Wide Legged Good Mornings
Wide Legged Good Mornings
Muscle Group Stretched: Hamstrings
Muscle Group Strengthened: Hamstrings, Back
Type of Stretch: Active Dynamic
Difficulty: All Levels
Suggested Prerequisites: none
Good mornings are a great hamstring strengthen-while-you-stretch exercise, and these wide-legged ones are no exception. This drill is a great hamstring strengthener for students working on their straddles and straddle pancakes, and is a bit easier doing it standing (where gravity is helping pull us into a deeper forward fold) vs sitting.
How To
Step 1
Start standing with feet wider than mat-width apart (I like to aim for about a 90 degree angle between my legs, but it doesn’t have to be exact). If you’ve got tight hamstrings, feel free to bend your knees a little.
Step 2
Keeping your back flat, hinge at the hips to lean forwards. Focus on rotating the front of your hip bones towards the floor, lifting your sits bones and tailbone away from the ground - you should be feeling a stretch in the back of your thighs (hamstrings). You may feel your butt drift backwards to counterbalance the weight of your upper body, that’s OK.
Step 3
Once you’ve leaned as far forwards as you can with a flat back (even if that’s not yet parallel to the floor), press both feet into the floor as you lift your torso back up to standing. Intentionally pushing your feet into the floor is something you need to add to help engage your hamstrings - without the “foot press” engagement, our back muscles do more of the work to lift our torso.
Repeat for 8-12 reps.
Modifications
Need to make it easier?
Bend your knees even more. As long as you’re still feeling a stretch in your hamstrings, you can bend your knees as much as you need to for this to feel comfortable-but-challenging.
Brace your hands against your thighs for support.
Want to make it harder?
Straighten your legs.
Reach your arms out to the side, or overhead - this will make the “lever arm” of your upper body feel heavier, so your hamstrings will have to work harder to lift the weight.
Add weight. Hold weights in your hands, or a barbell on your back. For the purposes of flexibility training, pick a weight that still allows you to go through the same range of motion that you can as before you added weight.
