The seated good morning is designed to target your lower back while hitting complimentary muscles in your hips and hamstrings. This exercise is beneficial whether you’re an athlete or just trying to improve your overall quality of life. If you're looking for an awesome lower back strengthening movement look no further than the seated good morning. Now let's dive in!
Why The Seated Good Morning:
As a bit of an unpopular exercise, you may be wondering what the seated good morning has to offer that you can't get out of something like a deadlift or glute bridge. And that's a great way to look at the seated good morning. This exercise is all about gaining resilience in the posterior chain by isolating your muscles with a slow and controlled movement. By slowing the tempo of the movement, you engage the targeted muscles more functionally, allowing them to experience a deeper and more intense contraction. And for these muscles involved, the deeper contraction and engagement will improve the muscle's strength and endurance, which will enhance overall stability, mobility, and risk of injury.
Seated Good Morning - Tutorial:
- Find a sturdy bench, chair, or box and sit on the edge with your feet planted firmly on the ground shoulder-width apart.
- If you are doing this exercise without weight, position your hands behind your head or crossed over your chest for stability. If you have a barbell across your back make sure you have a good grip on the bar and it's comfortably resting across your traps.
- Keeping your spine neutral and maintaining a strong posture, hinge forward at your hips, leading with your chest.
- Lower your torso to around parallel to the floor or when you feel a tight stretch in your hamstrings.
- Engage your glutes and hamstrings to raise your torso back to the starting position, exhaling as you do and holding the same posture.
- Repeat for a comfortable amount of reps.
Exercises similar to the seated good morning: glute hyperextension, reverse hyperextension, back extension, and the good morning exercise.
Seated Good Morning - Tips and Benefits:
A useful tip that has been proven to maximize the efficiency of the seated good morning is starting with a warm-up to get your body feeling prepared. This will help performance and reduce the risk of injury. Dynamic warm-up routines have been proven to be super effective for achieving better results. A couple of other tips that have been proven to help include: putting an emphasis on form rather than weight and gradually increasing your intensity over time.
When done correctly the seated good morning has many benefits to offer. The first and obvious is a stronger posterior chain (check below for muscles in the posterior chain). Next, you can expect increased flexibility (especially in the hamstrings and hips, reducing the risk of lower back pain), improved core activation, enhanced athletic performance, and injury prevention.
Seated Good Morning Muscles Worked: Lower back (spinal erectors -multifidus), glutes (mainly gluteus maximus), and hamstrings.
Back of Steel 2.0 - Lower Back Strengthening Program:
Back of Steel is a game changer for athletes, fitness enthusiasts, and anyone looking to mold themselves a bulletproof lower back. It's not just another generic workout routine; the program is specialized to target the root causes of your discomfort and strengthen your lower back in the most effective way possible. Myself and many others have used this exact formula not only for pain relief, but to prevent any potential injuries that will come our way. Say goodbye to limitations and unlock your true potential today!
Back of Steel 2.0 - Lower Back Strengthening Program
[1] Donnelly, Joseph M. Travell, Simons & Simons Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: the Trigger Point Manual. 3rd ed., Wolters Kluwer Health, 2019.
[2] Davies, Clair, and Amber Davies. The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief. 3rd ed., New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2013.