4 Landmine Exercises To Build Strength

Utilising a landmine in your strength training is a great way to bring in variation to your workouts.

It encourages you to work with different planes of movement, helps you work on your coordination and breaks up some of the standard exercises that you might have become too familiar with.

The great thing about a landmine is that you can do pretty much any exercise with it, so you can really get creative. It’s also a little easier on your joints than standard barbell training and lets you use new angles to activate muscles that may sometimes get ignored without you even realising.

If you need inspiration about how to incorporate landmine training into your routine, here are four exercises you can use.

Squat Press

Stand facing the landmine, cupping the end of the barbell in both hands. Sit down into a squat bringing the barbell down into your chest, then explode back up to a standing position, pressing the barbell over your head by extending your arms at the top of the movement.

Landmine Half-Kneeling Press

This movement works your shoulders, triceps and chest in particular, but also engages your glutes and core. Kneel down on your right knee in front of the bar, leaving the foot of your left leg on the floor with the knee at about a 90-degree angle. Hold the end of the barbell in your right hand and press the bar up so that your arm extends fully. 

Standing Rotation Twist

Stand in front of the bar, holding the end of it with both hands while keeping your arms extended - like the top position of the squat press. Bring the barbell across your body down to your hip and twist your torso 180 degrees to follow it. Go back to the starting position and repeat it on the other side. This is a bit like a standing Russian twist.

Single-Leg Deadlift

Using a landmine rather than a dumbbell for a single-leg deadlift is a useful variation. Stand parallel to the landmine with the bar slightly in front of you and hold the end of it with your hand nearest the landmine. Stand on one leg (the leg farthest from the landmine) and hinge forward while keeping your spine straight to lower the barbell towards the floor. Then squeeze the glute on your standing leg as you lift the bar back to hip height.