Barbell · intermediate · upper legs
Barbell landmine squat
Also called Landmine squat, Landmine goblet squat, Landmine front squat, Landmine front rack squat.
One end of a barbell sits in a landmine sleeve, you hold the loaded end against the front of your chest with both hands, and you squat: hips back and down, heels flat, torso close to upright. Standing back up is your knees opening under the quads and your hips opening under the glutes, while your midsection and upper back keep the bar end pinned to your chest without taking it anywhere. Because the far end is pinned, the bar swings on a curve and part of the load pulls you toward the anchor instead of pressing down through you. That sideways pull is the thing this squat has and a weight held at your chest does not.
How to do it
- Step oneSet one end of a barbell in a landmine sleeve and load the free end.
- Step twoFace the anchor and bring the loaded end up to the front of your chest, cupping it in both hands with your elbows down.
- Step threeStand with your feet about hip to shoulder-width apart and your whole foot in contact with the floor.
- Step fourSquat by sending your hips back and down, keeping your torso close to upright and your knees tracking over your feet.
- Step fiveDescend until your thighs are around parallel to the floor, then stand back up by driving through the whole foot.
What usually goes wrong
Your quads do not feel it the way a goblet squat with the same weight does.
WhyThat has been measured. At a matched load, the landmine squat produced lower readings in two of the quadriceps heads and less vertical force through the floor than a goblet squat, and more horizontal force, because the anchored bar sends part of the load sideways.
FixNothing, if this is the version you enjoy. If quads were the reason you picked it, the goblet squat is the more direct of the two and the measurement agrees.
You get dragged forward near the bottom and end up on the front of your feet.
WhyThe bar end travels on a curve around the sleeve, so the lower you go the more of the load is trying to take you toward the anchor rather than into the ground. The horizontal force in that measurement is this, felt from the inside.
FixStop the descent at the depth where your weight is still spread across the whole foot, and add depth back once you can hold it there. Being pulled onto your toes is the movement winning, not the movement working.
Your hands, wrists and shoulders quit while your legs still have plenty left.
WhyYou are carrying a bar end at chest height, and what a pair of hands can hold in front of a sternum caps this lift long before a set of legs would.
FixTake the ceiling as given and let this be one of the lighter squats in a week rather than the heaviest one. If your legs want more than your hands can hold, the load needs to sit somewhere other than your chest.
Every session feels different and you cannot work out what you changed.
WhyYour feet moved. Where you stand relative to the sleeve sets the angle of the bar, and the angle of the bar decides how much of the load presses down through you and how much pulls at you.
FixFind a spot, mark it, and start every set from the same place. It is the only setup variable this movement has and it is the one nobody writes down.
Landmine squat or goblet squat
These look like one idea with two pieces of equipment, and somebody put them side by side with electrodes and a force plate. Sixteen men and sixteen women squatted both, each loaded to 30% of their own body mass, with sensors on two quadriceps heads and two hamstring muscles.
The landmine version came out lower in both quadriceps readings and lower in vertical force through the floor, and higher in horizontal force. The authors read that as the landmine squat being useful for evening out the balance between hamstring and quadriceps activity and for adding horizontal load, and the goblet squat being the better of the two when the quads are the target.
So they are not swaps for each other, and the difference is not that one is the advanced one. If you want the more direct quad squat, hold the weight at your chest and go straight down. If you want the one that pulls at you while you do it, use the anchor.
This is not a sissy squat
This movement gets filed as a landmine sissy squat in more than one exercise catalogue, and a sissy squat is a different exercise. In that one the hips stay extended and pushed forward while the knees travel a long way ahead of the toes, the torso leans back rather than folding over, and the heels usually come up. It does not look like a squat, which is the point of it.
What is happening here is a squat with the load held at the chest. The hips go back and down, the torso stays close to upright, the feet stay flat and the knees track over them. If you came looking for the movement that takes the hips out and leaves the knees to do all of it, this is not that movement, and it is worth searching for the sissy squat by name instead.
The distinction is not pedantry. A sissy squat asks the knees to do the whole job with the hips deliberately held out of it. This one splits the work between the knee and the hip, which is what a squat is for.
What it is for
The landmine squat holds the loaded end of an anchored barbell against the chest while you squat down and stand back up. The quads and glutes do the work of standing, and because the far end of the bar is fixed to the floor, part of the load acts horizontally rather than straight down.
Questions people ask
- What muscles does the landmine squat work?
- Getting out of the bottom is the quads opening your knees and the glutes opening your hips. Your hamstrings assist, and your midsection and upper back hold the bar end against your chest for the whole set without moving it. Measured against a goblet squat at the same load, the quadriceps readings here were the lower of the two.
- Is the landmine squat a sissy squat?
- No, though the two get filed under each other constantly. A sissy squat holds the hips forward and extended and bends almost entirely at the knees, with the torso leaning back and the heels often off the floor. This is a squat with a weight at your chest: hips back, feet flat, knees over the feet.
- What is the landmine actually doing?
- Loading you, and pulling at you. The plates are real weight, and the pinned end makes the bar travel on a curve, so some of the load acts sideways rather than straight down. On a force plate that showed up as more horizontal force and less vertical force than a goblet squat carrying the same load.
- Landmine squat or goblet squat for quads?
- The goblet squat, on the one comparison that exists. Both quadriceps readings came out higher in it and it put more vertical force through the floor at a matched load. That does not make the landmine version a worse exercise, it spreads the same work differently.
- Why does the bar feel like it is pulling me forward?
- Because it is. The far end cannot move, so the end at your chest swings on an arc around it, and the load has a horizontal component that a free weight held in the same place does not. Where you stand changes the bar angle and changes how strongly that arrives, which is why the same plates feel different from a step nearer or further out.
- Is the landmine squat easier on your back?
- It gets said and nothing has measured it. What was measured is that it put less vertical force through the floor than a goblet squat at the same load and more horizontal force, which is a different distribution rather than a smaller total. Pain that keeps turning up after you squat is worth taking to a physiotherapist, who can watch you do it in a way a page never can.