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Barbell good morning: small load, big effect

Also called: good morning, good mornings. All one movement, one page.

By

We compute it and we cite it. We do not test gear. How we know this.

Short answer

Bar on your back like a squat, then hinge forward at the hips and come back up. Small loads, big effect.

Pattern
Hinge
Equipment
Barbell · Plates · Squat rack
Usual bar
45 lb / 20.4 kgOhio Power Bar, 45 lb

Barbell good morning setup

  1. 01Bar on your back in a squat position, unracked, two steps out.
  2. 02Feet hip to shoulder width, knees soft.
  3. 03Brace hard before the first rep.

How to do a barbell good morning

  1. 01Push your hips back and let your torso travel toward horizontal.
  2. 02Stop where your back can stay flat.
  3. 03Drive the hips forward to return to standing.

How to load the bar for the barbell good morning

Before the barbell good morning is a rep, it is a number on the bar. Plates go on in pairs, one per sleeve, and the bar itself is part of the total — a 45 lb bar with a 45 on each side is 135 lb, not 90. This animation walks the three loads you will meet most often.

Our own render, modelled to the IPF bar spec and the published plate spec table.An original 3D animation showing how the three most common barbell loads are built. A 45 lb bar starts empty; a 45 lb plate slides onto each sleeve to make 135 lb, a second pair makes 225 lb, and a third pair makes 315 lb. The running total and the plates-per-side count are shown throughout. This is an illustration of a class of equipment, not footage of a specific product.Original animation by BarWeight — an illustration of this class of equipment, not footage of a specific product, and not a demonstration of how to perform a lift.

Need a different number? Run it through the plate math calculator.

Barbell good morning video demonstration

Reading the steps only gets you so far, and a render cannot show you what a human body does under a bar. This is the barbell good morning demonstrated by a coach, not by us — we did not make this video, we do not host it, and we do not earn anything from it.

Demonstration

HOW TO DO THE GOOD MORNING EXERCISE: Build Your Glutes, Hamstrings And Squat With Perfect Technique

Jeff Nippard

HOW TO DO THE GOOD MORNING EXERCISE: Build Your Glutes, Hamstrings And Squat With Perfect Technique — Jeff Nippard. Embedded from YouTube; this site did not produce the video.Natural bodybuilder and powerlifter with a biochemistry degree; channel is built on citing and explaining peer-reviewed strength/hypertrophy research alongside technique coaching.

Common barbell good morning errors

  • Loading it like a squat. This lift needs a fraction of that weight.
  • Rounding the back to get lower.
  • Bending and straightening the knees to cheat the range.

Barbell good morning: muscles worked

Primary

  • Hamstrings
  • Gluteus maximus
  • Erector spinae

Secondary

  • Adductor magnus
  • Abdominals (bracing)

How we know: Standard functional anatomy — which joints move and which muscles cross them. Convention and reasoning, not a measured EMG result.

Barbell good morning: what the evidence does and does not say

No EMG source was located for the good morning in this pass. The muscle list is standard functional anatomy — a loaded hip hinge with the bar on your back — not a measured result.

How to program the barbell good morning

Training convention: light, 3-4 sets of 8-12, treated as an accessory. Start far lighter than you think.

Rep ranges are training convention. They are what most lifters and coaches do, not a measured result, and nothing on this page is medical advice.

Run the numbers

Knowing the lift is half of it. The other half is loading the bar correctly.

Questions people actually ask

▶How much weight should I use for good mornings?

Far less than you squat. Training convention treats this as a light accessory in the 8 to 12 rep range. Loading it like a squat is the single most common mistake on the lift.

▶How far forward should I lean on a good morning?

Toward horizontal, and no further than the point where your back can stay flat. If you have to round to go lower, you have found your range.

▶What is the difference between a good morning and an RDL?

Where the bar sits. A good morning has the bar on your back like a squat; an RDL has it in your hands. Both are hip hinges, but the good morning puts a much longer lever on your torso, which is why the load is so much lighter.

The kit this lift needs

Straight from this movement’s own equipment list. Each page below compares published specs across every model we have verified — no prices, no ratings, nothing we claim to have tested.

Same pattern, different lift

All barbell exercises

Sources

No study is cited for this movement because none was verified for it. The description above is mechanical instruction and standard functional anatomy. We would rather tell you the shelf is empty than put something on it.

How this page is built and what we will and will not claim: read the methodology.