F**K YOU: I’LL JUST DO GOOD MORNINGS

 As much as I avoid out right profanity in my blog, using childish asterisks to block out certain letters (a trick I learned from Marvel Comics: Thanks Stan!  Excelsior!), this EXACT phrase has entered my head on multiple occasions to the point that I feel it’s worth exploring the sentiment behind it.  Those who are regular readers are in no way going to be shocked by the direction this goes, considering I literally just wrote about this experience in my most recent post, but “f—k you: I’ll just do good mornings” goes back even further, back before I adopted it for my torn tricep/teres minor during my run of 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake where I squatted 5x10x405, and actually all the way back to 2008 when I first started my home gym.  In fact, I’ll tell that story now.

 

You caught me

It was 2008: I had finished reading literally EVERY article on Elitefts (at the time that wasn’t QUITE the undertaking it would be today, but it was still something), was “fully versed” in the conjugate method (chortle), and had laid out an extensive training plan for the next few months to get me Dave Tate levels of strong and jacked…until I showed up to my gym and saw a sign on it that said “Closed for renovations for the next 2 weeks.”

 

I was livid.  There was no prior coordination of this closure, no newsletter (this was the aughts, forgive me for dating myself there), no e-mail, nothing from the front staff: like the Ringling Brothers Circus, it just closed up one day and went away.  I already had a rocky relationship with this gym, having had a front staff member accost me because I was “deadlifting too loud”…despite the fact I was being scolded in front of a group of 3 dudes that had brought their own personal boombox with a mixed CD (still the aughts) with the Rocky soundtrack on it that they were blaring over the gym’s own sound system while they all curled in front of the dumbbell rack facing the mirrors…but I’m not bitter.  But at this point, the final straw had been reached and I decided then and there I was just going to go MAKE my own gym.  I already had a bench I had scavenged off the side of the road with a sign on it that said “free”, so now I needed a barbell and some plates.  I headed to my local “Play it Again Sports” and bought a used 300lb weight set with a crappy barbell and brought the whole mess home…only to realize the folly of my ways.

I mean, aside from that.  HEY!  Double Simpsons, how cool!

 

It was Max Effort squat day…and I squatted MORE than 300lbs.

 

Well f**k you gym: I’ll just do good mornings.

I had the latest in 2008 guidance to lead the way!

And that was my very first workout in my very first home gym: max effort good mornings (got to 275 for a single), front squats, straight legged deadlifts and ab work.  Good mornings done not just because they were effective, but out of spite.  I wasn’t going to let the gym determine when I got to execute my plan.  And by the time the next max effort day rolled around, I had more plates and more options.

 

When I was running 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake this last time around, the same thing: on deadlift day, on the very first rep of the first set of the BBB work, I tore something around my tricep and teres minor while subluxing my left shoulder.  I immediately lost all ability to hold a barbell  with the posture necessary to deadlift.  I was in the middle of an INTENSE training block with an intense goal: squat 5x10x405 by the end of the 6 weeks, and this was only week 3 of that block. 

 

Well f**k you body: I’ll just do good mornings.  I loaded up my safety squat bar, since it didn’t force me to put my arm in a position I couldn’t hold, and did one of the hardest BBB workouts of my life, starting from the bottom of the good morning off the pins, just like a deadlift, and going 5x10 in under 20 minutes.  It was brutal, it was effective, it achieved the INTENDED effect, and I did not miss that workout.

I mean...I didn't MISS that workout either

 

My amazingly catastrophic Super Squats run was detailed in full in my last post, but after tearing my right hamstring on the 20th rep of breathing squats as a result of squatting with severe dehydration due to RSV, I once again found myself at a decision point.  Was I to give up Super Squats at the mid-point and fail to realize my sole goal of “experiencing this experience?”  Absolutely not!  F**k you hamstring, f**k you RSV, f**k you circumstances, f**k you sanity, f**k you self-preservation, f**k you ‘making sense’: I’ll just go good mornings!  And once again, cue one of the hardest workouts of my executing breathing good mornings: a workout so brutal that now I HAVE to see what a full cycle of that would be like.

 

And from this, I already have so many lessons to learn.  One of which being that good mornings are an awesome exercise and I need to do more of them.  They are absolutely brutal, they hit everything, and they can maximize a small amount of weight.  Looking back during the pandemic, they were absolutely “the answer” for many people struggling with ideas of how to train with limited equipment.  You aren’t giving anything up by choosing the good morning over another exercise: there’s a reason Bruce Randall defaulted to them when he couldn’t squat due to breaking his leg in 7 places.  And in that regard, Bruce’s form on the good morning (and mine for that matter) is absolutely NOT textbook perfect once the poundages get high enough…and the lesson there is “who cares”.  If you see the video of me post Super Good Mornings, I’m having an out of body experience trying to come to grips with the sheer brutality I endured.  The training effect IS there: it doesn’t matter how straight your legs were.

Effort on the left: effect on the right

 

And there’s another lesson to be had there: we need to stop confusing the method for the goal.  I received some flak when I ran Super Squats using good mornings, because, of course, I wasn’t doing squats…but did it matter?  Again: the training EFFECT was there: I was absolutely NUKED by the time that set was done.  The amount of fatigue I generated rivaled, if not EXCEEDED a set of breathing squats, and I still held a bar on my back the entire time there.   And this is talking about swapping an entirely different exercise: just think about all the nitpicking we engage in when it comes to squat depth.  Are we REALLY going to pretend like it matters if someone is an inch or two high of powerlifting legal on a TRAINING set of squats if they still have to drag themselves out of the rack when the set is over?  We have this idea like the body is waiting for a certain magical criteria to be hit before it triggers a growth response, and really it’s a matter of simply subjecting the body to significant trauma and then giving it an opportunity to grow and recover.  And boy: if you want trauma, you want good mornings.

 

But finally, could there be a better “get to yes” lesson than “f**k you: I’ll just do good mornings?”  That good morning option is ALWAYS there: we simply have to be willing to take it when the opportunity presents.  And “good mornings” don’t have to be good mornings.  This could just as easily have become “f**k you: I’ll just do burpees”, which is the response I saw from Lee Hazard (AMAZING name) when the pandemic hit and took away so many fitness avenues, and in turn the dude completely transformed himself physically, mentally and psychologically.  This could be “f**k you: I’ll just do hill sprints”, which is the EXACT answer I’ve seen people give when told explicitly NOT to do hill sprints while running Building The Monolith: because THEY decided that THEY were going to take the risk, suffer the consequences, and reap the rewards therein, rather than ask permission or seek alternatives.  “F**k you: I’ll just train my OTHER leg”, which is exactly what I said after I ruptured my ACL (I have a lot of injury stories it’d seem), “f**k you: I’ll just carry my keg inside my garage” when my events day got snowed out: let’s make our first response be OBSTANANCE, defiance and spite before we start coming up with reasonable excuses and justifications.  Let’s jump to extremes and MAYBE back down toward the middle…but only if we need to.  And if anyone tells us we can’t do it: f**k them: I’ll just do good mornings.