Transcription
What a family, welcome back to another video! If this is you, which is known as wing and scapula, and you wanna get here, and you also want to have this type of control of your shoulder blades, which is going to help you for your clenches levels and all your calisthenics journey, stay tuned for this video.
[Music] [Applause]
What a family, you guys been asking for this one because as many of you know, I have scapula winging, and we know scapular control is one of the most important things in calisthenics. I'm going to be showing just how I do push-ups. I'm not gonna be exaggerating what I do, and this is what happens when I do a few reps. And Andrew here is gonna help us out with that. First rep starts off great, as he keeps going along, his blades start to come up a little bit more off of his back, kind of indicating that there is some weakness. Believe it or not, he is significantly stronger than me doing anything in calisthenics, and yet he has a lot more wing than I do.
Let's talk about how we can get some control and activation of the serratus anterior, the rhomboids, the lower trapezius, pec minor, the lats, all these areas to help keep the blade from winging off of the back. The first movement we're going to teach is the scoop. It is an upward rotation and an abduction and protraction of the shoulder blade. So there's three main movements going on there. If you don't know what that means, doesn't matter. You're going to start off with your arm out to the side. You're going to reach away from you as much as you can without side bending the body, so keep it nice and still. You're going to then roll your shoulder up and forward, and then scoop it down and forward.
Let's get a side view for them. So you're going to roll it up and forward. There, you're activating into bad posture. It's not necessarily bad posture, we're just getting into that full downward rotation, elevation. Then we're sliding it around. The blade is coming down, but instead of going back, which is what a lot of people hear, like your blades go down and back in calisthenics. Thankfully, we work a lot on protraction, so you actually want to protract the blade forward. The only way that's going to work is if you are reaching away. Now, if you don't reach away and you keep your blade retracted as the blade comes down, it literally runs into your rib cage, so it can't go around the rib cage. As we reach away, it allows the blade to slide around.
There's a couple of other benefits to this. Being able to spread your blades apart is going to increase the amount of breath you can bring into your upper back, which creates a ton of tension. It's going to make you a lot stronger, more efficient in creating tension from the upper to lower body, which as you all know, is going to make your movements work.
Let's take this to another position. If you can't figure out how to get it standing in a freestanding position, let's grab onto a pole. You're going to grab on, we're going to work your left side now. You're going to bring your feet toward the pole a little bit, so you're just leaning away, so you have a little bit of tension on the arms. This will help some of you. Just having this tension, this pull is going to help make it easier for you to get that roll forward and then roll down and forward. And you're pressing that armpit forward the whole time. You can use your other hand here along the side of the ribs to kind of feel along for the serratus. We're looking, we're looking to feel the serratus pop in here, and you're going to feel your lat engage as well. The lat is going to help you pull your shoulder down. Wait, the lat attaches to the humerus. It does, but the act of the lat engaging is pulling on the arm, which is then pulling the blade down. Same with the pec minor, so you might feel this in the peck.
Rolling through that, this is going to take a long time to master. So you have two positions to do it in. And Gabor actually prefers to do it in, losing my microphone, prefers to do it with some compression. So this is going to distract the joint. It's helping to pull the joint apart. This compresses the joint. Gabor finds this to be much easier to get his scoop done. This is not going to be the same for a lot of people. This is actually a very difficult position. However, if you're struggling with those two and you'd like to try some compression, he's got a band across his chest at about the height of his sternum. Shop for that water bottle, dog. Then you're going to roll the blades up and forward and then down forward. Same movement. So you can do one arm at a time or two. Two arms is going to be much harder.
And the fact that you can't see this is a huge problem. It's really important you record yourself or you're able to see yourself in a mirror so that you can go through this movement. Seeing it is one of the most important parts because you can't see what you're doing here. You watch yourself in the mirror from the front, it's not going to work. So record yourself, play it back. Keep reaching away, up and forward, down forward. The reach away is super important. Good job, dude. Great.
So you learned how to do this, that's all fine and dandy, but you don't really know how to apply it to a movement. So we're going to start in a quadruped and then a plank position. So learning to scoop from here is much more difficult. His blades are going to wing, and can you scoop from here just innately? We've been practicing this for about six months or so. What you're going to do, go and let it relax again. You're going to start by lifting one arm out to the side. You're going to do that same scooping motion. So you're reaching, he's reaching toward you. He's going to slide that shoulder up and forward, and then down and forward. He's going to keep reaching as he drops the arm to the floor. So he's continuously reaching down, down to the floor, keeping that blade protracted and upwardly rotated. So you can see that blade slid around the side. You're going to do the same thing on the other side. Real quick, slide it under there. There you go. Good. You're keeping this side active. Reach, reach, reach. Both active. Good.
