How To Do The Barbell Good Morning Exercise

The good morning exercise with a barbell is the best exercise for strengthening your lower back and core muscles which is an extraordinary move for office workers, weightlifters, sportsmen, and marathon runners.

Good morning is also one of the effective exercises to develop your hamstring, lower back, glutes, and abs. Actually, the name good morning got because of bowing your head position forward and downward.

You need to put a barbell on your shoulders and bend your hips similar to a back squat, but position your torso parallel to the ground, without bending your knees (with straighter legs).

How to do Barbell Good Morning?

1. Place a barbell on your trapezius muscles of the upper back near your shoulder and stand at shoulder-width with feet apart.
2. Grip the bar with your hands wider than your shoulder and your palms facing forward in the back of the barbell.
3. Engage your core muscles and take a deep breath in.
4. Exhale when you drop down your upper body by hingeing your hips backward and bends your knees slightly.
5. Sending your hips until you feel stretched on your hamstring but avoid arch from the lower back. Stop once your upper body is nearly parallel with the floor.
6. Inhale while when you are lifting your body back from the floor, make sure your back should be straight, and your lower back also be tightened.
7. Repeat.

Hinging at the hips is the same motion you would use if shutting a car door with your butt or if you had a rope around your hips and someone was pulling that rope backward.

Benefits of Good Morning Exercise with Barbell

The good-morning exercise hits a number of muscle groups all at once, provides strengthens your lower back, glutes, and core muscles, with regular practice you can see good morning exercise benefits like the below mentions:

• With regular practice, good-morning exercise can increase muscle hypertrophy along your back and improve your posture during everyday activities.
• Good-morning exercise with a barbell works on the posterior chain muscles of your body, including your hamstring, gluteus maximus, erector spinae, and lower back muscles.
• A stronger and strengthen posterior chain gives you more functional stability and mobility. This helps you avoid injuries, both from working out and regular day-to-day activities. 
• Depending on the weight you use, you can also work the shoulders, biceps, and triceps. All this from one exercise.
• This exercise is also a good option for warm-up or cooling down the body while starting or ending the workout with a lightweight.

Variations of a Barbell Good Morning Exercise

You can vary this exercise to better meet your skill level and fitness goals. Variations provide you, with the ability of exercise that you can initially start and increase strength for tougher variations, also with an increasing load.

Bodyweight Good Morning Exercise

If you want to practice your hip-hinging form without weight, practice this variation by placing your hands behind your head as you lower your upper body in the good morning movement pattern.

If you are a beginner, the good morning exercise no weight is the best to practice to correct your form. Then, stick to light weights at first, increasing the weight gradually over time as you gain strength and refine your form.

Seated Good Morning Exercise with Barbell

The seated good-morning exercise is a great variation for isolating your core muscles. While it won’t give your hamstrings the same workout as the standing version.

Resistance Band Good Morning Exercise

Perform this variation by wrapping a resistance band around your neck and feet as you hinge your hips forward and backward.

Good Morning Exercise with Dumbbells

For a slightly easier variation on the traditional barbell good morning, practice dumbbell good morning exercise by holding a pair of lightweight dumbbells at the base of your neck, resting on your shoulder blades with each hand.

Single-leg Good Morning Exercise

When you’ve nailed down your form, you can also try good morning exercise with single-leg, which increases the challenge to the lower body and requires greater focus, stability, strength, and balance.

If you decide to try this variation, make sure you’re not using too much weight and, if possible, have someone spot you.

Changing Your Stance

The simplest adjustment you can make—no matter what weight you’re lifting—is to narrow or widen your stance. Changing stance effect different muscles-a wider stance works your glutes, while a narrow one puts your hamstrings to work.

Safety and Precautions

If you have a chronic or pre-existing health condition, consult your physician before beginning an exercise program.

Proper exercise technique is essential to ensure the safety and effectiveness of an exercise program, but you may need to modify each exercise to attain optimal results based on your individual needs. Always select a weight that allows you to have full control of your body throughout the movement. When performing any exercise, pay close attention to your body, and stop immediately if you note pain or discomfort.

While there may be modifications your trainer can recommend, heavy weight lifting should be avoided if you:

• Are pregnant or recovering from childbirth
• Are injured or recovering from an injury to your spine, back, neck, arms, knees, or feet
• Have recently had surgery on your abdomen, pelvis, knees, arms, neck, or back

If you have any above conditions, consult the physician first and take permission to exercise.

Some important safety tips or precautions that you should follow:

• As always, check with your doctor before starting or increasing a weight training program.
• Good mornings are a more advanced weight training lift, so it’s beneficial to work closely with a trainer or coach when getting started.
• Stop doing this exercise if you feel pain in the hamstrings or lower back.
• It’s also imperative to have the right equipment and gear.
• Whether you’re working out at the gym or at home, always make sure you have stable footing and are wearing the appropriate strength training footwear.

The number of sets and reps you do will depend on your fitness goals. If you’re just beginning, a good place to start is 3 sets of 3 reps. Increase both as your strength begins to increase.

Bottom line

Good mornings are a powerful exercise for a number of reasons, including the efficiency with which you can work many different muscle groups and the benefits this exercise offers your core and posterior chain. It’s unfortunate that many people see the movement as dangerous, and thus don’t add it to their regular routine.

Take the time to learn the perfect form for good mornings, and start utilizing them now. You’ll see massive benefits that carry over into other lifts, athletic performance, and feeling great in daily life. You can also do good morning exercise at home, you only needed dumbbells to do it.