Why This Deadlift Helps All Your Strength Training

It is something I truly believe. You don’t have to do any ONE specific exercise, you have to find the RIGHT exercise for you and your training goals. With that said, I do think there are certain exercises that allow us to solve so many goals at once that if possible, we should really try to find a place for them in our training. One of those amazing exercises is a deadlift progression known as the Front Loaded Good Morning.

Now Good Mornings are NOT an exercise we created. Olympic lifters heavily used good mornings as an assistance exercise for their competitive lifts. I did my fair share of barbell Good Mornings when I was in my Strongman competing days. They always bothered my back, but back then, I thought (as well was told) that was just the cost of getting really strong. Looking back that was a severely stupid attitude I had!

Okay, not everything old was actually good!

As I started to build DVRT I wanted to try something different, what if instead of putting the weight on our backs, what if we held it front? Trying the movement again, something crazy happened. I had NO problems in my low back and really felt great power coming from my hips. Taking away the lever arm on my low back that the barbell created AND the fact I can create tension on the Ultimate Sandbag as Cory Cripe shows below, allows me to better integrate my core.

We NEVER do Good Mornings with the Ultimate Sandbag on the back because it only leads to many issues for the low back and even the neck, there is no great benefit in doing so. This is also where the shape of the Ultimate Sandbag comes into play. If we used a kettlebell we can’t put our body in the same holding position and obtain the connection to our core that makes this such a valuable exercise. If I use a roundish sandbag, it still doesn’t have the correct shape that allows us to get the arms in the right position and make that important connection. As we always say, you have to use the right tool.

Is This Just Another Hip Hinge?

After all that, why are we using the Front Loaded Good Morning, is it just another hip hinge progression to the deadlift? Is it even a deadlift progression? Most people don’t have a clear system to progress their deadlifts. They do either just try to go heavier and heavier in their deadlift (which ultimately leads to plateaus and bad movement patterns developing), or they just grab onto another random hip hinge as their solution.

In DVRT, we have a clear path of how we want to progress our hip hinge pattern and improve your deadlift and even other exercises like kettlebell swings! Changing the holding position after we have established a good Ultimate Sandbag deadlift (for men we recommend being able to do 15 reps with a 60 pound Strength and women 15 reps with a 40 pound Strength first), we change how we hold the weight. Yes, this does help with the issue that using a Burly for many people won’t let them get the range of motion in their deadlift that they want, but it also does something else very powerful!

The key to any good hip hinge or deadlift is how well we connect the lats, core, and glutes to the movement in what is known as the posterior oblique sling. This system of muscles connecting to one another provides stability and strength to our body. If the system is not connected then we have “energy leakage” which leads to less force being produced and many times compensatory movement.

The Front Loaded Good Morning helps this so much by keeping our elbows into our body and actively pulling the Ultimate Sandbag towards us. You can see Cory with one of his clients do this very well and it not only puts us in a better position for the hip hinge, it really loads up the core, upper back, and posterior chain developing a moving plank that gives us the ability to do many other hip hinges even better!

 

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That connection to the core and the strength it builds helps us perform better not only when we go back to our deadlifts, but kettlebell swings as well. That is because the jump from the deadlift to a kettlebell swing is very large. The quick swing back to the body requires the rapid ability to connect to that posterior oblique sling and maintain your plank. You can’t really train that with deadlifts nearly as effectively as you can in the Front Loaded Good Morning as strength coach, Martin Adame, shows below.

 

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We can start slowly then we can build up power with the Front Loaded Good Morning. Physical therapist, Jessica Bento, shows the link the kettlebell swing with using our Core Strap attached to a band to accentuate that power development.

Whether you are looking to improve your deadlift or kettlebell swing or pretty much ANY hip hinge movement, the Front Loaded Good Morning is a great solution. The best part is once you really start to use, build, and get proficient at the Front Loaded Good Morning you can progress the exercise many different ways as Cory shows below. This will really enhance your core stability, glute strength, and building your ability to produce great strength and power in almost any direction of movement.

Don’t miss saving 25% ALL throughout DVRT and when you invest in any of our Ultimate Sandbags you will get our DVRT Complexes Workout Program for FREE too! Just use code “summer” HERE

 

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