Now we're going to take the scapula in the scoop position, so it's protracted. You're going to then shrug them up and then pull them down. That's elevation and depression. Shrug, pull them down to your pockets. Third, very small range of motion there is keeping it scoop still. Then we're going to take it through protraction, retraction. So you're going to retract them just a tiny bit to there, and then press away. Now the reason we want to work on small range is because we want to work on keeping this as he goes back. So continue to relax into retraction, all the way, all the way, all the way. As he goes back, that's when people start to lose it. So we want to work within a range of motion that you can where you don't lose the scoop. You might need to bring your arm up, reset it, all that. He doesn't need to because he's getting some more control. Then you can work on getting into deeper ranges of motion in elevation, depression, and then protraction, retraction. You could even make circles if you wanted to, but again, we want to focus on trying to isolate the shoulders here, so we don't want the thoracic spine to get involved. His thoracic spine was kind of tilting anteriorly and posteriorly. I want to keep that nice and still.
Then take it into the plank. Now that you're tired, now he, from the plank position, I mean, you're going to be doing a one arm plank here, out to the side, out to the side, holding that plank position. And then from there, you're going to be doing those elevations, depressions. Elevate to press. Microphones dangling, look at that. And then protract, retract in a small range, and then circles.
To do another exercise to strengthen the serratus anterior, that's the knives here, hence the name serratus. We need this roller, dude. Come on. I know you're afraid of it. Okay. You're gonna get into a quadruped or a plank position. Quadruped is going to be easier, or you can walk your knees back. From here, you're going to be rolling the roller away from you while keeping the blades protract. The blades are protracted, rolling forward, rolling it back. You're gonna keep the pelvis right where it is, so the only thing that should be moving here is the shoulder joint. As you can see, his blades are active, they're pressed forward, he's not swinging very much in this position. You can then take it to a plank position, which might be too much for them. I don't know, we'll find out. It's great, looks awesome.
If these progressions are too difficult, let's go to the wall. From here, you can stand against the wall, straight parallel with it. Arms there, you can press your arms into the roller. I think you may actually start closer to the elbow, like right down here. There you go. And then press it up like that. Just a little bit of movement, and then back down. You can then walk your feet away from the wall. You might need to roll the roller down, so you're kind of leaning into it. This would be the progression. So you go from the wall and slowly walk your way down until you can't anymore. Then you go to a box, then you would go to quadruped on the floor, then a plank position, working on keeping that protracted the whole time.
Or a family, so once you understand how to do the scoop, how to apply it to a quadruped position, and to the foam roller exercises, then you can apply to every single calisthenics exercise that you do. Right now, he's not applying it, but he can scoop now and do the full push-up. You can also apply these to pull-ups. You can also apply these to dips. You can also apply these to rows, and any possible calisthenics movement that you can imagine. Again, guys, this takes time. I've been practicing for a long time and I still cannot get it super, super completely right. But under your final words, I've been practicing for seven years. It's taken me a long time to apply this to a lot of exercises. He's been showing me some calisthenics movements today that I've never done, and I don't have the control there.
Now, the important thing to remember here is that winging may or may not be an issue at all. Ultimately, it could just be that learning how to do these movements, go through them, just learning how to do these movements in and of themselves are going to make you feel a lot better, just because you're gaining more control and strength. The wings may always be there, you may never correct them. For those of you that are interested in correcting it for aesthetics purposes, you're going to need to work on it for a long time. And I found that actually using some movements outside of calisthenics is going to be beneficial. Pressing overhead, using some heavy external weights, loads, carries can help get some increased strength in that area so that you can then carry over to your calisthenics moves.
Awesome, thank you so much. Good luck, have fun. That was amazing. Keep working on that scapular wing. He says is something that it is not bad, but for all of us that we want that plant with that rounded posture and that fully protected scapula, it's really going to help us. If you enjoyed this video, if you want to like, share, subscribe, comment down below what else you would like to see on this channel, and we'll see you all next time.
[Laughter]