Good Mornings: How Many Sets and Reps, and How to Progress

How many sets and reps of good mornings to run at each level, how to add weight week by week, and the mistakes that load your lower back the most.

Good mornings look simple: bar on your back, hinge at the hips, stand back up. The catch is that this is one of the few lifts where too much weight doesn't just make the set hard, it goes straight into your lower back. Here's the concrete version: how many sets, how many reps, and how to add weight over the weeks without guessing.

What the lift actually trains

Hamstrings and glutes do the moving; the spinal erectors work isometrically to hold a neutral spine under load. Unlike a Romanian deadlift, where the weight sits in your hands close to your body, here the bar is on your back. The lever arm is longer, so the moment on your lower back is bigger at the same weight.

Practical consequence: 60 kg in a good morning is much harder on your back than 60 kg in an RDL. Expect to use roughly 30–50% of your RDL weight. People who carry over their RDL numbers usually learn this over two or three days of a stiff, angry lower back.

Execution: what has to be right

Bar on the upper traps or slightly lower, feet hip-width to about 10 cm wider.
Knees bent 10–20 degrees and they stay there. This is not a squat.
Hips travel backward; the torso lowers as a consequence. The goal is a hamstring stretch, not a low torso.
Descend only as far as your back stays flat. For most people that's a torso at 30–60 degrees from the floor, not parallel.
Come up by driving the hips forward and squeezing the glutes. No leaning back at the top.

Breathing: inhale at the top, hold the brace through the descent and the first half of the ascent, exhale near lockout. Tempo: 2–3 seconds down, no rest at the bottom, 1–2 seconds up. If you can't hold that tempo, the weight is too heavy.

How many sets and reps

First 4–6 weeks

2–3 sets of 10–12 reps. Load: an empty 20 kg Olympic bar, or a 10–15 kg bar if 20 kg makes your back round. Rest 60–90 seconds. The goal here isn't load, it's that rep 1 and rep 12 look identical.

Intermediate

3–4 sets of 8–10 reps at roughly 25–40% of your best squat. If you squat 100 kg, that's 25–40 kg. Rest 90–120 seconds. Leave 2–3 reps in reserve (RPE 7–8) — no sets to failure on this one.

Advanced

3–5 sets of 5–8 reps, up to about 50% of your squat, rarely more. Rest 120–150 seconds. Still no maximal attempts: testing a 1RM good morning carries risk out of proportion to anything you learn from it.

Weekly total: 4–8 working sets, split across 2 sessions at least 48 hours apart. More than that rarely adds anything and quietly eats the recovery you need for squats and deadlifts.

Where it goes in the session

Best as the second or third exercise on a leg or back day, after squats or deadlifts. If you put it first, leave 5–8 minutes before your main lift and keep it light. Don't run it the day before heavy deadlifts — erectors recover more slowly than they feel like they do, often 48–72 hours.

How to progress

Double progression is the safest model here: grow the reps first, the weight second.

Start with 3 sets of 8 using a weight you could hit for about 12.
Add one rep per set each week, up to 3x12.
Once you hit 3x12 with clean form, add 2.5–5 kg and drop back to 3x8.

Eight-week example starting at 40 kg: week 1 — 3x8 at 40 kg; week 2 — 3x10; week 3 — 3x12; week 4 — 3x8 at 45 kg; week 5 — 3x10; week 6 — 3x12; week 7 — 3x8 at 50 kg; week 8 — 3x10. That's 10 kg in two months, about 25%, and that's fast enough.

If you stall at the same rep count two weeks running, cut 10% off the bar and repeat the cycle. If your lower back is burning and your hamstrings feel nothing, the weight is too heavy regardless of how many reps you grind out.

Useful variations

Seated good morning — takes the hamstrings out and targets the erectors; use 20–30% less weight, 3x8–10.
Band good morning — 2 sets of 15–20 as a warm-up before squats.
Safety bar — easier on the shoulders and easier to keep the back flat.
Wide stance — more glute and adductor, usually allows 5–10 kg more.

Common mistakes

Too much weight, so the lower back rounds on the last few reps.
Bending the knees on the way down, turning it into a bad squat.
Bar sitting too high, on the neck instead of on muscle.
Bouncing out of the bottom instead of a controlled start.
Running it every session and wrecking deadlift recovery.

When to see a doctor

Sore muscles for 1–3 days after a new stimulus are normal. These are not:

Pain that radiates down the leg, numbness, or foot weakness.
Back pain lasting more than 7–10 days, or getting worse at night and at rest.
A sharp pain mid-set that forces you to stop the rep.
Any loss of bladder or bowel control — that's same-day, emergency care.

If you have a history of disc herniation, spondylolysis, or spinal surgery, clear it with a doctor or physiotherapist before adding good mornings to your program at all.

The short version

Beginner: 2–3 sets of 10–12 with an empty 20 kg bar; intermediate: 3–4x8–10; advanced: 3–5x5–8.
4–8 working sets per week, across 2 sessions at least 48 hours apart.
Use 25–50% of your squat weight and never test a 1RM on this lift.
Progress by double progression: build to 3x12, then +2.5–5 kg and back to 3x8.
Pain down the leg, numbness, or foot weakness means stop and get it checked.