 Welcome back to The School Casternex. It's Jaco and we are in my back garden. We're going to be using the rig looking at how we can improve our pull-ups and all of our hanging work by creating a more stable position for the scapula on the ribcage. In this video I'm going to give you three things, really simple things we need to be doing to help improve our shoulder strength, our stability for hanging and more importantly for your pull-up strength. Now if you haven't yet subscribed, give us a little subscribe before we crack on with this here video. So the shoulder is a fabulous joint, has so much range of motion because we've got these two moving parts, we've got the arm, the humour head can move but also the scapula is able to move on the ribcage and in terms of being able to produce high levels of force that we need for something like a pull-up we need to ensure the scapula which I'm putting my hands like is stable and secure and flat to the back of the ribcage and it's important that we're able to create that stability and know how to do it. If the stability of the scapula is compromised then things like our pecs and our lats have to to try and provide some of that stability. That will restrict and change the position of the scapula, it will restrict the range of motion that the shoulder can go through and most importantly or equally importantly for the strength for a pull-up it's going to compromise the force output that the lats with the prime mover in the pull-up is going to be able to put down in terms of force. So what does that look like in a pull-up? It might be that when you go to start to pull-up the shoulder hikes up and we're not able to be able to give it down and in this nice position on the back of the scapula and if you feel that that's you and if you're not sure you want to video yourself and see what is the position like if you feel like when you go to start that initial process of going into the pull-up that your shoulder hikes up if you feel it or you've seen it or if you get to the top of your pull-up and you can't maintain the shoulders in a good position you're going to need to look or we would suggest looking at how you put the position of the scapula starting with a good stable position so if we quickly break the pull-up down into two simple positions we've got the start position where effectively the hand is overhead and then we've got the end position where the elbow is driving down into the arms in like a w position so we're effectively going from like a y hanging position where in a while their arms overhead into that sort of w shape in the w shape but often people get to that end position and they're able to retract the scapulas and able to keep ourselves in a relatively good position what we don't want to see the shoulder rounding forward but often the detail comes from what we do at the beginning so when we are hanging from the bar the arms are overhead and we're relaxed when a passive hang position we need to be able to get the scapula into a stable shape on the back of the ribcage what that means is we're going to try and retract the shoulder blades and we're going to also allow this upward rotation of the scapula often what we'll find is we don't get that engagement of mid lower trap and serratus anterior to maintain a nice stable position whilst we're in that upwardly rotated shape the shoulder blade has to go into upward rotation when the arm is overhead it's only when you get to the end of your pull-up where your arms are down by your side and you're retracting those scapulas back that you're going to get that feeling of pinching the shoulder blades back together so let's look at these three main things that we need to be focusing on when we're going into the starting point of any of our hanging work and particularly for setting ourselves up for success in the pull-up we want to be able to activate mid lower traps to provide good depression of the scapula so rather than the shoulder being hiked up by the ear we're going to pull it down actively and that's going to be mid lower trap that helps to do that and stop the scapula sort of winging out from the side or anteriorly tilting if we haven't got that activation likely is that peck and particularly peck minor will pull the shoulder blade forward so we don't want that that's going to reduce the stability and the connection of that scapula being flush to the ribcage the thing that's going to really do a great job in keeping the scapula flush to the ribcage particularly the starting point where the arm is overhead and the scapula is in an upwardly rotated position is seratus anterior the forgotten muscle of the shoulder or often overlooked his job is going to be to help not just protract or allow the shoulder blade to ride around that ribcage he's going to keep it in that nice upwardly rotated position that facilitates good mobility of the shoulder whilst overhead it's going to stop any pinching and impingement around the front of the shoulder because it's not having to round forward and very importantly it's going to maintain the bottom portion of that scapula posturally tilted so it's staying flush and riding on the ribcage nicely the third one is then going to be our rotatocuff which job is to maintain that humour head so your upper arm sucked in to that general humour joint so keeping the ball in the socket effectively those three things working together is what's going to give us lovely harmony around our shoulder blade and therefore good movement mechanics when we are starting our pull-up and taking all of that through to the end of our pulley you might be asking then jacko how do we actually do that practice that's nice you've told me what muscles are working but how do I actually do it and this is the most important bit so those three areas we're going to focus on the first one you're going to try and snap the bar when you're grabbing it you're going to externally rotate so your elbow starts to point forward and you're imagining you're trying to snap that bar open that's going to help create some external rotation which is hitting that rotatocuff after that we're going to look to draw the shoulder blades down engaging the mid lower trap it's going to be job of pulling those shoulders imagine you're trying to pull the shoulders down towards the opposite hip that's going to create some space between your ear and your shoulder and keep the shoulder in a nice depressed position the final point then and the real creme de la creme in this is getting those shoulder blades in that uplifted rotated position to wrap nicely around the ribcage and posteriorly tilt so your job is thinking about trying to push your armpit forward and wrap those shoulder blades around the ribcage so let's go through those things you're going to try and snap the bar you're going to try and pull the shoulders down and then you're going to wrap them around the ribcage in that nice flush position to the ribcage creating lots of stability at the shoulder and therefore be able to put down better force production in your pulling mechanics word of warning though when you start to do this it's going to you're going to find it difficult so work slowly use a band if you need to to give you a little bit of support or even do it on a position where you're just practicing without holding onto the bar at all just get used to those movement mechanics of the pull-up in these three with these three key critical areas snap imagine snapping the bar pulling the shoulder down and then wrapping those shoulder blades around the ribcage and once that starts to feel smooth and you build up gradually the strength of it although initially at the start it might feel a little bit more difficult for your pull-ups you're going to see your pulling strength progress much better than whether those shoulders are hiking up and rounding forward and compromising the position and strength that you're able to put through your pull-ups now i hope that's been helpful and useful and give you some understanding as to why we want to try and do this in the intricacy of doing even the starting point are active hanging effectively for our pull-ups but it's going to be the same as that position for the top arm in the human flag even if you're going to start in doing muscle-up work any pulling and hanging work that you're going to do i want you to think about those three things can you snap the bar can you pull the shoulder way down and can you wrap the shoulder blades around the ribcage and just think about how that shoulder blade is going to ride on that ribcage and just trying to get it as flush to that as possible that's what i'll try to imagine in my own mind whilst i'm in here feel the activation and work with the intricate detail of the movement don't rush it try and do it nice and slowly we can do some of these things for time where you're going to hold it for 10 20 30 seconds what can be quite nice is to transfer onto sort of a single arm can you do it like that just to overload it a little bit but what i would say is at the start when you're doing it for the very first time trying to be a little bit more detailed with this is find a way to make it easy enough for you to do and then work in and out so rather than holding just for time let's look at doing 12 15 20 reps in a set two to three sets where you're working in and out nice and slowly control pausing in that active position where you've pulled the shoulder blade down just for a couple of seconds and then slowly lowering down work the control work a nice slow tempo with that pause in the active position and what you're going to start to do is make that feel a nice comfortable habit that you're used to doing and when you go into any of your pulling work whether it's a pull-up or there's a horizontal row whatever it is that you're thinking about having those three things to keep the scapula in the most stable position on the rib cage and see your strength gained increase so put some time and effort into that over a series of weeks let us know how that affects and improves not just your strength but probably the flexibility or mobility at the shoulder and the control you've got at the shoulder joint that's going to be really nice let us know in the comments how that goes for you and if you have any questions at all about any of these exercises or anything else at all with your training do let us know in the comments and we're more than happy to help thanks again for watching until next time class dismiss