maratoolSeated Good Mornings
How to do the seated good mornings
- Set up a box in a power rack. The pins should be set at an appropriate height. Begin by stepping under the bar and placing it across the back of the shoulders, not on top of your traps. Squeeze your shoulder blades together and rotate your elbows forward, attempting to bend the bar across your shoulders.
- Remove the bar from the rack, creating a tight arch in your lower back. Keep your head facing forward. With your back, shoulders, and core tight, push your knees and butt out and you begin your descent. Sit back with your hips until you are seated on the box. This will be your starting position.
- Keeping the bar tight, bend forward at the hips as much as possible. If you set the pins to what would be parallel, you not only have a safety if you fail, but know when to stop.
- Pause just above the pins and reverse the motion until your torso it upright.
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.
Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the glutes finish hip extension.
Every exercise for:Lower backGlutes
How this movement works
The load travels toward you and several joints bend to bring it there. The arms finish work the back starts, so grip and elbow flexors sit in the path of every repetition: when people stall on a compound pull, it is more often the hands giving out than the primary muscle running out of force.
It is filed under powerlifting — the squat, bench and deadlift family and their accessory work. Technique is judged by whether it survives a near-maximal single, not merely by whether the weight moves.
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:
- Smith Machine Dead Liftssmith machine
- Supermanbody only
- Weighted Ball Hyperextensionexercise ball
- Dumbbell Dead Liftsdumbbell
- Hyperextensionsbench
Difficulty
Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.
Of the 35 lower back exercises in this database, 12 are listed at intermediate level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.