Think you need a fancy gym to build muscle? Nope — here’s how to get jacked with just two dumbbells.

This is Dayton.

A typical guy who can’t commit to gyms because “life is too busy." “Gyms are too expensive”, and he’d eat whatever was reachable. But here's the worrying bit.

His current body fat is 32.5%! And his visceral fat is dangerously high.

So, as a caring brother-in-law, I’m stepping in to save his life, showing him how to get jacked with a home gym, a better diet, and 3 science-backed strategies. 

In the next 6 months, I'm getting Dayton to only use a bench, dumbbells, and a pull-up bar, which cost only $200.

If, by the end of it, Dayton can cut his body fat by 10%, visceral fat by half, and gain at least 3 lbs of muscle, I will reward him a _____. (Learn what his mystery gift is by sticking to the end.)

If he can’t even train 4 days a week? He’s swallowing this dumbbell.

How To Get Jacked (Workout Science)

So here's the million-dollar question: how to get jacked without the gym?

Well, to get Dayton just as good of results as he would in a fully equipped gym, I’ve built a science-backed workout routine that can target every single muscle with just 2 dumbbells and a bench. 

Chest

When people think about how to get jacked, chest training usually comes first. So let’s start with building his chest.

Dayton:

“Looks like I have tits."

To fix that, I first took Dayton through a sternum test to find the best bench angle.

But it’ll only work if he uses the correct arm position.

Next, I finished on his chest, sorry, finished off his chest, with a flat dumbbell press to target the mid and lower fibers, then we moved onto the back because a huge part of how to get jacked isn’t just chest or arms — it’s also building a strong back.

Back

First up, a chest-supported dumbbell row to target his mid and upper back for thickness and definition. The key here is to use a wide elbow angle. But I quickly noticed Dayton’s weaker back muscles led to other areas taking over instead.

He's a classic arm puller, just like Kevin here. And here's how he fixed it.

Then, we moved on to a single-arm dumbbell row. But to now target his lats for back width, he kept his elbow tight to his sides while sweeping his arm back towards his hips. 

Shoulders

Next up, the muscle Dayton has always struggled with is the shoulders. But after watching his technique, I quickly found out why. 

After fixing his technique, the thing about this exercise is it's gonna build the front delts, but what actually gives him the width is the side delts.

While we don't have cables, we can replicate the same effect with dumbbells in this how to get jacked without a gym challenge.

Side Delts

The first exercise is lateral raises reverse dropsets.

Why? Because with your traditional lateral raises, if you do reps to failure, your delts actually still have so much more even though you can't do any more full reps.

So here's what Dayton learned about how to get jacked with broader shoulders: do normal reps, go heavier, then only do partials.

The second exercise is leaning dumbbell raises to mimic cables.

See, when you do lateral raises, the exercise is the most difficult up there, and super easy down there. So with a wall, if you hold it like so, and angle yourself sideways, it's gonna make it harder down here, and easier up here.

Meaning? If you combine these on one day, and those guys on the other there, boom, you're hitting the delts in all the different ways.

Arms

No guide on how to get jacked would be complete without a plan for biceps and triceps.

So for his arms, a recent study on the biceps found that incline curls with the arms locked behind the body seem to provide more growth in the upper biceps. Whereas preacher curls lead to more growth in the lower biceps and brachialis.

Which makes both of them the perfect combo for complete growth.

As for the triceps ...

Dayton's got really nice lateral head, which you get from doing a lot of pressing, but his long head seems to be lagging.

So if I were to choose only 1 exercise to target that in this how to get jacked without a gym challenge, it would be the standing overhead extension.

Legs

And of course, for anyone serious about how to get jacked, skipping leg day isn’t an option.

For the lower body, since a high bench can feel tough on the hips, we lowered it with styrofoam so we could do wide stance Bulgarian split squats to hit his glutes, followed by a narrower stance driving his knee forward to hit his quads.

Then, slow and controlled Romanian deadlifts for his hamstrings.

