 Let's discuss shoulder mobility and barbell back squats. So when I put a barbell on my back, I wanna hold on to the bar, else it'll slip right off, right? So if I can keep my arms tightened in or my arms scooted in on that bar, I can get a lot of tension in my back to make myself more rigid and to increase the compression that my body has so that I can demonstrate more power into the bar, right? Usually the limiting factor isn't the legs. It's actually the hip and midsection area combating the torque from the bar, trying to just crush you into the ground, right? So the issue with scooting your hands in is it requires more shoulder mobility, shoulder external rotation here. And now what you'll see, some of the biggest power lifters in the world, they have to grab the collars. They don't do that because they get tighter and more pressure doing that. They do that because their shoulders can't turn back that much. That's why they have to grab the bar and then swing their head under or they grab their bar and they like, my good shoulder goes back and then my bad shoulder has to get cranked back and then I can turn and I can face everything or can face forward. So what is going on here? If I have a limited external rotation in my shoulders, generally we have to think, so what is the shoulder blade doing? Shoulder blade has to tilt backwards. Why would the shoulder blade not tilt backwards? Well, if the upper back is too flat, the shoulder blade is already backwards, okay? And it doesn't have, if I don't have any more motion, then I actually have to allow the shoulder blade to tilt forward or to orient forward so that then I have room to pull things backwards. So if I lean up like this or if I lean back like this, I feel much more stretching in my anterior shoulder chest muscles, right? And I can get that muscle elongated. I can get that external rotation motion that I'm looking for as opposed to being here where now my hands are back here. I'm getting a little pinch of my shoulder. My hands are back here and the bar would have to be through my neck to get there, okay? So I don't need to chest up so much. Maybe that's a cue you've heard that I think is the wrong idea here. So especially if you're having shoulder issues when you're doing your barbell back squats, then I would caution you with the chest up cue. Pay attention to how that feels and if your shoulder doesn't feel better after you do it, then don't do it. If it's working, maybe that's what you need and that's okay, you can keep going, okay? So those are just some ideas. Generally what we need to do is one thing I'll say is exhale, we need this thoracic spine, your upper back here. We need that to round out a little bit more. We need the air to come out of there so that it can round so that your ribs can come down in front and can open up in the back, give those shoulder blades a place to sit so they're not just floating really tight back there and then that will allow your actual shoulder, your arm to rotate backward more. So if I have that, generally what I need to do is I need to do anything that will close down this front. So even pushups are really good but if I do a pushup, I can't do one like this, okay? Because I'm not restoring the thorax position, I'm not restoring the scapular position this way, all I'm doing is turning my peck on more, okay? So bench presses won't fix it. Instead what I need to do is that I need to be really diligent about the top of the pushup and maybe I need to go slower but this is an assistance exercise for your squat, right? You don't need to do as many pushups as you possibly can, you need to do them correctly. So as I come back up, I can't stop here, I need to keep pushing all the way, okay? Just like that, okay? Some people might call it a pushup plus if you're just like holding the thing or like a full pushup, I don't know, some people have given it another name. To me it's just a pushup and everybody does it that way because everyone feels better when they do it that way. Now, one thing you need to notice when you're doing this, people are gonna wanna shrug their shoulders up so that they can reach their shoulders forward. That is a no-no, that is not getting us what we want. A little bit is okay, they don't need to stay pinned down, that's not gonna get us what we want but they can't shrug up too much towards the ears. Second thing you're gonna notice, sometimes with that shrugging, you're gonna notice a crunch like this and that's how you're gonna push up. That's not restoring this position up here, it's just rounding my back here in the middle of my back. That's not where my shoulder blade is and that's not where it's coming in contact with the arm bones, the humerus. So I'm gonna get down, I'm gonna show you one last one and hopefully I can do it well. You're gonna come down, you're gonna come up and you're not gonna crunch like this, you're gonna just finish like this. One thing, or two things that you might wanna feel, armpit muscle and a stretch in your upper back. You wanna feel a stretch of your shoulder blades coming apart from one another. So shoulder mobility, not an easy topic, not a simple topic but I've given you some tools. You kinda understand what's going on, you can find another exercise that works better for you maybe. Generally what I'm doing is I'm trial and erring through things, a push-up doesn't always work with people. Sometimes a push-up is too hard, sometimes you need to incline the push-up, sometimes you just need to do a plank and work on breathing all that air out. Sometimes you need to do a little bit more unilateral stuff one side at a time because that gives you enough focus to really get one side down and then you can try the other one, all sorts of stuff. So experiment and if you need help, just leave a comment below.