How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? Manga Volumes

So you watched a clip of Machio — the impossibly muscular personal trainer — flexing his way out of his tracksuit, or maybe a friend told you about the manga that actually teaches you proper squat form between jokes. Now you want to read it, and the big question is: how many How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? manga volumes are there, and is it still going?

Good news — this guide covers everything you need to get started.

How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? Has 20 Manga Volumes — And It’s Still Ongoing

Here’s the quick answer: How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? (ダンベル何キロ持てる?) currently has 20 volumes published in both Japanese and English. The series is ongoing, meaning more volumes are on the way.

The manga is written by Sandrovich Yabako (サンドロビッチ・ヤバ子) with art by MAAM. It’s been running in Manga One / Ura Sunday — a Japanese digital manga magazine where new chapters are published on a regular schedule before being collected into the paperback volumes you buy — since August 2016. The Japanese publisher is Shogakukan. The official English translation comes from Seven Seas Entertainment, a company that licenses and translates manga for English-speaking readers. All 20 volumes are available in English right now.

A quick note on how manga publishing works, since it’s helpful context for this guide: a manga series is first released as individual chapters in a magazine (in this case, a digital one). Those chapters are then grouped together and published as volumes — the physical or digital books you actually buy and read. When this guide talks about “20 volumes,” that means 20 collected books, each containing several chapters.

The series also received a 12-episode anime adaptation in 2019, which covered material from the early volumes of the manga. If you watched the anime and want to continue the story in manga form, picking up around Volume 5 or Volume 6 is a reasonable starting point — though starting from Volume 1 is still worthwhile, since the manga includes fitness instruction details and character moments the anime condensed or skipped.

If you’re looking for a sports manga that’s a little different from the usual baseball or basketball fare, this one focuses on gym training, weightlifting, and fitness — wrapped in a comedy that’s funny and surprisingly educational. It’s a great entry point for readers who want sports manga energy without needing to understand the rules of a specific team sport.

Complete Volume List

The series ran continuously from late 2016 until October 2023, when it went on a roughly 10-month hiatus before resuming in August 2024. Here’s the full volume breakdown:

The full release timeline spans from December 2016 through August 2024, with the series still actively publishing new chapters. All of these volumes are available in English from Seven Seas Entertainment — the English edition has published all 20 volumes — matching the Japanese release count — though with roughly a two-year lag behind the original Japanese releases. Any new Japanese volumes that come out will take around a year and a half to reach English readers.

One nice thing about this series: each volume works as a fairly self-contained batch of chapters. While there are ongoing storylines and character development that carry across volumes, you won’t hit a cliffhanger every volume that makes you desperate for the next one. (Though you’ll probably want to keep reading anyway — the comedy hooks you.)

What Makes This a Sports Manga — Fitness, Competition, and Real Exercise Instruction

You might be wondering: is a manga about going to the gym really a “sports manga”? Absolutely. And here’s why it stands out.

It’s Built Around Real Exercise Technique

Every chapter of How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? includes actual fitness instruction. The characters demonstrate exercises — bench press, deadlifts, lateral raises, planks, you name it — and the manga explains proper form, target muscles, and common mistakes. This isn’t vague hand-waving about “getting stronger.” The series breaks down specific movements in a way that readers can actually learn from.

The educational content is baked into the comedy rather than feeling like a textbook interruption. A character will try an exercise, mess up the form, get corrected by their trainer, and the reader learns something along the way. It’s clever and it works.

Competitive Storylines Give It Real Stakes

This isn’t just a low-key series about daily gym visits. The manga features genuine competitive storylines — multi-chapter sequences building toward a climactic event — that give the story forward momentum:

• Bodybuilding competitions where characters train for and compete in physique contests (events where competitors are judged on muscle definition, posing, and overall fitness)
• Arm wrestling tournaments that bring a different kind of physical competition into the mix
• Various fitness challenges that test the cast in new ways

These storylines provide the same tension and payoff you’d expect from a basketball manga’s championship game or a boxing manga’s big fight — just in a less conventional setting.

It Fills a Unique Niche

Most sports manga focus on team sports (volleyball, soccer, basketball) or combat sports (boxing, martial arts). A gym-focused fitness manga is unusual, and that’s part of the appeal. If you’ve read your way through the big team-sport series and want something different, this delivers sports manga energy in a fresh package.

The series also doesn’t require you to understand any specific sport’s rules going in. Everyone understands the concept of working out and getting stronger — that universal relatability makes it incredibly accessible.

The Comedy Actually Lands

The humor is a huge part of why people love this series. The over-the-top character reactions, Machio’s impossible physique reveals, Hibiki’s food obsession clashing with her fitness goals — it’s consistently funny. The comedy doesn’t undermine the fitness content; it makes you want to keep reading so you absorb more of it.

Is the Series Finished or Still Ongoing?

How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? is confirmed ongoing. There is no final volume yet.

The manga continues to run in Manga One / Ura Sunday, with new chapters still being released. Volume 20 came out in Japan in August 2024 — the same month the series resumed after a roughly 10-month hiatus that began in October 2023 — and the series shows no signs of wrapping up anytime soon.

What This Means If You’re Starting Now

This is actually a great time to jump in. Twenty volumes is a substantial amount of content — enough to really get invested in the characters and their fitness journeys — but you’re not facing an intimidating backlog of 50+ volumes like some long-running manga.

Here’s the reality of reading an ongoing series:

• You can read all 20 volumes and get a satisfying experience with plenty of completed storylines along the way
• You’ll eventually catch up to the current release and have to wait for new volumes — that’s the trade-off with any ongoing series
• New volumes will continue to release, so the story you’re investing in isn’t abandoned or stuck in an extended break — it’s actively being created

Since each volume contains fairly self-contained chapter batches with their own exercise lessons and comedy beats, the series doesn’t feel incomplete even when you’re caught up. You’re not left dangling on an unresolved storyline.

Where to Buy the English Volumes

The English Publisher

Seven Seas Entertainment handles the official English translation of How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? They’ve kept the release schedule current, with all volumes available in English right now. The translation quality is solid — the humor comes through well, and the fitness instruction text is clearly rendered.

Getting Started

No complicated reading order here. Start with Volume 1 and read straight through. The series introduces characters and concepts in a natural progression. Volume 1 sets up everything you need: Hibiki’s motivation for joining the gym, the core cast, and the format of exercise instruction woven into story chapters.

If you watched the 2019 anime and want to skip ahead, you can start around Volume 5 or 6 — but Volume 1 is still worth reading for the extra fitness detail the anime didn’t cover.

If you want to test the waters before committing to the full series, grabbing Volume 1 on its own is a perfectly fine way to see if the humor and fitness focus click for you. Most readers know within the first volume whether this series is for them — and for a lot of people, it very much is. The card below shows one of the most recent English volumes — from its product page you can jump straight to Volume 1 and the rest of the series:

Physical vs. Digital

The series is available in both physical and digital formats. Physical volumes are the standard paperback manga size — roughly 5 by 7.5 inches, smaller than a typical Western comic or graphic novel. Digital editions are convenient if you want to start reading immediately or prefer not to store physical books.

There are no omnibus editions (where multiple volumes are combined into one thicker book), deluxe editions, or box sets for this series at this time — it’s individual volumes only. That keeps things simple: just buy Volume 1 through Volume 20 in the standard Seven Seas editions.

Notes for Collectors

Since the series has over 20 volumes and is still growing, here are a few practical points:

• Buying in batches can be more manageable than trying to grab all 20 at once, both for your wallet and your shelf space
• Earlier volumes have been in print for years, so availability is generally good — but keep an eye out, as popular manga volumes occasionally go temporarily out of stock
• New volumes will continue releasing as the Japanese editions come out and Seven Seas translates them, so you can space out your purchases naturally by buying each new volume as it drops

The manga is widely available at retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and BookWalker (for digital). Bookstores with a manga section will often carry Seven Seas titles as well.

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How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? is one of those manga that surprises people. They come for the comedy or the anime connection and stay because the fitness content is useful and the characters are a blast to spend time with. Twenty volumes in, the series is still going strong — pick up Volume 1 and start your own reading workout.