As for calves, our bench wasn’t gonna cut it. Dayton thought of building a platform — a solid one, not one made out of styrofoam.

We’ll see what he ends up building when I’m back in 4 weeks, which is when I’ll also surprise him with a few more exercises in this how to get jacked without a gym challenge to take his training to the next level.

How To Get Jacked Without The Gym: Full Workout Routine

Here’s the full workout routine Dayton will be following, using our Built With Science+ app to track all his progress.

But We Can't Overlook Dayton's Diet

Of course, knowing how to get jacked isn’t just about training; diet is half the battle.

So, before I leave, there’s still one more room I need to check out. The kitchen — as I want to find what in Dayton’s diet might be contributing to his alarming amount of visceral fat.

I quickly scanned Dayton’s favourite ribeye steak dinner with our BWS+ app, and it contains almost 50 grams of saturated fat and 610 calories. I actually wrote an article about how saturated fat contributes to visceral fat, which you can check out here.

Oh, not to mention the butter he’d use for cooking, that’s an extra 150 calories.

But here’s an easy switch to cut down on calories: swap out fatty meats for leaner cuts and cut back on those ‘invisible’ oils. Here’s the full list I gave Dayton, that you can apply, too. 

And if fatty meats were the first culprit, the second contributor had to be his snacks.

While Dayton’s choice of snacks wouldn’t be too bad in moderation, it was the sheer volume he was eating that was clearly the problem.

Here’s what Dayton used to eat, and here’s the rough plan I’ve made him. 

If Dayton actually stops crushing the popcorn, instead of slowly gaining fat, he should be able to lose just over a lb per week. 

Dayton's Work Situation

At first, with his new gym and diet locked in, things were off to a really good start. But unfortunately, this new plan wasn’t the only challenge Dayton was going through. 

Dayton:

“I’ve been dealing with a lot lately.

I work in film, and the past few years have just been really slow … and the other week, I was pretty much laid off.

Life’s not always perfect, and you just gotta work around all that… Tryin’ to make money, trying to run my own business, it's not always guaranteed to get a paycheck every two weeks. And yeah, today was just one of those days."

On the first day I visited Dayton, he showed me his side job collecting and reselling vintage electronics and stereo equipment.

And with Dayton looking to turn this into a full-time gig, along with 3D printing and building models, I could tell that balancing his workouts with his new career path was becoming a real challenge.

Dayton:

"Today was just one of those days where I'm just kind of agitated and miserable for no real reason.

Just had a client back out of a big deal. I left my chicken out overnight after I just cooked it. That's $20 bucks. Just stupid stuff but it's bothering me.

Didn't want to work out at all, but what's complaining about it gonna accomplish?"

After watching his vlogs, I had to do a quick check-in on Dayton.

Jeremy:

I’ve been watching your vlogs, and I wanted to check in and just see how you’re doing in everything.

Dayton:

Well I’d probably say I’ve been better and I’ve been worse. But it’s all good.

Jeremy:

Yeah? Because if you want to put your plan on hold for a few weeks or take some time, that’s completely fine.

Dayton:

Honestly, I feel like gettin’ in these workouts, sticking with the diet. That’s what I have control of right now. Everything else, it just is what it is you know.

Jeremy:

So you want to keep going. No pausing.

Dayton:

No breaks, Jeremy.

From what Dayton has shared, it's clear that how to get jacked isn’t just physical, it’s about showing up even on hard days.

I also promised Dayton that if he cut his body fat by 10%, I'd get him the new 3D machine to help his business.

After the call, Dayton quickly got back on track and has been consistent without missing a day. He’s even built some equipment on his own.

100-Day Check-In

But after 100 days, Dayton had only lost 11lbs on the scale, and he had no idea what his new DEXA results were gonna show.

In just 100 Days, Dayton actually lost 17lbs of fat and almost tripled his muscle goal, gaining an impressive 6lbs of muscle. Bringing his body fat from 33% on Day 1 down to just 23.5%.

