#1 More total resistance
#2 Easier progression
#3 Less emphasis on balance/unilateral elements for beginners
#4 Better at stimulating CNS
#5 Easier to use to add size,strength,power

There’s also nothing preventing one from using barbells for unilateral movements. DBs do have certain movements which are hard to do with a barbell such as Swings however their place is still primarily as assistance in a well balanced strength program.

If you have to choose between barbells & dumbbels, the choice is barbells. MarkFu mentioned waiter walks, farmer walks, overhead squats, etc using a dumbbell. Try a one barbell overhead press, one barbell waiter walks, one barbell turkish getups, etc. You can do unilateral exercises using a dumbbell & it’s more challenging. The only benefit for a dumbbell would be is if you don’t have the strength to do an exercise with a 20kg barbell. But that’s what a beginner’s program is meant for: build a foundation of strength.

Barbells are better because they give faster results. More loading, more stress. This applies to anyone. You don’t want to believe it: continue doing what you do.

One might argue that, well these folks are lifting to be strong in the particular lifts of their sport. This is true, but they all learn that lifting heavy in a core group of compound exercise produce maximal general strength gains throughout the body (read some of Mehdi’s begginer articles for why), and that lifting heavy for these key exercises is best done with a barbell. Now, there are a few caveats to this. Maximal gains can be enhanced by occasionally changing up the routine to avoid adaptation stalling, and some of these periods of where one alters the routine in this way should consider variations and alternative lifts that use dumbbells. Second, maximal gains will benefit from supplementing the key exercises with some strategic use of assistive lifts. Third, a lifter may have an imbalance or an injury or some other condition or sport need that makes particular injuries a concern, and that these often are addressed using single-limb exercises that use dumbbells.

Now if one is preparing for a sport that relies on a repetitive motion, especially that is limited range of motion, in a single direction or otherwise imbalanced in terms of focusing on one side of the body or one muscle group rather than its antagonist, then those pursuing that sport will have to adapt their program to address those needs and the associated injury/imbalance problems. These folks will almost certainly need to use dumbbells, and it would make sense to prioritize the purchasing of dumbbells over a barbell for that reason. Still, in general, and for most of the general strength gain lifts they should also be using, a barbell will still be the better tool other than the reasons I listed in the previous paragraph.

Finally, Mehdi was not advocating not having dumbbells, but that for the general audience that reads this blog with the aim of most effective use of their limited time to gain general strength, a barbell is a better tool and should be higher priority. I might quibble a bit with this, as some have pointed out, for true beginners one will not be approaching the weight limitations of dumbbells and so it might make sense for any who have some need to address known imbalances or injuries to buy dumbbells first with the understanding that a good barbell should not be too far in the future. Still, because even at lower weights one of the important goals for a beginner’s program is to learn proper form before getting to heavier weight and to grove the lifter into the positions (like ass to the grass on squats or beginning wrist/arm position on the overhead press), starting with a barbell makes most sense for achieving this end. As I mentioned in a previous post on this thread, I have used dumbbells for very inflexible beginner friends to learn to squat deep using a goblet squat because this got them into the down position better and faster than the traditional back squat. I think Mehdi would agree that if one can afford both a good barbell and dumbbells, this would be best. I suspect he would agree that some particular sport goal or injury/imbalance need might be best served by getting a good set of dumbbells first if a good barbell was soon to follow. He didn’t frame his article this way which may have produced some of the reaction, but I don’t think these caveats take away from his general recommendation that the barbell is the best general tool for effective strength training.

Of course, we really might be wrong and I recommend that readers try the alternatives for themselves. Both tools will produce strength gains, each person will have to weigh their particular goals, restrictions, and budgets to decide what they should do.

Wrong. Absolutely wrong. Your body is genetically programmed to respond to stress very differently from mine and each of your other readers. In the very general sense muscles grow as a response to stress. But the way they grow in each individual is vastly different. If every person responded exactly the same way to stress you’d have one single workout program that worked for everyone out there exactly the same.

Dumbells. their cousins, kettlebells and barbells are tools in the toolbox. Is one better than another? I wouldn’t make that argument, but I would point how they are different and then tie those differences together as to how they contribute to overall strength gain. Each certainly has big advantages over the other.

I still have to meet somebody who doesn’t want to build strength & muscle as fast as he can. That’s why barbells are better than dumbbells. Dumbbell lunges/squats might be easier than a power clean + front squat, but that’s also why the latter will make you tougher. “Follow the line of most resistance” Napoleon Hill.

But if what you do works for you, continue.

Now if you’re aiming at a beginner who is limited to a home gym, I still think that dumbbells are going to be the best option. Clearly there are benefits and drawbacks to each option without having the other available.