Today we're starting the hashtag #NoMoreNocebos! Furthering the Enkiri Elite Fitness aim of eliminating fear mongering as it pertains to movement and exercise, in today's installment of this series I want to discuss another highly productive yet frequently vilified movement: the good morning.

Nothing else can give a glassback nightmares quite like this old school classic that calls on you to put a heavy ass weight onto your spine and bend ALL THE WAY OVER. Here are the 3 top reasons why you should include this wrongly vilified and fantastic exercise in your training!

This is similar to the theory I discussed in the previous installment of this series regarding the behind the neck press and its ability to inoculate the shoulders from injury. If an exercise puts a particular part of the body, even a generally precarious one, under a high degree of stress and strain there is a very good chance we can use that stress and strain to our advantage to create highly positive adaptations therein.

In the case of the good morning, due to the positioning of the bar on the back of the shoulders, there is an exceedingly long lever arm acting against the lower back and hips. In fact, the further forward that you bend the longer that this lever becomes, increasing the difficulty of the movement to an exponential degree for every inch that you add onto the range of motion.

This massive strain represents the potential to create an insanely strong and resilient lower back that will be capable of handling just about any type of stress that you can throw at it. The key here is to exercise diligence. Most people won't be able to put a weight on their back and bend all the way over right away. Nor should they try to! Instead, you should start with a range of motion that is comfortable but challenging, and use a weight that is very easy for you. Use a weight that is too easy for you.

You should strive to slowly build up your range of motion first, until you are capable of executing the full ROM movement fluidly, comfortably, and seamlessly. This can take weeks or it can take months. Either is fine as there will be variability from individual to individual and there is no rush. This is a long game.

A good tactic for grading and improving ROM is to use pins. Find your baseline to start with, and slowly work your way down the pins as mobility and confidence improve.

Once you have become comfortable at full ROM then you can make it a point to start building up the training weights slowly but surely. Now you can treat it like any other primary lift with the goal of getting brutally strong, but do not be reckless about this process. It is, after all, your back that we are talking about here and you only get one.

If you execute this conditioning and building process with patience and fortitude you will build erectors that could serve the dual function of acting as steel cables, and your lower back will be highly resilient against a massive variety of stresses and strains.

I've talked about the concept of dummy strength before and why I think it's the most badass type of strength to have. In short, dummy strength is basically strength without regard for techniques or positions. It is the ability to bully massive amounts of weight around until they succumb to your will, regardless of the precariousness of the involved implements or your body's positioning and ability to leverage force. It is just straight up brute strength that is wholly unreliant on technical prowess.

In the weight room, there are several key movement patterns and types of exercises that I believe have the greatest impact on enhancing dummy strength. Anderson lifts, i.e. bottoms up squat variations, are probably one of the best. Different types of deadlifts done from large deficits are another good option. And variations of the good morning have their own place firmly locked in this category as well.

It's hard to beat the combination of erector strength, thoracic extensor strength, and hamstring strength that can be built from this exercise. It's just a brutal lift that requires a brutal mentality to execute, and in turn rewards you with a level of brutal DUMMY STRENGTH that would make even the most behemoth, corn fed farm boy proud.

Mobility enhancement is an underrated aspect of the good morning exercise. The reason for this is that most people don't really do good mornings, they do quarter rep power curtsies. They push their hips back 2 inches like they've got a boner and are trying to aim it down towards the toilet.

That's all well and good if you want to move a lot of weight and not really accomplish all that much, but if you want to achieve all the benefits I've outlined so far in this video you've gotta go further.

Much, much further.

The goal, in my opinion, should really be to go as far as you can possibly go. And if that isn't very far then the goal should be to build that slowly over time.

So many people are so stiff through the hamstrings because their hamstrings are weak AF and lack end range strength. But if you prioritize making your hamstrings massively strong through a FULL RANGE OF MOTION then all of a sudden they won't be stiff anymore. Instead, they will become highly mobile, and along with that mobility the end range strength that you have built in them will make them much more resilient across a variety of activities, especially sports and athletics, which is very important if you prioritize overall athleticism, well rounded fitness, and general capacity.  

If you follow this ideology that I've outlined in this article, the exponentially increasing lever arm that is present on the full range of motion good morning will bulletproof your lower back, make you the dumbest MF'er on the planet in terms of brute strength and force, and you will also become highly mobile through the backside of your body as well.

Those are 3 pretty stellar benefits.

There are the top 3 reasons why you should embrace the good morning! This is another fantastic, highly productive movement that has wrongly been put on the fitness chopping block by glassbacks and movement pessimists that have no faith in the resilience and adaptive capacity of the human body.

But remember #NoMoreNocebos! If you can truly embrace this philosophy and execute it intelligently then your strength, muscle mass, mobility, and overall resilience will have the potential to increase far beyond realms that you had ever imagined. Good luck!

Keep training hard and I will catch you guys next time!