THE KING OF EXERCISES
By- Louie Simmons
Tue Sep 29, 2020
GOOD MORNINGS
Tags: Back, Goodmorning, Low Back
An almost forgotten special exercise is the Good Morning.
From the beginning of weight training, the Good Morning—in its many varieties—has provided a solid base of building squat, pulls, and the posterior chain used for all types of running including of course sprints.
Good Mornings can build great back strength or be used to prevent injuries or build flexibility.
INFLUENCERS OF THE GOOD MORNING
I was influenced by three men when I was young.
The first man was Bob Peoples from Tennessee. Bob pulled 725 pounds at 180 pounds body weight in the 1950s. He was very inventive in his training with many special training devices.
But, the Good Morning was a favorite exercise. He would do them with a unique yoke that could place the bar on his traps to his mid to lower back. He felt this would put the load on many parts of the spinal erectors to work the entire back.
Using a Marrs-Bar will do the same thing, but only in one position. The Marrs-Bar places the majority of the work on the hamstrings, glutes, and mid-back quite well.
Paul Anderson, the second man who influenced me, was a young student of Bob Peoples and would later use the Good Morning to build a 1,160-pound squat done from the bottom position in a Vegas nightclub act. No gear at all. That was around 1960 or so.
He found you could cheat by doing a squat Good Morning without the bar going in front of the knees. To solve the problem, he placed a wide, eight-inch strap in front of his thighs that would connect to a rack. Then Paul would walk into it, so when he would bend forward, he could no longer bend his knees and turn it into a Good morning that would take work off the legs and place it on the back where it was not needed.
Today, if you look at a Good Morning machine, it has a pad that keeps the lifter from using his or her legs. Remember, the more you bend your legs, the less back work is being used.
Note: You must always do the exercise correctly, or it will not be effective.
The third man who influenced my early training was Bruce Randall. Not many of you have heard of him, but the Good Morning was a lifesaver. Bruce was a 400-pound all-around lifter, then he broke his leg severely and could not do his favorite building-up exercise, the squat. When he learned he could no longer squat, he started doing Power Good Mornings.
A Power Good Morning is performed by pushing the glutes to the rear and bending the leg, much like a quarter squat, while leaning forward with an arched back. As he worked up in the Power Good Morning to 335 pounds, he found he could drop into a parallel squat.
Then, as the Power Good Mornings went up, so did his squat until he could squat 750 pounds. Bruce was at this time 400 pounds, and he set his goal to win Mr. Universe, which he did. This was quite a story, to say the least.