Unf**k your low back with the good morning exercise.

Can the good morning exercise really “fix” your low back pain? The back isn’t even the main target area of this exercise so how is this possible?

It is precisely for this reason that good mornings can improve your low back. For most people, the low back is doing too much.

The low back is meant to be strong, of course. But its main role in healthy movement is more of a stabilizer rather than a load absorber.

I talked about this concept in more detail in another article I wrote about the erector spinae muscle group.

In that article, I argue that the low back does not need to be isolated in order to improve how it feels. Instead, focus should be placed on building resilience in other larger muscle groups that are more responsible for generating force.

One of the best exercises to do that with is the good morning exercise, which I’ll focus on here.

An exercise is only as valuable as how you do it. If you want the good morning to make a positive impact on how your back feels, do it the way I explain in this article

What is a Good Morning Exercise?

The good morning exercise trains a hinging movement. If you’re not familiar with the term hinging, a simpler way to define it is a bending motion.

When most of us bend throughout the day, we do it unconsciously. This is not a bad thing. You shouldn’t have to think about how to perform normal movements. 

Your body will use the strength and flexibility that it has. If your body doesn’t have a range of motion in one joint, it will make up for that range of motion in another joint.

This happens in many movements with many joints. But the low back is notorious for taking on too much tension. It is my belief that this is part of the reason why low back pain is such an epidemic.

The good news is that you can improve these compensations with exercise. If you build more capacity in a movement like bending through exercise, your nervous system will recognize this new ability and use the newly acquired range of motion in your daily movements.

Once again, this will be done unconsciously - it shouldn’t be something you have to think about. Save all the thinking for when you do the exercise.

The Good Morning Exercise Variation to Bulletproof your Back

There are many reasons to program good mornings in your exercise routine. They build flexibility, strength, muscular endurance and many other benefits.

For the purposes of this article however, I am going to teach you how to perform them with the goal of improving how your lower back feels. The most important cue to think about is “less back, more hamstrings.”

Or it can be “less back, more hips” or “more calves.” The limitation and where you feel it will be different for each person but the main intention is to take the low back out of the equation. You want to make sure the low back is in a neutral position.

If you’re not a familiar with what a neutral low back position feels like for you, I recommend you practice the cat/cow exercise before your good mornings.

Go through the two extreme ranges of motion and identify what feels like a middle ground for you. Then, bring this awareness to the good morning exercise.

Be humble here. You might have to take MUCH less range of motion than if you allowed your back to round. Just remember that the purpose of this exercise is not depth, it’s function.

Programming and Closing Thoughts 

Your main priority with this version of the good morning is to build more pain-free range of motion in your hinging.

It is not more strength, even though this will be a natural byproduct. This is why you don’t need to add much weight or volume between training sessions.

The way you improve this exercise is by hinging deeper with the use of your hips and legs. If adding a little more weight helps you accomplish this then do it. If reducing weight helps you do this, then do that.

The message in the fitness world that more is better could not be further from the truth. As we age and want to build resilience in our bodies, less done well is better.

If you want a back that will withstand the test of time, give it some help by building function in all of the other muscles and joints in your body.