Annihilate Your Workout with These Landmine Exercises

Annihilate your workout with the landmine.

So potentially with many places having restrictions and with gyms still being closed a lot of us have had to think outside of the box for our workouts. So today I am going to delve into the world of the Olympic bar, and more specifically landmine workouts using the Olympic bar.

But, this isn’t going to be your same old, same old landmine workouts or movements like the landmine shoulder press, the landmine chest squeeze, the landmine T-Bar row or even the landmine squat.

Today, the focus will be on movements you may not necessarily see at the gym but they will definitely challenge you to the maximum.

So let’s begin…

Landmine exercises:

Muscle worked: Back and rear delts

Meadow Rows

Named after legendary bodybuilder John Meadows, who the move is named after, but Meadows has since himself admitted that he has seen footage of Franco Columbu doing a variation of the movement back in the day on muscle beach.

This exercise is used to target the back and if utilized properly can also target the rear deltoid area, secondary muscles utilized can also be the biceps.

How to do it:

1. Place Olympic bar into landmine position
2. Add desired plate, maybe a smaller height plate so you can get the range of motion
3. With a staggered step, lean forward and grasp the barbell with overhand grip
4. Begin exercise by rowing the weight up so that the rowing hand ends up just outside of your chest
5. At the top of the movement you should feel a contraction in the shoulder blades
6. Lower the weight down and repeat accordingly

Muscle worked: Hamstrings

Landmine deadlift

Regular deadlifts can become monotonous, so a good way to spice things up is the landmine deadlift.

How to do it:

1. Place Olympic bar into landmine position
2. Load desired weight load
3. Legs hip width apart, stand with the bar in between your legs
4. You will be gripping the end of the barbell, for ease you can also use a V-Bar handle
5. Then lift the weight by pushing your hips back and hinging forward until the bar is just below knee height.
6. Ensure to drive through back of heel to ensure hamstring contraction
7. Lower weight down and repeat (you can either do a RDL or stiff leg version of this movement)

Muscle Worked: Quads (and Hamstrings)

Low Grip – Landmine split squat

Another variation to the split squat, rather than having the bar on your shoulders or at a higher height you will actually be holding the landmine as a low grip.

How to do it:

1. Place Olympic bar into landmine position
2. Add desired plate
3. Stand with your feet staggered with the landmine adjacent to your forward leg
4. Forward leg and gripping hand should be on opposites sides, so if forward leg is left gripping hand should be right
5. Hold landmine with overhand grip
6. Grab the landmine and stand up into the staggered squat position and ensure the torso is vertical
7. Ensuring the load should be on the lead leg, stand up and continue downwards into the split squat
8. End with the back knee bent as it touches the floor
9. Repeat on the other leg

Muscle worked: Shoulders

Single Arm Landmine Jammer 

Another exercise you may not see at the gym unless your gym has the hammer strength jammer machine which is specifically made for this exercise. This is a great exercise to target the shoulders and front deltoids.

This exercise can either be done slowly and controlled or be performed as an explosive movement.

How to do it:

1. Place Olympic bar into landmine position
2. Load desired weight load
3. Feet shoulder width apart with knees slightly bent
4. Then pick up the barbell with hand you want to begin with
5. Push the barbell up
6. Catch it and repeat

You can either push it so it goes from one hand to the other in the same set, or do one arm at a time.

To make it a more explosive movement, ensure your add explosiveness from the hips while twisting into the movement.

Muscle worked: Biceps

Single arm Landmine Bicep curl 

This is essentially a concentration curl. Load the landmine accordingly then grip the end of the barbell and curl towards you just like a regular bicep curl.

You probably won’t be able to use 45lb plates as they will impede the movement so stick to using smaller sizes plates. 

Muscle worked: Abs

Landmine overhead sit ups

Again set up the landmine accordingly with your desired weight, again heavy load is not essential as form is crucial.

Lie back, and you can either have knees bent or legs straight.

Hold the end of the barbell with both hands, then come up accordingly and feel the contraction at the top, then slowly come back down and repeat the movement.

Variations

Landmine alternating overhead sit ups:

Here you do a single arm landmine overhead sit up, then switch hands at the top of the movement. And then keep switching at the top of the movement each time until the set is complete.

Another variation:

Another great single arm variation is that at the top of the movement, if you are holding the barbell with your right hand then push the landmine from the center to the left so it incorporates some of your right oblique muscles.

Landmine Ab rollout:

Like the traditional ab rollout a landline can also be used.

Set up the landmine accordingly.

Then kneel on the ground and grip the end of the barbell with both hands.

Keep your arms straight and lean forward and roll out, then roll back in accordingly.

Landmine oblique ab rollout:

So this rollout will target the oblique muscles.

To get an idea of how this move works, the roll out will start from your oblique area and go past your shoulders and diagonally past your head.

Simply set your body up in a push up position, with one hand gripping the barbell (with an overhand grip), and the other hand in a push up stance.

Then slowly roll out, and just as in a regular roll out, and come back in. Ensure to repeat both sides.

So there we have it, some compelling Olympic bar landmine moves to turn you into a home gym Olympian!