Landmine Cossack squats & single-leg RDLs: strength and power when life goes sideways

Lateral workouts for unconventional strength & power

What you get from this video

¶ Cossack landmines + 2 variations: simple technique & demo

¶ Single-leg Romanian deadlift landmines + 2 variations: technique & demo

¶ A proper warm-up routine

¶ Regressions (variations that make each of these movements easier to do)

¶ Progressions (variations that make these movements more challenging)

¶ The physiology of these landmine exercises: how they make you stronger

The Cossack landmine and the single-leg Romanian deadlift landmine are two challenging landmine exercises that build deep leg and hip strength through unconventional weighted movements.

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These are called “landmines” because the barbell, protruding from its anchor, resembles an actual military landmine apparatus. If you’re not familiar with gym landmines, don’t let the name or the setup keep you from trying this workout. If your gym doesn’t have the anchor sleeve to slide one end of a barbell into, you can wedge the end of a barbell into a corner with a towel or into a weighted sandbag.

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Weighted Cossack landmines are a strength + power move, because they require your hips to open up and your lower half to stabilize a weighted movement laterally.

Traditional leg training is typically one-dimensional: either a forward or up-down movement: squats, lunges and step-ups are each examples of that. But life after 50 or 60 doesn't happen in only one plane of motion. The injuries we get certainly don’t limit themselves to only forward or up-down movements.

See all Move Like It’s 1899 videos and articles here

That’s why these two moves are important to try, because they train your legs to move sideways under load and to hold you up on one foot, which makes the small stabilizer muscles in that foot, ankle and hip work harder than anything you have to do on two legs.

Functional strength = healthy longevity

Building functional strength in life's second half is extremely important to any aging body. Older adults, especially, need to develop pelvic, hip, and deep leg strength and flexibility, not just to avoid injury but also to create more symmetry between your right and your left sides.

Don’t skip the warm up

Warming up for these is extra important, given how Cossack squats will tax your hips, hamstrings and quads. So, jumping rope for a few minutes, as I mentioned in the previous MLI 1899 episode, warms up and loosens your muscles in two or three minutes. Jumping rope also improves your VO2 max over time, which is the single best predictor of how long you'll live from a lifestyle change.

Cossack landmines: the proper weight and technique