Steps
- Allow the dumbbell to hang at arms length between your legs, holding it with both hands. Keep your back straight and your head up.
- Swing the dumbbell between your legs, flexing at the hips and bending the knees slightly.
- Powerfully reverse the motion by extending at the hips, knees, and ankles to propel yourself upward, swinging the dumbell over your head.
- As you land, absorb the impact through your legs and draw the dumbbell to your torso before the next repetition.
Tracking it in OneRep
Add the vertical swing to a routine and your previous weight and reps sit beside every set, so the decision to add load is made by what is already on the screen rather than by memory. Exercise history and volume trends are one tap away, and logging works offline for the gyms where signal does not reach.
Because OneRep tracks food on the same timeline, a stall on this lift can be read against what you were actually eating that month — which is the difference between a programming problem and an eating one. More on that in tracking progressive overload without a spreadsheet.
Where the instructions come from
The steps above come from free-exercise-db, a public-domain exercise dataset. They are general guidance, not coaching for your body: if a movement hurts, stop and get someone qualified to look at it.