Banded Good Mornings (How To, Muscles Worked, Benefits)

I’m not a huge fan of doing Good Mornings with a barbell with athletes, but Banded Good Mornings is a much more safe way to add some resistance to your Good Mornings.

In this guide, I’m going to teach you how to do Banded Good Mornings including important coaching points and a few variations to keep things interesting.

How To Do a Banded Good Morning

Equipment Needed

None

Step-by-Step Instructions

Stand on a resistance band and pull it up over the head and across the back of the shoulders.
Stand tall with feet hip-width apart, hands holding and securing the band in place.
Put a slight bend in the knee and pull the shoulder blades back.
Now, hinge at the hips by pushing the hips back and bending at the waist. Push your knees out slightly as you descend.
Keep the back slightly arched throughout the movement.
Continue the hinge until you feel a stretch in the hamstrings.
Stand back up tall and push the hips forward to the starting position.
Repeat until all reps are completed.

Coaching Points

Banded Good Mornings can serve as a warm-up movement or as a strength-building exercise, usually as part of a circuit.

Listen to your body. Depending on your hamstring (and sometimes glute or low back) flexibility, you may be able to lower down quite far or not very much at all. The key is to move just to the edge of your range of motion. Don’t try to force anything.

Benefits

Banded Good Mornings target the muscles in the lower back, as well as the glutes and hamstrings.

Some potential benefits of Banded Good Mornings include improved posture and core stability, increased lower body strength, and hypertrophy. It is important to use proper form when performing banded good mornings to avoid injury and maximize the benefits of the exercise.

Having said that, Banded Good Mornings are much more forgiving than the barbell variation in terms of improper form potentially leading to injury. This is why I would suggest perfecting your technique with a band before deciding to move on to a barbell.

How Many Reps?

Total reps and sets will depend upon how Banded Good Mornings are being incorporated into the workout (warm-up, circuit, etc.). Generally speaking, rep ranges will be 2 to 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps each set.

Banded Good Mornings Muscles Worked

A Banded Good Morning is going to work the same muscles that a regular Good Morning, or an RDL works.

The hamstrings, glutes and low back (Erector Spinae) will all benefit from Banded Good Mornings. This is what makes them a great dynamic warm-up exercise to add to a lower-body lift or run workout.

Banded Good Morning Variations

If you’re looking to mix up your routine a bit, here are a couple of variations that you can try out.

Single-Leg BW Good Morning

Single-Leg Bodyweight Good Mornings will work to warm-up the same areas as regular Good Mornings but will add an element of balance as well. You can even increase the balance challenge by incorporating an Airex Pad or Bosu Ball into the exercise.

SL Good Mornings can take a while to complete so I usually like to stick to 5 or 8 (at most) each side instead of the typical set of 10. Doing 10 reps on each leg can seem like forever and can bog down the energy of a warm-up.

Single-Leg Anti-Rotational RDLs

This is another single-leg variation. Single-Leg Anti-Rotational RDLs are a mouthful to say and can sound intimidating, but they’re really quite simple to do.

Wrap a thin resistance band to the upright of a squat rack, or something similar. Stand perpendicular to the rack, grab the band and pull it to your midline. From this position, it’s the same movement as a Single Leg Good Morning.

By using a band, the glutes and core have to work to keep the body from rotating while you hinge (hence anti-rotational).