustable dumbbells. These are a
00:26collaboration between Hammer Strength and Power Blocks, so two recognizable
00:30names, and they aim to address both of our issues in a couple ways. One, Power
00:35Blocks has always been known for building really really durable
00:38adjustable dumbbells, so they're going to try to address things in that way. These
00:41bill themselves as the toughest adjustable dumbbells on the market. We
00:44will test that. Two, these dumbbells, unlike most of what's on the market, go
00:49up to a hundred pounds. In general when you see adjustable dumbbells you're
00:53going to see them usually 40, 50, 60 pounds. 80 or 90 on the high end. In fact,
00:58Power Blocks regular adjustable dumbbells typically go up to 90, but
01:02these go up to 100. Those extra 10 pounds offer you a little bit more challenge on
01:07your farmer's carries, on your dumbbell presses, on a lot of your heavier lifts
01:11that can actually get you stronger. So let's see how these Hammer Strength Pro
01:14adjustable stack up. We're going to run them through a couple tests and see
01:17where things shake out. So what's under the hood on these adjustable dumbbells?
01:20They're made of urethane coated steel plates. These are meant to be durable.
01:24They're not the plastic that you might see on a lot of cheaper adjustable
01:27dumbbells, and there's also a lot of freedom for us to make adjustments here.
01:30We go from 5 all the way up to 100 pounds. We're doing it with the clip,
01:34which in theory is going to be part of the durability of these dumbbells. Really
01:38easy to slip and change, and we can adjust these dumbbells not just in these
01:44large 10 pound increments, but by two and a half pounds via this little tab here.
01:48All we do is hit that, and then we can take out two and a half pound add-on, add-on,
01:54so that we can change the load on our dumbbells. When we purchase these, you're
01:58going to start with 40 pounds, and from there you can purchase expansion packs
02:03to get yourself all the way up to 100. So that winds up being the setup. It's a
02:07really, really nice setup. Seems to offer us a lot of options, but will it stand up
02:11to the test? We're going to go to that now. So how are we going to test these
02:14dumbbells? We're going to do this men's health style, and we're going to do this
02:17in a way that's going to help you figure out whether you can get a full
02:19workout in with them. We're going to basically take these dumbbells through a
02:23full workout. We're going to do five exercises. They're going to range in
02:26different weights. We're going to get a light exercise in there, something a
02:29little bit ballistic, something heavy. That way we can test these dumbbells and
02:33take them through their paces. Then we're going to test their durability, and we're
02:36going to start this off with the biceps curl, a workout that's in most guys
02:39regimens, and we're going to start light. We're only going to do a set with 25
02:43pounds just to get a feel for things.
02:52Helped me to get the weight right. And all we're going to do, and right off the bat,
02:58I mean these feel fine. One of the issues I've always had with power blocks is
03:04these rims, right, or these spokes right here kind of cut into my ability to get
03:11a truly complete range of motion. That continues to be a problem with power
03:16blocks, but at the same time I still get a nice good contraction, and these weights
03:21feel sturdy, so instantly right off the bat I like that a lot. So the takeaway
03:26from doing the curls is, yes, we can get curls done. We can get some of our
03:29accessory motions done, but because we still have these strips across that just
03:34add stability, that's part of the reason these dumbbells are so durable, but they
03:38are going to undercut your range of motion on a couple things. They're not
03:41going to feel as natural for your accessory exercise, in particular my
03:44curls. Just, I can do them, but I'm not really getting that full contraction
03:48that I want. So test one went okay. I feel like I can get some curls done with this,
03:52but how do the power blocks handle with ballistic ideas? We're going to test that
03:56with a dumbbell snatch. So we're going to add a little bit of weight. So let's get
04:00a set of these snatches and see how things feel.
04:11I definitely feel a little bit constrained, again, because I've got those
04:21strips on the outside of the dumbbell, and I don't feel like, if I was doing
04:26alternating snatches, if I was doing some kind of really fast-paced crossfit style
04:29on that con, it's not going to be a really fluid experience, but if I'm just
04:32doing classic snatches, if I'm not really trying to move with any kind of
04:36speed, if I don't need to fit something into like some sort of EMOM or
04:39five-minute AMRAP, you can make it work with these. Not ideal for explosive ideas,
04:44but we can get it done. So we've hit a couple light exercises. Now we're going
04:47to get to the fun stuff. We're going to start to lift heavy. We're going to move
04:50up a little bit more with these power blocks, and we're going to get in an incline
04:53press. This gives us a chance to test that. If you can't bench press with
04:56dumbbells, are they really any good? Probably not. So the mechanism is nice
05:02and easy as we change weights. It's pretty fluid. You do need to kind of
05:06rethink a little bit because you have to make sure you match the color to the
05:09right weight, as it's listed here. But once you're in a rhythm, it's just like
05:13picking up a dumbbell and trying to figure out where you're going load-wise there.
05:18So incline press is getting in position nice and easy.
05:23So it felt pretty solid, felt pretty good once I got in pressing position. To be
05:37honest, I actually like setting up with the power blocks a lot better than I
05:42like setting up with a standard pair of dumbbells because you don't wind up with
05:46any kind of spots that are nagging into your thighs when you're setting up for
05:49your press. So I actually kind of appreciated that about these. Once I got
05:53in pressing position, nice and easy. Again, because we've got these bars here,
05:57you have to be pretty decisive with how you're grasping the bar, but that's not
06:01really a bad thing at all. So these definitely passed the incline press test.
06:05They definitely felt very, very solid out of those presses. Now we're gonna flip
06:09around. We got to get a back exercise in here. We're gonna move up in load with
06:12this. So we're gonna go for 80 pounds and we're gonna work an incline row. This
06:18gives us a chance to to insert the clips back in. Nice quick process and
06:27that is a very quick change with that red dial. Super easy.
06:37And it takes a little bit to kind of line up those clips just right, but it
06:42gets the job done. See if we can be faster on the other side. And so it is
06:57just a little bit, I don't use these dumbbells all the time, so it took me a
07:00while to figure it out. Much faster on the other side. Let's see how these guys row.
07:12So starting to move a little bit of load. And how do these handle? I can
07:16technically get my incline rows done, but your mileage on this is gonna vary a
07:22little bit based on the style of your bench. I've got slightly wide supports on
07:28this bench and that actually means rowing because of the width of these
07:32dumbbells that actually took me a little bit of a while to figure out. And I had
07:35to go a little bit wider with my row. If you're doing chest supported rows with
07:40these, it's gonna feel a little bit different. Dem free weights gonna take a
07:43little bit of getting used to. You're gonna want to start a little bit lighter.
07:46It does feel good. Again, these dumbbells feel terrifically solid both on the
07:50incline press and on this row. They don't have that sense of looseness that I feel
07:55with some adjustable dumbbells. So that is a definite plus. I feel really, really
07:59comfortable with these. I just wish they weren't quite so wide for the load that
08:04I'm at. I'm at 80 pounds. I wish they were a little bit skinnier. That way I had a
08:08little bit more freedom to row. So now let's max these babies out. We've tried a
08:12bunch of exercises for our upper body. I can get most of my upper body motions
08:16done with these Pro 100s, but what happens when I max things out? How does
08:19it work for training my lower body? To test that out, we're gonna go to the
08:23Romanian deadlift and we're gonna take these dumbbells now from 80 all the way
08:26up to 100. Let's see how they handle.
08:30As I'm getting more and more comfortable, it gets easier to kind of switch the
08:39weights. The first thing right off the bat, these dumbbells are really wide.
09:00So how do these feel with the RDL? Well, they're definitely a little bit wide and
09:05I notice it mostly when I'm trying to glide down. If I'm using standard
09:11dumbbells or standard free weights, I can keep my arms a little bit closer to my
09:14sides. Here I was a little bit more out because I have to deal with the width of
09:19the power blocks. Still, it was a really, really good, comfortable experience. I
09:23actually like the rubber grips for heavy lifts like this. Made it a little bit
09:28easier on me to maintain my grip, which I liked a lot. Going heavy with them, again,
09:34a really good feeling of solidity to the dumbbells, which I really liked on the
09:39RDL. So you're gonna be able to get your heavyweight exercises done and to be
09:43honest, the fact that you have this little guard out here on the Pro 100
09:47actually serves a little bit of benefit because I can lean that guard almost
09:52against my forearm and it makes it a little bit easier to hold the dumbbells
09:56over your duration. So if you're doing farmer's walks, if you're doing heavy
10:00lunges, if you're doing ideas where you want to go heavy but you don't really
10:04want to overthink or you're not focusing on your grip and you just want to be
10:07able to hold the dumbbells, the structure of these Pro 100s actually works a
10:11little bit in your favor. So I'm gonna give it high marks for the RDL and for
10:15any of the heavy lifts you're gonna do where we're gonna hold bilaterally and
10:18we've just got to hold a heavy weight. Okay, so now to the exciting part, the
10:22drop test. So I can get through a full workout with the Pro 100s, that's a
10:26really good sign. The ultimate test of any dumbbell though is gonna be its
10:31durability. The only way we can really test that is by dropping the dumbbells
10:36and seeing what happens. So that's exactly what we're gonna do. We're gonna
10:38do it at two different loads. We're gonna do it lighter with 50 pounds to see what
10:42happens from two different heights and then we're gonna do it with the max
10:46dumbbell. The interesting thing with the build of these Pro 100s is that the
10:51heavier the dumbbell gets, the more secure it gets. So hopefully that helps
10:56but we're really just gonna find out as soon as we drop them. So let's see what
10:59happens. We've got four drops, let's see how these Pro 100s survive and then
11:04we'll make a judgment on exactly how these dumbbells fit in with your routines.
11:07Now before we drop all this, we got to keep one thing in mind. If you actually
11:11do drop the dumbbells, you void the warranty. We don't care about that
11:15because we want to get a really good test in, so let's just do it. Let's go
11:18with the lightweight. Hard. And the heavy one. Okay so let's see what our damage
11:27report is on these. The good thing is they didn't go far. Now a couple of
11:33things we want to test on these after we've dropped them. There are three
11:37mechanics we need to check. We need to make sure we can change the weights and
11:39we need to make sure we can swap the weights and we need to make sure we can
11:41take out the core piece. So let's test it. Let's see how the 50-pound unit fared.
11:51Clip still works nice and easy. It's plastic so this is pretty durable and
11:55again this is just, that's a nice simple mechanism. Pulling out the dumbbell still
12:01works fine. Now the thing with power blocks, originals in general, is
12:05sometimes these clips can jam. This little red tab can jam, but it's
12:09functioning fine. So from a very basic drop height, as if you were finishing a
12:21bench press and you couldn't finish off the set, the 50-pounder survived. We can
12:24almost assume that the 100-pounder survived, but let's just double check that.
12:31Clip moves nice and easily, even though it came down to the ground with more
12:38force, the tab still works just fine. Shifts in and out nice and easy. We are
12:44successful at a bench height. Let's see what happens when we drop it from higher.
12:47That'll be even more fun. So we've got one more test. We're gonna go about
12:51shoulder level and we're gonna test those same features and see what happens.
12:55This is the ultimate test of dumbbell durability, a good sign that these can
13:00take a pounding, assuming they survive. So let's see what happens. Gonna take the
13:0450-pound dumbbell. Count to three. One, two, three. Okay, so that's the 50-pound
13:14dumbbell. Keep in mind it's from a pretty high height. Let's see what happens when we drop the 100.
13:19One, two, three. The Power Blocks did not survive the high drop test. And basically,
13:31on both the 100 and the 50, it's different degrees of damage, but it looks like it's
13:39only on the clip that changes the weights, which is actually kind of a good sign.
13:45The attachment for us to shift to lightweight still works really well on the 100. This
13:54attachment still works as well, still feels solid. So the core of the dumbbell survives
13:59and the actual load survives. The only thing that you're gonna run the risk of
14:03damaging if you wind up dropping your dumbbells is the the plastic part, which
14:09in theory, it's only attached by a piece of elastic and it just wraps around the
14:16outside of the dumbbell. So this is entirely replaceable. You can easily buy
14:20the selector clip. It winds up only being 15 bucks. The core of the dumbbell
14:24survives, so you still have a really, really sturdy structure. We just have to
14:28attach this back on, so it's really not that bad. The dumbbells are durable. In
14:31terms of scratches, we have one scratch on the large dumbbell, so it's a hundred
14:37pounds crashing down to the ground. The 50-pound dumbbell, there's nothing. These
14:40things are still like new. So final thoughts on the Hammer Strength Pro 100s.
14:45These are probably not for beginners. If you're somebody who's just training in
14:49your living room and you just want to move a little bit of weight, you're not
14:51really going to take advantage of all the load that you can get onto these, and
14:56you're also not going to get the most out of it for your smaller accessory
14:59motions, for dumbbell curls, for skull crushers, for ideas like that. If you
15:03really want to push the load and you want to go heavy, these are great
15:06dumbbells for the RDLs. I love them for incline presses and for bench presses,
15:11and they get through just enough on the rows that you can really get a workout
15:14done. So they're a really great dumbbell for anybody who wants to push a load. If
15:18you're really trying to build muscle, there's a lot of challenge. And as we
15:21found in the drop test, these can take a pretty good pounding. They'll only run
15:25you 15 bucks in the long run because the core of this unit is really built to
15:29last.