That’s huge.

Because Dayton was a new lifter with enough excess fat to burn as fuel, by locking in his diet and training we were able to force his body to burn off his body fat and use it as energy towards building new muscle. But Dayton was hungry for more:

"I think it’d be really cool if we hit 20% body fat."

… and so we decided to continue pushing for another 50 days. And it’s only fair since he’s already crushed his initial goals, I’m going to have to upgrade his secret gift plus throw in a pull-up bar to keep his training interesting. 

Pushing For More Progress

However, these 50 lb dumbbells are no longer enough to feed the beast I’ve created.

He’s been setting PR’s every single week and actually maxed out his dumbbells on many exercises. This is where most people assume training without a gym no longer works.

Luckily, there’s a science-backed solution.

The technique I want Dayton to use is called pre-exhaust.

He’ll start with an isolation move — like the dumbbell fly — and take it all the way to failure. Then, without resting, he’ll switch to a heavier compound lift, like the dumbbell press. But because his chest is already fatigued, his chest will be able to reach failure without needing super-heavy weights.

Earlier this year, I actually helped run a study comparing pre-exhaust to traditional training. Traditional training did have a slight edge, but the gains were nearly identical. — and you can make up the difference just by adding an extra set or two.

And by applying pre-exhaust to Dayton’s workout, he’s not only hitting failure on his chest press by rep 10, he’s doing it while actually dropping his weight back down to 40lbs.

As for Dayton’s lower body, there’s one big muscle in his quads that squats and lunges don’t actually grow very well: the rectus femoris.

Normally, you’d use leg extensions to target this muscle.

But in Dayton’s case, with our how to get jacked without a gym challenge, I’ve got 2 workarounds that should produce the same results. 

The first is reverse nordics.

And a second, more challenging exercise, just for fun: the sissy squats. 

With Dayton already making so much progress, I decided to give him one more stretch goal to shoot for.

Even though we fixed his training, as Dayton gets leaner, I’m expecting his cravings for his beloved Chicago Mix popcorn to only get stronger. 

That's why I shared a list of creative ways to satisfy his sweet tooth with more protein and fewer calories with Dayton.

He’s making incredible progress, especially with his abs, but with just 50 days to continue making progress, Dayton continued to hit PRs in those workouts, and with his business as well.

How To Get Jacked Without A Gym Challenge Results

In 150 days, Dayton gained 7lbs of muscle while losing 26lbs of fat. Plus, his visceral fat dropped by 70%.

To put it into perspective, this is the total amount of fat he lost and muscle he gained — pretty crazy, right?

 All without doing a single exercise in a gym, proving that all you need is the right plan paired with consistency. 

TL;DR

• Dayton’s starting point was rough, with 32.5% body fat and dangerously high visceral fat; he needed to figure out how to get jacked at home before his health got worse.
• The workout routine covers everything using just two dumbbells, a bench, and a pull-up bar. It's a science-backed plan that targets every muscle group.
• Diet was the game-changer. Learning how to get jacked also meant cutting back on fatty meats, oils, and snacks, and replacing them with leaner swaps.
• Hard days didn’t stop him — the biggest lesson in how to get jacked was showing up consistently, even when life and work made things tough.
• Continued progress came from a smart technique called pre-exhaust, which helped Dayton keep growing without needing heavier weights.
• The transformation speaks for itself: in 150 days, he lost 26 lbs of fat, gained 7 lbs of muscle, and dropped his body fat to 23.5%, proving how to get jacked is possible without ever stepping foot in a gym.

So it’s time to give Dayton what he deserves ...

Now, the Built with Science app keeps him on track. Thousands of members like Dayton have seen impressive results with the app, and if you want to learn how to get jacked at home just like Dayton, the Built With Science app can guide you step by step.

You can try it free for 2 weeks here:

Click the button below to try the BWS+ app for 2 weeks, for free, no strings attached:

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By the way, here’s the article summed up into a YouTube video: