Landmine training was invented long before the barbell attachment was created—unofficially—when the first gym bro stuck a barbell in corner and created a T- Bar rows variation long ago.
For lifters who have shoulder mobility issues, landmine training is an excellent method to lift overhead because it combines vertical and horizontal pressing paths and is a nice change from regular barbell training. The beauty of landmine training is that it trains your body from a different angle and makes some traditional barbell exercises easier for those with mobility or stability shortfalls.
Other benefits of landmine training include.
The ability to go heavy with unilateral exercises.
Gripping the fatter end of the barbell increases grip strength.
Angled training gives the spine a break from the compressive load of traditional barbell training.
The ability to hit the muscles from abnormal angles in standing, tall, and half-kneeling positions.
All this makes it an excellent training method to improve your bench, deadlift, and squat. Here five coaches give you the lowdown on landmine exercises to improve your strength with your Big 3 lifts. Let’s get to it.
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Landmine Squat: Allan Bacon, Ph.D.,an online personal trainer specializing in training powerlifters and body composition clients.
The landmine squat is a joint and lower back-friendly squat variation that allows you to target your quads and glutes. The center of gravity is front-loaded, making this movement highly advantageous for taller lifters.
How to do it:
Tip: you can begin by stacking the barbell on a bench if you are lifting heavier loads that you find challenging to get into position.
Start with your feet roughly under your hips, which is narrower than your back squat stance.
Cup the end of the bar with the heels of your hands under the bar, thumbs over the tip, and wrap one hand over the other.
Keep elbows and hands close to the body at all times.
Descend as you would a regular squat to a full range of motion and allow your knees to track over your second toes.
Flex your glutes and quads to power back up to the start position.
How it benefits: The landmine squat is a great way to push weight without adding extra stress on soft tissues. It’s also particularly beneficial for taller lifters who find gaining strength in their quads challenging. This movement allows a narrower foot position under less stabilization demands to push progress.
Programming suggestions: 3 to 5 sets of 6 to 12 reps.
1.5 Stance Deficit Landmine RDL: Tasha Wolf Whelan, pro SCC manager, personal trainer, mentor, and PPSC master instructor
Elevate your deadlift game with the 1.5-stance Landmine Romanian deadlift. This variation can effectively enhance standard deadlift strength, promote muscular hypertrophy, and improve movement quality, thanks to its expanded range of motion stemming from the unique foot position and a slight deficit.
How to do it:
Start in a bilateral stance with feet together in front of the landmine.
Keeping heels together, fan out one foot (toe out).
Adjust the foot (big toe) so it’s more in line with the heel of the working leg.
Create slight internal rotation (spotting foot), allowing for greater posterior lateral hip and glute activation.
The working leg is now primed to act as a stabilizer (supporting act)—Keeping weight overwhelmingly on the working (flat foot) leg while minimally using the ball of the foot to assist.
Hips should move more easily posteriorly in this positioning, allowing you to better load glutes and hamstrings helping further to develop those tissues.
How it benefits: Increased irradiation effect with the assist of a kickstand stance puts great emphasis on the glutes allowing for better hypertrophy development. The stability factor (the landmine setup) allows for greater force output and increased strength via increased load compared to its SL RDL counterpart.
Programming suggestions: The 1.5 stance LM RDL is best programmed as an assistance or accessory move to either the squat or the deadlift, meaning this would not be your main movement but instead a variation that will enhance the primary move previously done. This movement is best used with sets of 6-15 reps per side, sticking to the lower ranges (6-8) if strength is the primary goal and higher repetitions (10-15) if the goal is to pack on muscle.
Follow Tasha Wolf Whelan on Instagram: @ironwolf03
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Landmine Lateral Raise: Travis Pollen, Ph.D., an exercise science professor and personal trainer and co-creator of the “Strength for Yoga” program, and co-founder of 3M Athletic Performance Gym
First popularized a decade ago by LA-based trainer Ben Bruno, the landmine lateral raise hits all three heads of the deltoid in one fell swoop, making it a perfect choice for building strength and stability for bench press.
How to do it:
Stand parallel to the landmine with the end of the bar in your right hand by your left hip.
Keep your arm straight, and perform a lateral raise bringing your arm up at a diagonal angle across your body until your hand is a little above your head.
Slowly return to the starting position and reset and repeat.
How it benefits: It’s common for lifters to incorporate front raises, lateral raises, and rear delt flies as accessory exercises for bench presses. But this underrated shoulder raise variation can effectively replace all three when you’re short on time. Due to the unique orientation of the load, the lower half of the range of motion will feel more like a front/lateral raise, while the upper half will feel more like a rear delt fly.
Programming suggestions: While this exercise may look unassuming, be prepared for a challenge. Start with an empty 45-pound bar, and once you can complete three sets of 10 reps on each side, gradually add load in five-pound increments.
Landmine Single-Leg Deadlift: Chris Cooper, strength and nutrition coach at Nerd Fitness
Improving our deadlift numbers isn’t solely about deadlifting more or adding more weight to the bar. You must incorporate other movements that train our glutes, hamstrings, core, and back. That’s where the single-leg deadlift comes in. It’s an effective way to build strength, stability, and balance in the lower body.
How to do it
You approach the bar in two ways: front-facing, facing the end of the barbell, or side-facing, where you are parallel to the bar.
Grab the bar with one hand and stand on the opposite leg.
Lower the bar towards the ground as you hinge from the hips and bring your non-working leg off the ground behind you.
As you lower the bar, focus on pushing through the floor with your foot, keeping your spine straight and hips level.
Once you hit the spot where you can control the movement, push with your working leg to stand up, driving through the heel and squeezing your glutes at the top.
How it benefits: This exercise will challenge your hips, ankles, and core muscles to work together to improve your balance. This will increase your ability to control your hips and keep your center of gravity over the weight. Plus, single-leg landmine RDL requires more muscular control through the hamstrings and glutes, which are the main drivers of the deadlift. Our deadlift’s power output will increase if these muscles are bigger, stronger, and provide more stability.
Programming suggestions: Since our goal is to improve our deadlift, we can use this as a main movement exercise as our strength work or an accessory exercise on leg day.
Strength: If we want to increase the strength of this movement, we aim for 4-8 repetitions with a load that is heavy enough to challenge the hamstrings and glutes while being able to maintain balance.
Hypertrophy: In order to increase the size of our posterior chain muscles, aim for 8-15 repetitions.
Landmine Curtsy Squat: Dr. Bo Babenko, a physical therapist and strength coach specializing in total-body strengthening.
The big three is stuck in the sagittal plane (forward-backward /up and down), with no rotation to be seen anywhere. One way to build resilience and longevity in your joints is to add some rotational training into your SUCCESS-ory (accessory) work.
How to do it:
Hug or goblet that barbell to your sternum, then swing the leg closer to the back behind you into a curtsy position.
Getting your knee to the ground is an excellent sign of high-class mobility, but stay in a range of motion you can control.
Focus on the front leg, staying aligned with knees over midfoot with a nice explosive finish after a controlled descent.
How it benefits: The landmine curtsy squat provides unique unilateral, rotational, and angled loading into the front leg. This also serves as an excellent assessment tool for all the strong humans out there – if you have any imbalance left to right with this move, it’s possible that we can say you may be risking injury with the big three or, worse, leaking performance!
Programming suggestions: 3 sets of 6 reps per side 1-2 x/week. This is much more about the quality of the motion than the weight. Ensure every rep looks better than the last!
