Good Morning Exercise: How to Do It, Muscles Worked and Benefits

The good morning is a hip hinge done with a barbell resting across your upper back. You bow forward from the hips, keep your back flat, then drive your hips back to standing. It is one of the most effective posterior chain builders there is, and also one of the easiest to get badly wrong. Done light and clean, it will do more for your hamstrings, glutes and lower back than almost any other accessory lift. Done heavy and sloppy, it is exactly how people hurt themselves. Here is how to do it properly.

How to do a good morning

Set the bar in a rack at roughly upper chest height. If you have a power cage or squat stand, use it, and set the safety pins so you can dump the bar if you need to.

1. Rack the bar. Position the barbell across your upper back, in the same place you would for a low-bar back squat, resting on the shelf of your rear delts rather than on your neck. Grip it firmly and pull your elbows down to lock it in place.
2. Step back and set up. Take two steps back. Feet about hip to shoulder width, toes pointing forward or very slightly out, with a soft bend in your knees. That knee bend stays fixed for the whole rep.
3. Brace. Take a big breath into your belly, tighten your abs and squeeze your upper back. Your spine should be in a straight line from your head to your hips, and it stays that way throughout.
4. Hinge back. Push your hips backwards, as if you are closing a car door with your backside, and let your chest travel forward as a result. Do not think about bending forward. Think about pushing your hips back and letting the bow happen.
5. Find your depth. Go as far as you can while keeping your back completely flat. For most people that is somewhere between 45 degrees and parallel to the floor. The moment your lower back starts to round, you have found your limit.
6. Drive back up. Squeeze your glutes and push your hips forward to return to standing. Do not yank with your lower back. Finish tall with your glutes tight, without leaning back at the top.

Muscles worked

• Hamstrings. As you hinge forward, your hamstrings lengthen under load and then pull your hips back through to standing. They are working hardest at the bottom, in the stretched position.
• Erector spinae. The muscles running either side of your spine work isometrically to stop your back rounding under the bar. This is the good morning's real specialty. When researchers loaded the good morning progressively, activity in both the hamstrings and the spinal erectors rose as the weight went up (EMG and kinematics of the good morning under load).
• Glutes. Your glute max drives hip extension out of the bottom, exactly as it does in a deadlift or hip thrust.
• Core and upper back. Your abs brace against the forward lean, and your upper back and lats work to keep the bar tight and stop your chest collapsing.
• Adductors. Your inner thighs assist hip extension, particularly if you use a slightly wider stance.

It is worth being honest about where the good morning sits. In a study comparing hamstring exercises, the Romanian deadlift and glute-ham raise produced greater hamstring activity than the good morning (muscle activation during various hamstring exercises). The good morning is not the best pure hamstring builder. What it does better than either is load your spinal erectors and teach your whole body to hold a rigid position under a bar.

Benefits

• It bulletproofs your hinge. The good morning trains the exact pattern you need for a heavy deadlift, and the bar on your back gives instant feedback the second your form slips.
• It builds the muscles nothing else does. Loading your spinal erectors directly is difficult. The good morning does it without needing a machine.
• It carries over to the squat. If you find yourself tipping forward out of the hole in a back squat, that is usually weak erectors and hamstrings. Good mornings are the standard fix.
• It needs very little kit. A barbell and somewhere to rack it. That is the whole shopping list, and a decent barbell covers dozens of other lifts too.
• It is efficient strengthening work. The NHS recommends muscle-strengthening exercise covering all major muscle groups on at least two days a week, and one lift that hits hamstrings, glutes, back and core is a fast way to tick several boxes.

Common mistakes

Loading it like a squat. By far the most common and most dangerous error. The good morning is an accessory lift. Most lifters should keep it well under half their squat weight. If you are new, the empty bar is genuinely enough.

Rounding the lower back. If your back rounds, the load moves off your hamstrings and glutes and onto your spine. Reduce the depth, reduce the weight, and film yourself from the side so you can actually see what is happening.

Bending the knees more as you go down. If your knees keep bending, you have turned it into a bad squat. Set a soft knee bend at the start and freeze it there.

Going too deep. Depth is not the point. Your range is decided by where your back stays flat, and that varies with your hamstring flexibility. Parallel is a target, not a requirement.

Hyperextending at the top. Standing up and then leaning back squeezes your lower back for no benefit. Finish tall, glutes squeezed, ribs down, and stop there.

Putting the bar on your neck. The bar belongs on the muscle of your upper back. On your neck it is uncomfortable and it encourages your chest to drop.

Variations

• Seated good morning. Sit on a bench with the bar on your back and hinge forward. Taking your hamstrings out of the equation forces your spinal erectors to do everything. Brutal and very effective.
• Safety bar good morning. If you have a safety squat bar, the padded yoke sits comfortably and the bar's design naturally pushes you forward, which makes it a great tool for this lift.
• Banded good morning. Stand on a resistance band and loop it behind your neck. The resistance builds as you stand up, matching your strength curve, and there is no spinal compression. Ideal at home or as a warm-up.
• Dumbbell or kettlebell good morning. Hold a kettlebell at your chest or a dumbbell behind your neck. Easier to load lightly and a sensible starting point.
• Wide stance good morning. Widening your stance brings your adductors and glutes in more and lets some people reach a deeper position comfortably.
• Single leg good morning. No weight needed at first. It exposes side-to-side differences and hammers your balance along with your hamstrings.

Sets and reps

Treat this as supporting work, not a main lift.

• General strength and muscle: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps after your main squat or deadlift. Rest 60 to 90 seconds.
• Learning the pattern: 3 sets of 10 with an empty bar or a broomstick, focused entirely on keeping your back flat.
• Higher rep back work: 3 sets of 12 to 15 with a light bar, moving slowly, to build endurance in your erectors.

Two sessions a week is plenty. Progress by adding small jumps, 2.5kg at a time, and only when every rep of every set is clean. If you have any current or recent lower back trouble, get it checked before adding good mornings, and start with the banded or bodyweight version.

Recommended reads

1. The best barbell in the UK
2. The best power cage in the UK
3. Romanian deadlift: how to do it and muscles worked
4. Deadlift: technique, muscles worked and mistakes
5. Hip thrust: how to build your glutes