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Landmine presses are powerful landmine exercises to train your shoulder, chest, and tricep muscles. What are the best attachments and handles for landmine presses?
A landmine setup consists of a barbell, weight plates, a base, and possibly a handle. This combination is used to do a variety of exercises with a relatively unique range of motion compared to many other equipment options in the gym.
Landmine presses are a popular way to take advantage of this unusual range of motion. These are a combination of exercises, standing, kneeling, and seated, where you push the landmine bar up and away from your body.
These types of exercises mainly target the shoulder, tricep, and chest muscles. In what ratio and what other muscles depends on what variation you do.
In theory, you don’t need a lot of landmine equipment options to do landmine presses. In reality, the right attachments and handles can make your landmine presses both more effective and enjoyable.
In the end, what the best landmine attachments or handles are for you, depends on many factors including personal preference and training goals. Even so, it can be helpful to have an overview of all the options.
1. Landmine base and barbell
In theory, all you need to do “landmine” exercises is a barbell and a wall, preferably a corner of two walls. After that, you put one end of the barbell in the corner, potentially with something like a towel to protect the bar, and you hold the other end.
In practice, you at least want a good landmine base to ensure smooth movements and minimal damage to your barbell.
The main thing to keep in mind when getting this minimalist landmine setup is making sure your base and barbell match. This is not that hard since most of the standard barbells will have two-inch caps and most of the landmine bases will be made to fit these.
That being said, there are also one-inch cap barbells. Some landmine bases can also support these. Many others of these barbell attachments don’t.
After that, you want to think about what type of landmine base you want. This will vary from situation to situation. If you want a base to bring to your local gym, set up in seconds, and use with low weights, a simple weight plate anchor will do.
For doing landmine presses with heavier weights in your home gym where you have a squat rack, a squat rack base will likely be the best option. There are other landmine base types too.
What length of barbell you want to get for landmine presses depends on a few factors like your personal height, whether you want to target shoulders or chest more, the weight you intend to use, other exercises you want to do, and personal preference.
2. Hammer sleeve handle
The hammer sleeve, also known as a straight bar handle, is simply a straight bar, often with a round handle at the end, to make your landmine presses different in a few ways.
First of all, this handle will make your barbell “longer”. This makes it easier to push up more instead of forward. Doing landmine presses this way focuses more on shoulder muscles and less on chest muscles.
Depending on your training goals this can be both an advantage or a disadvantage.
Secondly, the round part at the end of this straight bar handle makes it easier to hold than the end of a barbell. This will generally be a benefit for both landmine presses and other exercises with this handle.
One potential downside is that if your shoulder landmine exercises are already sufficient, this can be a relatively expensive landmine attachment compared to the relatively small way it changes your workouts.
Even so, if you use a landmine setup often for exercises where this option can benefit the movement, a straight bar handle can definitely still be worth it. Another situation where this option can be a good choice is if you have a relatively short barbell.
Check hammer sleeve landmine attachment prices
3. Viking press attachment
The next landmine press attachment is a big step higher in terms of size, functionality, and price. A viking press handle is a construction of handles at different angles. This allows you to hold the landmine with a neutral, pronated, or supinated grip.
Another potential advantage of the viking press attachment is that you can do landmine presses and other exercises with two hands at a time.
A typical exercise example for this option is the viking press. This is a specific type of landmine shoulder press. Because of the different trajectories the arms follow, the viking press can feel more comfortable than the traditional shoulder press.
The different angle of your wrist thanks to the viking press handle can also feel more comfortable and allow you to position your elbows better to engage the middle part of your deltoids (the main shoulder muscle).
There are a few things to keep in mind when choosing your viking press handle. First of all, there are both skinny and thick grip options.
For a shoulder press, this is mostly a case of personal preference. For other exercises, this influences how much your grip muscles will be challenged.
A potential downside, and something to keep in mind when choosing a viking press landmine attachment, is that the width of the handles is fixed. The handle position of certain models may feel too wide or too narrow for landmine presses depending on the individual that uses it.
Check landmine viking press attachment prices
4. Landmine support stand
When doing landmine presses, it can be very helpful if you could start the exercise with heavy weights at shoulder height. When doing regular barbell shoulder presses you can just use a power rack to start the weights at that height.
In the case of a landmine setup, you need a more unique solution to overcome this challenge.
There is a type of landmine support stand with adjustable height that allows you to put the barbell in a landmine workout equipment setup on it.
You can then load to the barbell, potentially put a landmine accessory on the end of the barbell, and start with the landmine presses, generally with a focus on shoulder muscles.
One potential downside of this option is that there are almost no brands that offer this piece of landmine workout equipment.
You may be able to use regular squat racks in a similar way for low landmine weights but these are definitely not as stable so be careful when using them that way.
An additional benefit is that this landmine support stand can be extremely helpful for landmine leg exercises too.
Check landmine support stand prices
5. Single hand landmine press handle
A single hand landmine press handle is relatively straightforward. It is very similar to the hammer sleeve attachment, a straight extension of the barbell.
The difference is the end of the handle. The hammer sleeve option has a round or neutral grip handle at the end. The single hand landmine press handle has a straight bar.
This makes it easier for you to do one-handed landmine presses with a pronated (hand palms facing forward) or supinated (hand palms facing backward) grip than the hammer sleeve or bare barbell.
In turn, this can help you target certain parts of your shoulder muscles better.
Besides that, you can also use this attachment for one-handed landmine rows, bicep curls, lateral raises, and many more exercises.
Check single hand landmine press handle prices
6. Clean and jerk attachment
The clean and jerk attachment is a landmine handle made to do the exercise with the same name with a neutral grip. This is mainly possible thanks to the unique rotating handles.
Even though it may not be their main use, these handles also allow you to do two-handed landmine presses.
The clean and jerk attachment also has room to add additional weight plates. For most individuals this will not be needed for shoulder exercises but if you are more advanced when it comes to resistance training this may be helpful.
One potential downside is that these rotating handles are in a non-adjustable position. That means that their position may be too wide or too narrow to do landmine presses for you personally.
The clean and jerk attachment is more of a luxury option that may be an option if you plan to implement the landmine version of the clean and jerk exercise too.
If you just want to do landmine presses and a few other standard landmine exercises, this attachment is likely overdoing it. Both in size and price.
Check clean and jerk landmine attachment prices
