You can use the weights in the gym in many ways. Find out what benefits the good morning exercise offers to see if it is for you.
These positive points range from important benefits of weight lifting that are worth mentioning to very specific advantages good mornings offer.
1. The good morning can grow and strengthen muscles
The good morning is mainly a resistance training exercise you do to grow, strengthen, and improve endurance in a variety of muscles.
Having bigger and stronger muscles comes with a variety of secondary health and visual benefits.
Some of the muscles worked with the good morning exercise include:
- Glutes (butt)
- Hamstrings (back thighs)
- Lower back muscles like your erector spinae
You can slightly influence which of these muscles you focus on. More specifically, if you really bend your spine in the good morning, you can work your erector spinae a lot harder.
That aside, keep in mind that you still need to use enough resistance. Since the muscles worked in the good morning are relatively strong, you will need a good amount of resistance.
Luckily, there are still ways to do the good morning exercise at home if you don’t have the time to go to the gym.
Additionally, you want to implement the rep and set ranges that are good for your fitness goals.
2. Good mornings may reduce back pain
Having aches and pains in many areas is a somewhat common issue in modern life. Especially, the lower back is an area where things are not always optimal.
Luckily, there are still ways to avoid and resolve these things. More specifically, growing and strengthening the muscles in this area with good mornings can help you achieve these goals.
One review of multiple studies concluded that core strength training exercises like the good morning can be effective for reducing low back pain (1).
Another study with 120 participants that had lower back pain observed that a core stabilization exercise program was better than routine physical therapy exercises for reducing pain (2).
3. The good morning does not really fatigue grip
The good morning is definitely not the only resistance training exercise that works your glutes, hamstrings, and erector spinae.
However, many good morning alternatives like deadlifts, pull-throughs, and even weighted back extensions work your forearm grip muscles a lot.
This extra grip engagement is not necessarily a downside and can even be a benefit.
That being said, there are also workouts where you want to save your forearm grip muscle endurance for other exercises.
In a situation like that, the good morning can be a good choice.
4. The good morning can help weight loss
Another common challenge of modern life is gaining excess body weight. This excess body weight increases the risk of a variety of negative conditions so this is something you want to avoid or resolve.
One way to do this is by increasing your energy consumption with an exercise like the good morning.
Tilting your upper body forward and backward with heavy weights on your back will typically burn more calories than your daily activities.
Additionally, the glutes and hamstrings are big muscle groups where there is a lot of room for mass increases.
This is good for losing weight because your weight influences how much energy you use a lot.
By building extra healthy mass, you burn more calories throughout the day which makes it easier to get to the point where you lose weight or helps you speed up your results.
5. Good mornings can improve athletic performance
To get better at a certain sport or exercise it is common to train more often in this same activity. However, you can also often get a lot of skill progress by turning to other workouts.
For example, the good morning exercise can help you grow, strengthen, improve endurance in, and improve muscle power in your glutes and hamstrings.
These two muscle groups play important roles in running.
In turn, that means approaching the good morning exercise the right way can potentially improve your athletic performance in sports where you benefit from fast running.
Keep in mind that how you train muscles influences which of the aspects above you train.
A sprinter would likely benefit from doing good mornings with a lot of weight and explosive reps.
Someone who runs long distances may want to focus on muscle endurance instead with low weights and a lot of slow reps.
6. Good morning exercise sessions don’t take long
Many people don’t even try to get fitter because they think it requires many hours out of their day to get tiny benefits.
However, it is often possible to get great results from relatively short workouts too. Especially in weight lifting exercises like the good morning.
In these, you just have to work your muscles hard enough to start the processes that can repair and grow them.
This does take some time to do but something like 3 sets of 10 good mornings is over before you know it.
Resistance training beginners can already see nice results with two sessions a week of this.
