Barbell Good Mornings
The barbell good morning is a hip hinge with the bar resting on the upper back, pushing the hips back and tilting the torso toward the floor with a neutral spine, to work the hamstrings, glutes and erectors.
HAMSTRINGS · LOWER BODY
How it is executed
- Place a barbell on your upper back, feet hip-width apart.
- Slightly bend your knees and hinge at your hips, lowering your torso until nearly parallel to the floor.
- Return to standing.
- Keep your back flat and core tight.
- Muscles worked
- Hamstrings
- Primary muscle
- Hamstrings
- Equipment
- Barbell
- Movement pattern
- Lower body
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- What it is for
- StrengthHypertrophy
Common mistakes
- Rounding the back to go lower. With the bar on the shoulders, every degree of lumbar flexion loads the spine directly. Go down only as far as the back stays neutral; the range grows with mobility, not by forcing it.
- Bending the knees too much. If the hips drop instead of traveling back, the exercise turns into a half squat and the hamstrings barely stretch. Fix a slight knee bend and move only the hips.
- Loading the bar as if for a squat. The lever of the torso multiplies the weight on the lower back, and what is light in a squat is too much here. Start with the empty bar and add small plates.
- Resting the bar on the neck. As you lean over, a high bar rolls toward the neck and forces you to shrug to hold it. Place it on the traps or a little lower, and pull it into the back.
Frequently asked questions
- Which muscles does the barbell good morning work?
- The hamstrings and gluteus maximus perform the hip extension that lifts the torso, with the adductor magnus helping from the bottom. The spinal erectors work isometrically for the whole rep, with a longer lever than in a deadlift because the bar sits on the shoulders rather than in the hands. The abs keep the ribs down, and the traps and upper back pin the bar against the body so it does not roll toward the neck.
- Barbell good morning or Romanian deadlift: which one should you pick?
- Both are hip hinges; what changes is where the bar goes. In the Romanian deadlift the hands hold it and it travels close to the legs, so you can load far more and it is the option for building the hamstrings and glutes. In the good morning the bar sits on the back, the lever is long and the load has to stay light: it serves to strengthen the erectors and to practice the torso position of squats and deadlifts.
- How much weight and how many reps for the barbell good morning?
- Far less than your leg strength suggests: start with the empty bar or small plates, and a common starting point is 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps, leaving 2 or 3 reps in reserve. It is done far from failure: an ugly rep loads the back. It comes after the squat or the deadlift as an accessory, and the load goes up in small steps, only with the back stable on every rep.
- How far should the torso go down in the good morning?
- As far as the back stays neutral and you feel the hamstrings stretch, usually with the torso somewhere between 45 degrees and parallel to the floor. Depth is set by the hips, which travel back, not by the back: as soon as the lower back starts to round, that is your limit for now. The knees stay slightly bent and fixed, the bar rests on the traps and the weight sits on the midfoot, without drifting to the toes.
Sources and editorial approach
The explanation, variations and FAQs are Kaizer’s editorial synthesis. ACSM’s 2026 guidance provides general context on progression and resistance training in healthy adults; it does not independently validate the technique of each variation.
No individual professional review is recorded for this page.
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