Barbell Good Mornings

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the spinal erectors running either side of the lumbar spine, which hold the spine extended instead of letting it round under load.

Even with a single joint doing the moving, the muscle is not working alone — the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down.

Every exercise for:Lower backHamstrings

How this movement works

Everything happens at one joint. That gives you direct control over where the tension sits; the trade-off is that the muscle gets no help, so the load that feels hard here is a fraction of what a multi-joint version of the pattern would take. Slow, complete repetitions beat heavy ones.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

A barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.

Every exercise using:Barbell

These train the lower back too, using equipment this one does not:

• Dumbbell Dead Liftsdumbbell
• Hug A Ballexercise ball
• Hyperextensionsbench
• Hyperextensions With No Hyperextension Benchbody only
• Lower Back-SMRfoam roll