 Hello, everyone. Today we are talking about scapular winging in a push-up. So what does scapular winging? The shoulder blades are round and they sit on the rib cage, which is also round, or at least it should be. When you lose that round-on-round relationship, the rib cage generally flattens and the shoulder blades lose the leverage for the muscles that keep them on the rib cage. So they start to come off the rib cage. So scapular winging is when it looks like you got wings coming out of your body, those shoulder blades come away from your rib cage and they become very noticeable. What does it look like? So I'm just gonna flatten my upper back like this and I'm gonna let my arms come out like this. You'll notice it kind of looks like your upper back is a soup bowl that you could eat soup out of. It literally rounds and it becomes a round towards the bottom flattens anatomically and it becomes a reservoir for whatever you got there. Hopefully you're not actually drinking out of it. So what do we have to do here? We have to find a way to encourage the right muscular positions and bony positions so that the muscles can work. It's the only way to increase both the stability of this relationship and the mobility of the joints that are impacted by it. So we mentioned the rounding of the rib cage. That's the big thing. You got to make sure that you can do that first. So before you're even doing your push-ups, I want to make sure you can round your upper back here. If you've ever done a cat camel kind of thing, it's a good like introduction to these positions. It's a good place to start. Maybe you try to do that. Now can I do this? That's one thing but also at the top, can I push my upper back towards the ceiling? Can I push my body away? If I can't do it on my knees, I'm not gonna be able to do it in my push-up, right? Because a push-up is more load. So first, you want to kind of see if you can do that. You don't necessarily have to do it first if you're really athletic and you can cue yourself during your push-up. All you got to do is say, oh well I just need a little bit of a rounder back and then push away. Okay yeah, feel a little stretch in my upper back. My shoulders, they don't feel so tight but this is really hard and they start to shake, right? So that's a big thing. The other big thing for the rib cage position is finding the outer lower abdominals. So a lot of times when you flatten your back, you try to use these six-pack abs in the middle of your body, the middle of your abdomen, they they might look cool. They don't really function that well. They don't have very broad connections and they don't stabilize your hips and they don't pull your ribs down and function wise. That's what I need, right? If you're thinking about functional training, that's the way to maximize your functions to find those abdominals, not just the six-pack ones. So if you're having scapular winging issues or shoulder issues, that's something to look into. Again, I can start on my knees. I can round my back and from here, just tucking my hips like this, I should be able to feel my outer lower abdominals turn on a little bit. If I don't, I want you to force the air out and that will really help you find it. If you still don't hold that air out, try to take a breath in and then another breath out and that'll help you get a little bit more shortening of those abs and help you really feel them turn on. So once I have that, you want to hang on to the abs from there, straighten your legs out and now I'm in a plank. Plank is the next progression. Can I hold the abs in the plank position? If I can't, I got to come back here. I got to find them again. Yeah, I got them again and I come out here. Now I still have them. Yes. And if you can hold it here for a couple seconds at least, then come on down slow into your push-up. Hang on to those abs. Stop at the bottom. Check to see if you still have them and then yes, I do. Okay. Push away. And then at the top, I got to make sure that I restore that rounding position. I got to make sure I restore that rib cage. Classic coming off. Got to make sure I restore that round rib cage and that round scapula relationship. Convex on, or wait, concave on convex, whatever. So talked about rounding. We talked about the ways to get up into it. You can use other exercises to support you if you are doing this swinging. Everything has to relate to the serratus anterior though. You got to find a way to get that reach and you got to find a way to get that reach, not just by reaching your arm more forward, but by pushing your upper body backward. Okay. It's a subtle difference, but the ladder is more important for maintaining your balance. If I just keep reaching forward, all that's going to do is kick my back on because I have to catch myself before I fall. But if I can find a way to maintain my balance, push myself back, then I can turn my hamstrings on, get a good hip position, have that support my abdominal position, have that bring my ribs down, have that round my rib cage, have that position my shoulder blades, have that increase my shoulder mobility, have that loosen up my push-up. Okay. I know those are a lot of steps. That's really how it works. Usually doing one or two of those is enough. If you're unlucky, you need more. If you have elbow and wrist issues, you got to kind of be pretty diligent about it. This can relate to wrist stuff. Maybe we'll talk about that at a later date, but today we've talked about scapular winging. We talked about rounding the upper back. We talked about putting the shoulder blades on there. We talked about reaching. We talked about other ways that you can get to that position. Maybe start on your knees here. Make sure you can get that spinal position that you need and make sure you're queuing yourself to push yourself away from the ground. If you have questions about this, I know this is a complicated one. Leave comments below. Make sure you read my article about serratus anteriors because I put a lot of work into that. That doesn't mean anything. If you're a super nerd, you might find it interesting. If you're not, it's going to be overwhelming, so don't worry about it. Thank you.