Building a budget home gym but not sure what to buy? In this article, I review a home gym landmine based on cost, effectiveness, versatility and practicality and tell you whether you should buy it, whether you should consider it, or whether you should avoid it.
Contents
Cost
Effectiveness
Versatility
Practicality
The Verdict
Cost
Barbell landmines. What are they? With a landmine, you can secure one side of the barbell while loading up the other side with plates. This allows you to do even more exercises with the barbell. This landmine lets you secure either a 10 kg barbell or a 20 kg Olympic barbell to a power rack. I bought this landmine from Amazon Japan for ¥7,799.
Considering what it does, that is a little bit pricey. For cost, I rate this landmine 3.5 stars.
Effectiveness
We all know that barbell, dumbbell and other freeweight exercises are the most effective for building muscle. We also know that finding new ways and new angles to load up the muscles and stimulate them is more effective for building muscle.
Landmine exercises achieve both of these things. With a landmine, you can perform bilateral exercises using both sides of your body, with the load center to your body. That's not something you can normally do in a freeweight exercise. Landmines also allow you to perform unilateral exercises, which is just one side of your body at a time. You can also do this with dumbbells,but for barbells, this can really only be done with a landmine. And very unique to landmines, you can perform exercises vertically, pushing the weight either out in front of you or to the side.
All of these things provide new stimuli to your muscles which they're just not used to receiving, which will help them grow even more. Plus, because landmines use a barbell, you can really pile on the weight and load up your muscles.
For effectiveness, I rate this landmine five stars.
Versatility
The best thing about freeweights is versatility. Just by changing how you hold the weight, how you move the weight, and at which angle you hold the weight, you can do an almost limitless number of exercises. The landmine is no exception to this.
With a landmine, you can do T-bar rows, Meadows rows, and other really effective back exercises. You can do landmine chest presses, landmine shoulder presses, and other really effective upper body exercises. You can do landmine squats, landmine calf raises, and other really effective leg exercises. You can even do one of my favorite core exercises, the Barbell Russian Twist.
Without a landmine, do you know how hard it is to do core exercises using a barbell? It's nearly impossible!
For versatility, I rate this landmine five stars.
Practicality
The best thing about landmines, and any good home gym equipment, for that matter, is that they reuse equipment you already have in your home gym. Because landmines reuse your barbells and plates, you don't have to worry about them taking up more space. For me, in particular, in my tiny home gym, that is a huge advantage.
And speaking of plates, you can also get landmines that bolt into the hole in the middle of plates, with the plates weighing it down. If you want to be able to move your landmine around and not be stuck next to your rack, then this might be the better option for you. But because of the size of my room, having to place a plate in the middle of my floor to do landmine exercises would just take up too much space, which makes this particular landmine, which bolts into the rack, the perfect landmine for my situation.
And something else that is unique to this landmine is being compatible with both 10 kg barbells, which have a smaller diameter on the ends where the plates go, and 20 kg Olympic barbells, which have a larger diameter on the ends. This is really useful if you have both types of barbells or if there's a possibility in the future that you might own both types of barbells, saving you from having to buy and own two separate landmines for both types of barbells.
One minor downside to this landmine is that by attaching it to the rack, every now and again, if you forget to tuck the rotating part in, your foot can knock it when unracking and setting up for non-landmine exercises, like the squat or the overhead press. It's not a big problem, as when it's happened to me, I've never felt like there's been any danger. It's just a bit of an annoyance, as it is a minor distraction when you want to be fully focused on the exercise.
For practicality, I rate this landmine 4.5 stars.
The Verdict
These are the results for this landmine, but now it's time for the big question: should you buy it, should you consider it, or should you avoid it?
This landmine is a product you should buy. For what you get, it is a little bit pricey, but it reuses equipment you should already have in your home gym and allows you to perform many effective freeweight exercises that are very different to the ones you would normally do. And this particular landmine is compatible both with Olympic barbells and 10 kg barbells. Do you know how hard it is to find a landmine for 10 kg barbells? It's nearly impossible! If you haven't already got a landmine, buy this one.
For the most effective fitness and nutrition in the shortest amount of time, contact Tokyo Titan
I am Tokyo Titan, an International Sports Science Association certified bodybuilding specialist personal trainer and nutritionist. Using advanced bodybuilding techniques, I develop a fully customized program optimized for each of my clients' individual needs. Lessons can be provided online, at a convenient location of your choosing, or at my personal gym in Ota City, Tokyo, just 4 minutes walk from Omori-machi Station on the Keikyu Line.
I am also a bilingual English and Japanese speaker, and provide lessons in either language. If you want to build up your language skills and your body at the same time for more lessons, contact me today!
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