-: Let's talk about scapular stability
and incorporating scapular movement and pulling movement.
One of the biggest misconceptions is
when people see dysfunction with how
the scapula is moving, that they put
all of the blame on the scapular musculature.
If Adam turns around here, if we envision
the scapula on Adam's back here,
we have lots of muscles that control
the movement of this.
We have the upper traps, we have the
rhomboids, we have the lower traps
that are gonna control the various degrees
of retraction, upward rotation,
downward rotation, of that scapula.
But, what we don't take into account,
is all of the muscles that are loaded
on the other side of the scapula
connected to the arm, basically
supporting the load if the major
muscles like the lats are not
actually doing their job.
What I want to argue is that when
we look at improving scapular stability
we pay less attention to all of this
and more attention to actually getting
these prime movers to get involved
and to improve their functionn.
What that's gonna do is allow these
muscles to function like they're
supposed to, which is to srticulate
the scapula to where it needs to be
in order to give this humerus good support
and to give this lat good advantage
to be able to pull on it.
Rather than trying to teach all of these muscles
to start acting like prime movers
and acting on the load, they instead
need to be acting on the scapula.
Let's look at what that means in
a little bit more detail.
If Adam turns this way and he grabs
this band here, imagine that Adam
was pulling on something.
So, just hold that out there, right?
If Adam was pulling on something,
what it would do is it would create
a line of pull all of the way through here.
If he had a weight in his hand
pulling that way, it's going to be
pulling here, it's going to be pulling
here, and then whatever is attaching here.
Let's look at what that actually
breaks down to.
Imagine this is a cable row, for instance.
There's two things that Adam could do
in terms of pulling that if we
look at the shoulder joint.
The lats gonna come up and it's
gonna attach right here to the humerus.
It could pull directly on the load
and put no load on the gleneral humeral joint
in terms of what's being pulled from that cable.
It's all the lat is pulling directly
on the humberus so then the scapula
can come just around with that.
The other option is, and this is what's
taught a lot to initiate the movements,
is will it to attract the scapula.
It's pulling the scapular musclature first
to try and pull the load with the scapula
instead of with the lat musculature.
To illustrate what that looks like,
we're gonna take this, right, and
if Adam could kind of just interlock that there.
This is what's going on in that joint.
Ideally, we have the lat that would
be pulling right here, and it would
pull through this range.
The force is right here on the humerus
which isn't putting any stress on this joint.
The better he is at engaging the musculature
that is gonna pull this towards the spine,
which is a nice, stable surface for us to be
able to use to pull on that load.
The more he can pull on this,
the more the scapula can easily
go to where it needs to be.
Whether that be some downward rotation
through a row, some sort of retraction
as he would be able to get all
of the way back, if he were coming
out to the side it would be that
retraction and rotation needed to be
able to fascilitate the humeral movement.
The whole purpose of this guy is to
make sure that we have the appropriate
leverage to stabilize this joint.
It's moving around, kind of like
a golf ball on a tee, so that the tee
is always there to stabilize this joint,
so that the prime movers can act on that
and produce force on that without
actually damaging the joint or putting
stress on the surrounding tissues.
If we take that whole, let's emphasize
the retraction first, what actually happens,
imagine that load is really heavy,
this is the force right here.
If I'm pulling, I'm going to
overemphasize retraction first,
this is the force.
What actually ends up moving that load
is, I got some rhomboids, some
traps, and stuff going on in here,
but see this movement right here?
That means all of the tension on
your teres, your infraspinatus,
all of these muscles of the rotator
cuff, coming in here that are trying
to hold this, they are now acting
on that load to support this joint.
You're taking whatever you were
trying to row, and you're applying
that weight to these small muscles
here that are essentially just
supposed to balance that joint,
and training them like they're
this giant muscle of the lat.
Which one of those do you think
is actually meant to initiate
and act on that load versus which ones
do you think are made to kind
of control this joint?
In reality, if we look at things like
scapular winging, we look at things like
people have the inability to fully
retract or fully depress, is it because
these muscles here aren't firing properly
or is it because they're being
asked to act on load or act on
this joint in a way that's dysfunctional?
What really needs to happen is they
need to get better at
incorporating those lats.
To be honest, one of the most
dysfunctional muscles we have
because we just don't use lats that much
in our day to day life.
We don't climb things, we don't
pull things; we tend to be in a very
push dominant slouch type world
where were really not activating this tissue.
Most people, when they're training it,
don't train it directly anyway.
They end up training all of this musculature.
They end up doing a lot of upper
back and very very little lats.
You see that in everything from
your general population all of the
way to physique athletes.
If we think of like, well, okay,
somebody's got a scapular winging problem.
If this musculature here has to make
up for this, that's muscles that are
pulling this joint together.
Of course you're going to get
scapular winging because if the lat
can't pull down then maybe say
this teres and this rear delts
are going to be pulling and, yeah,
you're going to get scapular winging.
Is it because this stuff isn't strong enough
or is it because these muscles are
overworking because this lat is
not doing it's job.
If we want to get better scapular
stability, the first thing we should do
is make it as easy as possible
for our scapula to properly retract,
properly depress, properly rotate,
by maaking sure that it doesn't
also have to do the work of the prime movers
to make sure that this musculature here
is acting on the scapula, not the load.
In order to do that, that means we have to
learn how to engage these lats.
When we're looking at movements,
that's going to be not initiating
with retraction, but it's actually
going to be initiating with depression
of the humerus, not the scapula.
You can depress the scapula by pulling it this way.
We want to depress the humerus by
having the lat here, engage down that way.
Get the lat taking the load and then
if there's 100 pounds that way and
the lat takes all that 100 pounds,
and all this musculature has to
do thenis control that scapula
while the lat's taking the majority of that load.
It's so much easier for those muscles to fire
and that's how you're brain should learn.
When we look at motor patterns essentially our body
learning how to contract what and when and how much.
If we do all these exercises where we're doing this
and we're turning this into this overretraction at
the beginning of the movement, what we're
going to do is we're gonna start
trying to train our brain to use
that scapular musculature more
like prime movers, which means it's
not going to fully shorten or fully retract or
you're going to get scapular winging stuff
because you're rewiring the way it's working.
You're trying to train it to do a
purpose that it really wasn't meant for
and you're gonna see dysfunction
and pain and injuries in that shoulder joint
and cervical and T spine immobility and things like that.
When we're looking at teaching pulling,
and we're looking at teaching scapular
movement, train muscles for the function
that they're meant to do.
What you will see is that entire
complex will improve over time.