My information on this is that Pisarenko only went up to 220 x 10. GMs are an excellent assistance exercise, but you're trying to make them a lift. My back and I advise against this.
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Goodmorning progression
I am up to 3*10*225 for good mornings. What now? I would like to be able to continue loading this excellent movement progressively as it has been a key assistance exercise for me as an intermediate, but understand why it would be a good idea to avoid going much heavier. Any advice would be most welcome....
TMPHBITEU
My information on this is that Pisarenko only went up to 220 x 10. GMs are an excellent assistance exercise, but you're trying to make them a lift. My back and I advise against this.
Member
Fair enough. However, I feel both my squat and deadlift benefit greatly whenever I increase my back strength, so I guess I am curious whether there is some other, reasonably safe, way to keep driving my back strength up without needlessly flirting with injury. No is a fine answer, incidentally, but I thought I would ask. Weighted back extensions come to mind, but I do not see them being as readibly loadable. Isolating the erectors more, like seated good mornings may also be an idea.....Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe
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Rip, what would you do for progression on an assistance exercise when you've exhausted linear weight increases? (Limited as they are). I haven't seen this addressed in PPST, but I may have missed it.
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Bill Starr advocated working up to 5 sets of 8 reps with the good morning, then alternating weekly between that and 4 sets of 10, when a trainee reached 225; like Rip, he did not advise going heavier than that. Hope that helps.
Member
Just to add another reference to this though perhaps it is where Rip's info comes from also, I read one of the old Bill Starr articles that used to be up on another site where Bill recommended getting the GM up to 50% of you squat.
I wasn't quite sure, but I think he meant 50% of 1RM squat, not work sets. Also, I can't quite remember but I think Bill discussed an upper limit on this exercise as well. No sure he specified a specific one, but basically that there is not value in loading it up to the max
Sorry, going off of memory, but you get the idea I hope.
TMPHBITEU
Change to another assistance exercise. There are lots of them for this reason.
Use the halting DL/rack pull method I talk about in the book. Starr introduced me to this after a couple of years of deadlifting, and I used it to get to 633.
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Of course this is assuming he is doing the good mornings properly. You'd have to be pretty fucking strong to do 225 for three sets of ten the way we teach them.
Assuming they are correct, then you also have RDL's in addition to the rack pulls and haltings.
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