The Landmine Rollout: The Best Ab Exercise You’re Not Doing

The landmine rollout is a progression from traditional ab rollout exercises, and one of the best (and most challenging) exercises around for blasting your core.

 

Like other rollout variations, the most basic being stability ball rollouts on your knees, the landmine rollout trains you to resist lower back extension. The goal is to keep your back flat as you bring your hips forward. Doing so trains your core muscles to resist slipping out of a safe posture.

That’s why the most important first step is to take a deep exhale to activate your abs and flatten your back before your first rep. When you exhale, your deep abdominals can fully shorten, which is why pairing the exhale makes this more effective. Then grab the end of the barbell with both hands and rollout like normal. I’ve found it to be more comfortable with both hands as far outside as possible. 

Antirotation Component

Because the landmine means there’s only weight on one side, as you rollout, the weight will move away from your center of gravity. When this happens, you have to use the abdominals and obliques on the side it’s moving away from to resist rotation. If you have weak abs in this respect, your hips will shift to the side.

(Use a barbell clip so that the weights don’t slowly slide off.)

Add Weight For Easy Progression

Unlike an ab wheel, you can easily progress this variation by adding weight to the barbell. Be cautious when adding a lot of weight. This is a challenging exercise with very light weight.

You can also progress this by moving onto your feet, although that’s very challenging. If you haven’t done variations like bench wheel rollouts before (video below), try those first before testing the landmine rollout on your feet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by David Rosales (@davidwilliamrosales)

 

How to Program a Landmine Rollout

This belongs in a long line of progression AFTER you’ve learned how to do stability ball rollouts and wheel rollouts of different variations. It’s an advanced exercise, and one you’ll have to work up towards.

That said, if you’re doing a program that only includes landmine exercises, then throw these in along with your landmine squats and rows.

This exercises features prominently in my 8-week training program The Landmine Workout. 

In the program, you’ll learn the best way to save your joints, build muscle, and burn fat all with just a barbell.