Landmine Press for Bigger Shoulders (How to Do It Right)

In this video, we're going to show you how to do a landmine shoulder press, both standing and kneeling. We've got Jason here today, he's going to be demonstrating. First, we're going to show you how to do the standing landmine shoulder press. Now, Jason, if you can demonstrate for us. In this, this is a very safe exercise for the shoulder, and one of the reasons is, is because— well, before I say it's safe, one of the things you can see Jason doing straight away is getting nice and close, right? He's getting nice and close to the bar. Jason, can you just do it the wrong way for a second and don't get so close, right? So if he's in this position here, that is going to put a lot of strain and torque on the shoulder. So number one setup cue is, as Jason did automatically without any cueing at all, that bar is nice and close to his shoulder. The other thing that's nice and safe about this is he's in a neutral position from the get-go. So Jason, off you go, press that above your head. And he's also at a 45-degree angle, which then makes it nice and easy for the shoulder to get into that full extension. Now, one of the things that we're looking at when we're assessing a press is— hold there for a second— is the shoulder able to go behind the ear? Jason obviously is able to do that perfectly. Go again. Now, one of the things that this exercise does beautifully is often people are limited overhead by the strength of their lower back. The fact that this is on a 45-degree position alleviates any of the, I suppose, constraints and restrictions of strength required where you go through lumbar flexion on an overhead press. You're not going through any lumbar flexion here, so you're able to go nice and heavy. So again, so you can see Jason, he's nice and close to the machine, and he fully extends it at the top, which is where we want. So as a way to load this as a starting exercise, this is a terrific exercise to start with. Also on the stance, you can note that it's opposite leg to opposite arm. So he's nice and stable. We do that to get a nice stable base. All right. So Jason's demonstrated that quite nicely. Now, Jason, you can swap arms and let's do the kneeling variation. Now, the kneeling variation obviously is going to require— well, maybe not so obvious— is going to require a little more strength because he is kneeling and not able to use the assistance of his lower body. So in this position, This is all going to be upper body. We've cut out the lower body completely, and it is going to have a little bit more recruitment on that lower back. Not a huge amount, not like a military press, standing military press. And again, he's pushing straight up overhead, so it's nice and close to the bar. And you can see he's doing that very nice thing where at the end he's pulling himself forward, he's elevating and really getting to that end position because we want to go there. We want to go there with the overhead presses. We want to get that mid-back, those mid-traps, really nice and strong because they're going to stabilize when we're in that overhead position. So Jason's doing this perfectly and pushing up, pushing up, and again, the hand has to stay neutral throughout. Now, one of the drawbacks of this exercise is he doesn't have to stabilize anything. That's also the benefit. Again, if you're working through a shoulder injury or you're new to training, or you just really want an exercise where you can really load the shoulders on, this is a great selection. Not such a great selection if you're looking to be able to stabilize. And just do one more for us, Jason. And again, lower slowly and nice under control. Perfect. That's a nice demonstration. If you want more great tips and ways to do exercises and great videos in general, consider subscribing to our channel. Want more videos to learn how to build your superhuman? Click here or here.