I’m always looking for exercises to make clients better, but increase efficiency in the gym. My athletes have always done a lot of zercher good mornings, we love this movement and use it all the time. By making the simple adjustment of adding in zercher squats between reps, we ramp up time under tension and that requires a ton of stiffness and stability through the torso. The anteriorly placed loading of a Zercher squat forces you to maintain a more upright position followed by bracing for the good morning will engage the core,upper back, glutes and hamstrings . This is also useful as it gets the bar off the athletes back and into a more sports specific position. Often we will use them with slow eccentrics and pauses at the bottom of the movement to increase stability and tension requirements. It got a nickname as the ‘rumpwrecker’ for a reason.
In the video I’m using chains which increase the need for quick ascent out of the bottom posistions but also make holding those posistions inherently less risky.
This is an ongoing series of articles from guest blogger and Strength & Conditioning coach William Wayland of Powering Through Facebook