Gut Wrench Review
Last updated on April 5th, 2024 at 09:54 am
I’m on my third landmine. This is due to consistently changing the layout of the gym. I grabbed the Gut Wrench to fill a gap hoping I could find space wherever I felt like. Hopefully, this will be my final landmine.
Note – This is a fairly short review, as the Gut Wrench isn’t too complicated.
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Key Notes
If you have dedicated space, take something like a rack mounted landmine. If you have space limitations like me, or have a need to do landmines in different spaces at different times, then the Gut Wrench is a solid addition.
Note – The Gut Wrench has been replaced by the Barbell Bomb!
Stronger Than U Gut Wrench
The Gut Wrench is fairly simple. It has enough heft to it that your barbell wants to stay on the ground. It has enough padding on the inside to protect your bar. And enough padding on the outside to protect your floor or anything you might roll it up against.
This basic design is essentially the old shoe trick. You toss your bar in a shoe, so it can hold still, pivot, and allow you to perform landmine work.
Obviously, this is way more expensive (depending on your shoes), but much more professionally executed.
The Good
The good news is, the Gut Wrench does what it is intended to do. I can set it up for presses or rows, squats or deadlifts, or whatever I need, and do it literally anywhere. I can set it up in the rack or in the small free space I have, grab some mats and set it up on the second stall of the garage, I could even take it to the lawn and put it to work.
The Gut Wrench would fit well in a gym bag if you travel or go to a commercial gym, or maybe run a workout regime at a park.
It also has this cool liner on the inside to protect your bar that seems to be holding up well.
Some Tests
The Bad
The one thing the gut wrench seems to need is just a LITTLE bit of support in the back. It tends to slide and move on you. This is easily stopped by even the smallest of additions. A mat, an extra plate, a sandbag, a foot, whatever. It basically just wants to move a few inches on each set, so it only needs a small amount of encouragement not to, and good to go. Easy trade off for the ability to set up wherever you want and not deal with a plate loaded landmine. But keep this in mind depending on where you planned to use this.
The other negative is that the rubber sleeve on the bottom, on top of not exactly looking very clean and aesthetic, likes to slide around a bit. If you get going even a little crazy heavy, it can pull back and do weird stuff. Mine has not torn or anything, but it certainly has the potential to be a problem.
New Design
AbMat collaborated with Stronger Than U to make the Barbell Bomb! This basically takes the goods of the Gut Wrench, removes the rubber issue, and gives you a cheaper product. In fact, they don’t even sell the original Gut Wrench anymore, from what I can tell.
Overall Thoughts
If you have dedicated space, take something like a rack mounted landmine. If you have space limitations like me, or have a need to do landmines in different spaces at different times, then the Gut Wrench is a solid addition.
Joe Gray
My name is Joe Gray - aka Gray Matter Lifting - and I've been lifting at home since 2013. In that time I've built a badass gym, deadlifted over 600lbs, helped grow r/Homegym to over 1 Million subscribers, created the Garage Gym Competition and written a ton of posts here on this site. I love the Garage Gym Community... If you do too, I hope you stick around.
