How to Do the Good Morning Exercise—And Why You Should

Exercising in the morning refreshes our body due to which we look great throughout the day. Good morning is an exercise that you must do regularly.

When creating a strength training workout, some exercises are used more than others. Want to work the lower body? It usually involves movements like squats, lunges and deadlifts. Looking for highly coveted six pack abs? Planks and crunches are often used to build a strong core. However, another exercise that deserves to be more present in the workout routine is the good morning exercise.

Here, learn how to exercise good morning with good form, avoid common mistakes, and what you'll gain by adding it to your exercise rotation.

At its most basic, the good morning exercise is a hip hinge. "The hip hinge is a functional movement pattern that involves maintaining a neutral spine and flexing at the hips," explains Grayson Wickham, DPT, CSCCS, a physical therapist and founder of Movement Vault. To visualize, think about the first half of a deadlift when you bend forward at the hips — that's a hip hinge.

How to Do the Good Morning Exercise for hip hinge: The Complete Guide to Deadlifts

Another great scene is the name of the movement: getting out of bed in the morning. When you get out of bed, you plant your feet on the floor, then brace your midline before shooting your hips up to stand. right? Well, that's good morning exercise in a nutshell.

steps are: 

• A. Stand with feet hip-width apart, toes pointing forward, knees gently bent. The arms should be either straight down, across the chest or behind the head.
• B. Brace the midline and simultaneously hinge at the hips and push the butt straight back with the bottom leg perpendicular to the floor.
• c. Keeping a flat back, continue to lower the torso toward the floor until there is a stretch in the hamstrings or the back begins to round.
• D. Press through the legs and drive through the hips to reverse the movement, using the hamstrings and core to stand up straight. Glue the top.

Note: Although you want to eventually work on bending forward until your torso is parallel to the ground, you may not be able to do this at first (perhaps due to hamstring tightness and/or core weakness). OK! "Don't worry so much about going down so low that you compromise form," says Wickham. "Some people can go a few inches to begin with."

How to Do the Good Morning Exercise with Barbell

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent. Place a barbell of appropriate weight on your shoulders so that the bar rests on the trapezius muscles of the upper back near your shoulders.

                                                                                                                                                         

1. Close your upper back and abdomen and take a deep breath.
2. Exhale while bending at the hips, sending the hips back and up the body. Stop when your upper body is almost parallel to the floor.
3. Exhale as you return to the starting position.

Benefits of the Good Morning Exercise

Since good mornings primarily target the posterior chain, they can be used to increase strength in the hamstrings and erector spinae muscles. This makes them a great addition to lower body strength workouts with squats and deadlifts.

Increasing hamstring strength offers many benefits. One is that it reduces the risk of injury to this muscle group. The stronger the hamstrings, the more resistant they are to strain. Another benefit is that strong hamstrings help support a healthy posture. They make it easier to lift heavy objects, such as when moving furniture.

Building glute and erector spinae strength provides similar benefits. Both of these muscle groups support proper posture. They make it easier to perform everyday movements involving the lower body.

Adding this exercise to your workout routine helps balance the upper leg muscles. Working the quadriceps without working the hamstrings can lead to muscle imbalances. Not only does this affect your body symmetry, but it also increases your risk of injury.

Related: How to stay fit forever

How to do good morning exercises with proper form

As with all exercise movements, proper form is essential when doing good mornings. Using good form ensures that you are working the muscles you want. It helps prevent injuries due to poor form.

To do good morning exercises:

• Stand straight with your feet shoulder-width apart and knees slightly bent. Place your hands behind your head, as in a sit-up.
• Slowly bend forward at the hips, sending the hips back as if using your butt to close the door. Keep the spine straight during this movement.
• Continue the forward bend until your upper body is almost parallel to the floor. Engage your core to help stabilize the movement.
• Hold briefly, then return to the starting position.

When first starting out, do just a few bodyweight good mornings with a focus on good form initially. Once you feel more comfortable with this movement, increase this amount. Try to work your way up to 12 to 15 reps.

To avoid injury, do not lock the knees when doing a good morning. This prevents you from putting too much stress on the knee joints. Keeping a neutral spine is also important because arching your back creates spinal misalignment. This misalignment can lead to low back pain. So it can also go too far because it increases the pressure on the spine.

Good morning exercises work the muscles

You already know that the good morning exercise is a great strengthener for the posterior chain, but that's not the only group this movement targets. According to Hammond, they hit all the muscles of the core (including the transverse abdominis, obliques, and pelvic floor), which play an important role in keeping your spine safe and secure. And if the movement is weighted (it doesn't have to be, FYI), it can strengthen your triceps, biceps, shoulders, and traps, in addition to every muscle already mentioned. So, yes, the good morning workout is a full body workout.

Related: 10 Best Cardio Workouts to Try at Home & Why should you engage in cardiovascular exercise?

How to Add Good Morning Exercises to Your Routine

There's no reason to include this movement in an AMRAP or metabolic conditioning-style workout — or really, any workout for running against the clock. According to Hammond, quality, not quantity, is the name of the game for good mornings.

With no or light weights, you can do good mornings as part of your warm-up to "wake up" the posterior chain and core muscles, Wickham says. For example, do three sets of 12 to 15 repetitions before moving heavy deadlifts, squats or cleans, he recommends. "Doing good mornings before a workout will help your body get used to activating your posterior chain so that it happens automatically during the workout," explains Wickham. As mentioned earlier, you can also use a PVC pipe to practice good mornings before moving on to the weighted barbell.

Also great as a strength exercise on good morning leg days. Try doing three or four sets of eight to 12 reps at a weight you can do with impeccable form, Wickham recommends. Once you're familiar with the movement pattern, you can do five sets of five repetitions at a moderate weight, he says. Any heavy vehicle and the risk far outweighs the potential reward. Oh, and make sure to do this before your workout so your core isn't too wiped out to be engaged.

Remember: 

Good mornings are worth your time because they help prevent injury. Don't let your ego get in the way.