The landmine press is a press with a barbell anchored at one end, usually in a landmine attachment on the floor. You hold the loaded end at your shoulder and press it up and forward, along the arc the anchored bar allows, rather than straight overhead. It is done standing or half-kneeling, with one arm or two.
No one is credited with the press itself; a web search on October 30, 2026 found only the history of the attachment. Sorinex says “Pops and Bert” invented the Landmine in 1999 to help co-owner Bert Sorin train for the hammer throw before the 2000 Olympic Trials, and that the name came from building “explosion at the ground level”. Brolic lists it as Landmine Press (Barbell), with “Barbell Landmine Press” as an alias, and logs it as a two-sided exercise in reps; pressed one arm at a time, the rep count is the total, left and right together.
Muscles worked
John Meadows treats it as a shoulder exercise: he calls it really good for the front delts, with a little side delt, “like a hybrid”, and says it helps the shoulders grow. The chest and triceps help, as in any press. The anterior delt press is another press built around the front delts.
No study we found measures which muscles do the work. A PubMed search for “landmine press” on October 30, 2026 returned one paper, which tested a camera-based way of measuring the lift’s movement.
Half-kneeling setup
Find the starting spot before the first rep. Mike Robertson sees lifters struggle to find it, especially in presses. Sometimes the weight ends up out in front, which in his words puts a lot of stress on the front of the shoulder; sometimes the lifter ends up doing an overhead press, “which kind of defeats the purpose”.
Rest the end of the bar on the middle of the pad. Robertson calls this the key: if the bar starts in the middle of the kneeling pad, the rest of the exercise follows.
Put your knee where the bar was. As you pick the bar up, Robertson’s cue is that your knee replaces the end of the bar. With the knee in the middle of the pad, the bar rests right in front of the shoulder, which he calls a perfect setup; from there the lifter can reach long. Too far forward or back, and you either chase a bar that stays out in front or shift back into an overhead press.
Standing one-arm press
Brace with a neutral back. Meadows’s first step is to engage the core, with the back neither hyperextended nor rounded.
Put the pressing-side foot back. Meadows staggers his feet: the foot on the side you press with goes back.
Hold the bar a little out to the side. Held too far in, he says, it turns into a triceps exercise.
Keep the elbow under the bar. Meadows does not want the elbow drifting back or the bar dropping so that the elbow flares out; keep the arm under it and press up and through, all the way, without stopping short.
Keep every rep precise. It is not an exercise to get sloppy with, he says.
Kneeling or standing
| Half-kneeling | Standing, one arm | |
|---|---|---|
| Shown by | Mike Robertson | John Meadows |
| Base | One knee on the pad, where the end of the bar lay | Feet staggered, the pressing-side foot back |
| Where the bar starts | Right in front of the shoulder | A little out to the side |
| Fault named | Bar out in front, or drifting into an overhead press | Bar held too far in, or the elbow flaring out |
Neither coach compares the two or ranks them; each teaches one. The two-handed standing version, both hands stacked on the end of the bar, uses the same entry.
Logging
Brolic logs Landmine Press (Barbell) as a two-sided exercise in reps. With both hands on the bar, enter the reps; pressing one arm at a time, enter the total, left and right together, so eight each side is a set of 16. For the weight, record the plates you added to the sleeve and keep that convention, as the Meadows row guide explains: the anchored end carries part of the load. The free workout log has room for notes, and the weekly set tally shows how these sets add to your chest and shoulder work.
In the set’s note, write half-kneeling or standing and one arm or two. If one arm stops short, note which and how many reps it got rather than averaging.
Common questions
One arm or two? Meadows presses with one arm; the catalog entry covers both. Both go under the same entry, so use the set’s note to tell one-arm sets from two-handed ones, since the rep counts mean different things.
Where does it go in a workout? Meadows gives options rather than one rule: first in the session, before chest work, as a warm-up, or for several hard sets in the middle of the workout.
Is it good for the shoulders? Meadows’s title says so, and he says it develops some muscle around the shoulders. No study we found tested that. If a press hurts, stop the set.
Sources and method
- Mike Robertson: How to set up the landmine press — the starting spot, the two set-up mistakes, the bar on the pad and the knee cue; a transcript of the automatic captions.
- John Meadows (mountaindog1): Landmine press — the brace, staggered feet, bar and elbow position, muscles and where it fits in a workout; automatic captions and the video description.
- Sorinex: Landmine rack attachment — the 1999 origin, Bert Sorin and the hammer throw, and the name.
- PubMed search for “landmine press” on October 30, 2026 — one paper, on measuring the lift’s movement, none on muscles.
- Brolic catalog — name, alias, logging mode and muscle tags.
The cues are the two coaches’ own, not optima from a trial, and no claim is made that the landmine press builds more muscle than other presses.
