 Hello everybody, Lance here. Today we're gonna get into a little bit more nitty gritty. We're gonna, you're gonna see a little less filter on the, we're gonna consider this a slightly more advanced topic video where we're gonna talk about a little bit of anatomy. So specifically, I wanna discuss, I wanna just kinda ramble about the shape of the rib cage and its implications for the push-up. So the biggest thing that I wanna talk about here is what is required to do a good push-up? So what is a good push-up? So let's go level by level by level. So I wanna make sure that your spine is holding some sort of straight or slightly curved in the normal direction position. So I got a slight lordosis, I got a slight kyphosis and a slight lordosis again up here. And that is just the spinal position I need to be able to maintain throughout this entire thing. So that's step one. Step two is I wanna make sure that you can finish your push-up, not like a bench press, but like a push-up with your arms really long. Okay, that last little bit, I think separates the push-up from all other upper body exercises and that last little bit, that closed chain shoulder protraction reach that you get at the top makes this exercise my preferred upper body variation for most people. Now, if we talk about what do we need to be able to do those things, right? If I look at somebody who's stocky and wide, I have to think about what that rib cage is shaped like. And if we took a little cross section right about here and we looked from the top like this, those rib cages look like this. They're wide and skinny, kind of like a hamburger, right? They don't look straight and narrow like this. They look more like a gorilla and less like a dog, okay? If you know some comparative anatomy. Now, when the rib cage is wide, what do you think that's gonna do to the shoulder blades? A pause to let you think about it. So the width here is making the distance to travel for my protraction longer because protraction isn't just shoulder blades coming forward, protraction is also shoulder blades taking this arc, wrapping around a rib cage. So the rib cage is round like this. The shoulder blades are round and sit on it like this. So we've got rib cage, we've got shoulder blades, round. Sorry, my arms aren't quite symmetrical, whatever. They have to abduct and then swing around front. That's what protraction is, okay? And it is subtle, that's why I'm not exaggerating it too much but it would be like this if I exaggerated it. So they have to abduct and then swing around front, okay? Oh yeah, that's way easier on my wrist too. I'll have to remember this. So that's required for a good pushup, right? If we can agree that a good pushup requires a full reach at the top. Now, wide rib cages have longer distances to abduct and then they make this sharp turn at the end to get that last little forward motion. That's why wide rib cage people have so much trouble with the pushup, okay? They can't get that finished position. You can tell them to keep reaching but they're just gonna find it from their shoulder joint by trying to horizontally abduct, or horizontally adduct, sorry. Just compromising the stability that they have in the glenohumeral joint, right? So we have to consider that. Now, one thing you can do with this type of person is if they are really wide, they need to learn what is width, right? So if I gross inhale, I flare up all of my ribs and I create this wider situation that is going on here. This person needs a lot more exhaling. They need a more exhaled position of their rib cage. So when I'm holding this pushup, if maybe they can't get that full reach at the top and you can tell they're still kind of winging at the top of their pushup, don't maybe, maybe don't cue extra reaching. Don't just keep repeating the same word and it not working, because I know I've done that. Maybe you just need to say, hey, sit there and take a really big exhale and hold it, hold it, squeeze. And now take an inhale and now take another exhale and now finish your reach and do your next rep. Okay, and you can use that type of breath cycle to then cue the rib cage to move and cue the pushup to look better. If you got a narrow rib cage, you just don't have that limitation, right? They can push further. They might be a little more destabilized because they are narrower, but they're not gonna have the same types of trouble. So consider that there's a little helpful suggestion or hopefully helpful suggestion on training people with wide rib cages during their pushups.