 Next question is from our hanks one. What are your go to exercises for working the serratus? Oh, yeah, one of the most Neglected muscles, I guess of the upper body in terms of training and strengthening, you know, it's funny in the 70s Arnold popularized serratus training quite a bit He talks about a time one of the one of the very few contests He lost as a bodybuilder. He lost one contest I remember which one it was if it was a mr. Universe to frank zane And frank zane for those people who don't know who he is was this bodybuilder who was Much smaller. So Arnold was the mass monster of his day. He was just big Beefy bodybuilder big arms big chest big back and zane was this much smaller probably 60 pound lighter zane Nice dad jokes are getting great. He was chiseled and lean And one thing that zane had over over arnold and why arnold lost was zane had this amazing Chiseled body in this incredible serratus muscle. The serratus muscle almost looks like abs that come up the sides of your body Kills, I think I call them the gills. Yeah, up underneath the the armpit area, right? And arnold looked and broke that down and it's like i'll never lose like that You know because of that again and started doing all these serratus exercise In fact, if you go to if you're if you have is uh, arnold schwarzenegger encyclopedia bodybuilding one of my favorite Old-school bodybuilding books He writes about exercises specifically for the serratus. I don't remember what he recommends in there What does he record? He doesn't he does a cable He does this right over crunch. Yeah, which kind of hits the serratus, but it's not really a direct exercise I'm a side plank guy with this dude because I can take a side plank and get other benefits out of it too Like posture wise I think I could take somebody in a side plank you get some of those benefits plus two when we're talking about a muscle That's really really small like that that most people aren't even lean enough to see it Yeah, it's kind of tough to put a lot of energy. I've never tried to isolate Well, here's why it's important. I have I when I was competing I was That's why honestly, that's the only time that I though I wanted to look good Yeah, and I also know that I'm gonna get down to 3% and it's going to be really shown otherwise It's one of those muscles that you could probably directly train it all day long and not even tell a difference No, but now here's what's important about it It's extremely important for shoulder stability because it attaches to the scapula the shoulder blade And it stabilizes it and here's how you know when someone has a serratus problem You watch them do a push-up and their shoulder blades wing out you've seen that yeah Where they get that the shoulder blade sticks out and it wings anytime they push against something That's because their serratus is not stabilizing their shoulder. This is why I think the side plank is so beautiful for side plank and help I like The dead stop push-ups where your arms stay your arms stay straight out and what you're doing is you're letting the shoulder blades come back And then yes, the scapular push-up. Thank you. That's the name I was looking for. Yeah, that's a great exercise Yeah, I look that's good to train just you know overall like getting kind of better connected to your Scapula that's hard for some people. Yeah, it is and you can do them up against the wall to start right So start up against the wall and practice that that scapular spread that kind of works the serratus You know I tell you should make a note so Danny does that because that's I don't I know We've never taught that on the youtube channel now. Here's a point Here's an important point around this Joe Defranco did this post about this This one of the things I love about Joe is you could tell he's trained a lot of people Because he just the way he communicates things and he's like, you know As lifters were always focused on Bringing the shoulder blades back scapular retraction scapular retraction scapular retraction We never strengthen Scapular protraction and part of the reason why we don't do that is people are walking around with protracted shoulder You know shoulder blades all the time they were trying to correct that issue But we're not working the muscles that protract the shoulders which can cause an imbalance And so he talks about those scapular push-ups Plus must have real functional lifts are with in that rounded position where you're hugging something in front of you So to that point this is where I remember when I changed the way I did a seated row So for many years I taught a seated row with clients because because so many people aren't a very protracted forward shoulder position To sit upright and stay retracted the entire movement and never let the shoulder But you want to feel your serratus actually roll the shoulders Roll the shoulders and flare the lats And control it from there and then pull them all the way back in going to see a row And you will feel that big time in there now a great way to connect to your serratus Because a lot of people have no idea what that muscle does or what it feels like Practice a a front lat spread. This is a bodybuilding Pose in bodybuilding bodybuilding. There's specific poses that you have to do The front lat spread for the listeners who don't know what I'm talking about. It's the one where the bodybuilder Sexy though they have their hands on their waist And they bring their they bring their chest up in their lats their wings come out If you can practice that pose and connect to your scapula your shoulder blades to spread them out What you're activating is your serratus and if you include that in the seated row move Which is what I'm talking about you will work it you'll work it and you'll feel that which is kind of What I do like that's how I train seated row now because I just make sure to incorporate it there I wouldn't really target full range of motion. Yeah, you're gonna it's going to get strong And and definitely would be defined if I were to lean out you would see a lot of people's shoulder problems have Are not due to the the the shoulder joint the individual shoulder joint itself or the humerus the arm Goes into the socket a lot of people shoulder joint shoulder problems come from The other aspects of the shoulder joint like the scapula the shoulder blade and if your shoulder blade isn't Yeah, I love doing this to to to clients. It's hard to explain over the podcast But I would have a client come in and I'd have them roll their shoulders as hard as they could So they were kind of spreading their scapula and they'd say now let's keep your shoulders rolled as far as you possibly can Now let's see how straight you can get your arm up above your head stops And you can't it stops right there because any further I need to be able to bring my shoulder blade back And it was my way of communicating to them how important it was to get that shoulder position Yeah to get that mobility and the strength and the shoulder blades So I definitely think for those of you listening who've been working out for a long time I think it's a good idea. You don't have to do go crazy, but do some of these These these scapular push-ups you should have control of it. Yes That the the takeaway is that you should have control of that muscle. It's a very important muscle And if you don't know how to train it you've never felt it before you can't control like a lat spread like that It's an it's an exercise worth doing for that exact reason And then you can find creative ways to actually incorporate it in other movements Yep, and you can get I mean if your pull-ups hurt if you do pull-ups and your shoulder hurts If you do bench presses in your shoulder hurts or push-ups or overhead presses in your shoulder hurts A lot of times it has to do with the scapula a lot of times it has to do with that muscle right there