Variations Your Joints Will Love
Shake up your boring workouts, spare your joints, and get down to the business of getting jacked. Try these landmine exercises.
You’d be hard-pressed to find another piece of equipment as versatile as the landmine (on Amazon). Here are the benefits:
- There’s less wear and tear on your joints.
- It offers a nearly endless list of exercises.
- It takes up very little space.
- You can load more weight on exercises that are typically done with dumbbells.
Not sure where to start? Here are 10 landmine exercises for you try.
1. Double Landmine Seesaw Press
Overhead pressing with the landmine is generally a safer alternative to the classic variation due to the angled nature of the barbell. Pressing in a diagonal path reduces the mobility requirements, placing less potential stress on the shoulders and lower back.
This seesaw press calls for two barbells and is a great way to challenge your core musculature due to the offset loading. You can do it standing, or for more intensity, kneeling, which removes any assistance from the legs.
2. T-Bar Row
This will probably be your new favorite way to row. The guided swivel of the landmine really allows you to focus on your lats. You can also load more weight than the dumbbell variation.
3. Bench-Supported Meadows Row
The Meadows row has long been a staple back-builder. While it’s typically done standing in a hinged position, this bench-supported variation takes the low back completely out of the equation.
If you’re suffering from a current or pre-existing low back injury and find it hard to do standing bent-over rows, this bench-supported variation might do the trick.
4. Single-Arm Landmine Floor Press
Floor presses are an unsung hero. Not only are they a shoulder-friendly alternative to benching, but they’re also a great way to strengthen your triceps given the reduced range of motion.
Keeping your legs straight requires you to solely use your arm, removing any lower-body assistance. The closer your legs are together, the more challenging it becomes, given the narrow base of support. The offset loading will also challenge your core.
Reaching up with your non-pressing arm throughout your set helps you counterbalance.
5. Landmine Single-Leg RDL to Row
Combo exercises usually suck because they either 1) try to look cool for the sake of looking cool or 2) lack resistance on at least one of the two exercises being performed. This is an exception.
Your first reaction to this exercise might be that it’s a great way to target the low and mid-back muscles, which it is. But more than that, it’s an absolute burner for the glutes.
This is a full-body lift that combines a hinge and a row into one movement, and it requires a bit of core stability to top things off.
6. Landmine Cossack Squat
This is a lower-body exercise and mobility drill wrapped into one. Squatting down to your side offers a great stretch in the adductors (inner thigh) and will improve your ankle mobility. Moreover, the goblet position encourages an upright posture while integrating your upper body and core.
7. Landmine Hang Squat
Back squats and front squats are great, but they’re not the only way to build a solid set of trunks. Many lifters who try to do the classic barbell lifts end up exacerbating existing injuries and imbalances. It takes a lot of shoulder and upper-back mobility to get into an optimal setup for the front and back squat. Many lifters lack both.
So instead of throwing in the towel, use a hang squat variation like this one. There’s far less stress on your back since the weight is distributed directly in your center of mass.
8. Reverse Lunge (Side, Offset, Front Rack)
With the weight distributed at your side, you’ll feel your glute medius working its butt off (pun intended).
The subtle tweak of weight distribution with the oddest variation offers a greater contraction in the glute max and hammies.
Holding weight in a goblet or front rack position during a lunge or squat challenges the core and quads to a higher degree.
Like any exercise, there’s an abundance of lunge variations. The longer you lift, the more important it is to introduce new variations into your program to continually elicit adaptation. It’s equally important to find what works for you and address your specific goals.
9. Full-Kneeling Oblique Twist
The most common mistake made during oblique twists is pushing with your arms instead of using the core. To combat this, imagine your hands are hooks connecting your body to the bar. From there, it’s your core’s job (primarily your obliques) to move the weight and resist rotation. Think “throwing from the hip” instead of pushing with the arms.
Performing from a full-kneeling stance limits any assistance from the legs, making it more challenging than the standing variation.
10. Muscle Snatch
The landmine muscle snatch is the best upper back and shoulder exercise you’re not doing. The guided diagonal path of the barbell is perfect as it encourages a natural overhead movement of the shoulder without putting yourself in harm’s way.
Try adding it to your warm-up before overhead pressing or Olympic lifting to prime the shoulders and upper back.
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