Landmine exercises are great exercises for core, rotational, and total body strength development for all athletes. Landmine exercises are especially useful for baseball players due to the need to stabilize and rotate the core with force on a throw or a swing. Here are a few exercises to start your landmine training regimen.
First, set up the landmine by inserting a standard barbell into a landmine attachment or at the corner of the wall for the budget conscious facility. You can load the bar with weights appropriate to the exercise and the ability of the athlete. I prefer to use Olympic plates as they land on the ground more nicely, but any type of plate will do the job. With that, you are ready to go. The landmine is a super efficient contraption and you can perform a total body workout in a very small space.
We will start with a simple and basic exercise. The landmine front squat is performed with two hands clasped at the end of the bar with the feet slightly behind the bar.
From here, we can progress to a landmine front squat and press.
Because the landmine is fixed but also free to move in a semi-circular direction, landmine exercises are a great hybrid free-weight and machine exercise. The semi-circular rotation moves in the natural direction of the body. The landmine is also easier on the shoulders as the bar is fixed on the end to make pressing movements easier and held with a neutral grip which is the default position of the shoulder.
The landmine sumo deadlift allows athletes to perform the sumo deadlift movement with a neutral grip and is a variation of the dumbbell and kettlebell sumo deadlift. Clasp your hands together at the end of the bar and straddle the bar with a wide stance. Fully extend and lock out at the top.
Regular sumo deadlifts are a great auxiliary lift for the regular deadlift. If you have athletes who need to use a trap bar for their deadlifts so they can maintain a neutral grip for various reasons, the landmine sumo deadlift will allow such athletes to improve their glute and quadricep development in the sumo stance while utilizing a neutral grip to relieve shoulder stress.
Landmine abdominal exercises are challenging and will recruit muscles your athletes never knew existed. Here is a basic movement to perform on the landmine. The landmine twist, which is also known as the landmine 180 or the landmine anti-rotation, is a necessary exercise to increase rotational strength especially for baseball, hockey, and lacrosse players.
Clasp the hands together at the end of the bar with the bar above your head and move from side to side. The arms should be extended, but not locked out at the elbows. Complete the movement on one side with the top arm parallel to the ground and rotate the bar 180 degrees to the other side.
To increase the intensity of this movement, perform the landmine twist while squatting.
There are more useful landmine exercises in the repertoire, but these exercises are a good primer to introduce landmine exercises to young athletes.
