what's up guys dr jared here tone and titan and these are the best exercises you can do at home to correct scapular winging now what in the world is scapular winging that's the name that we give when your shoulder blades start to look like this you see normally your shoulder blade is held right tight against your ribcage however in some instances of muscle weakness or muscle imbalance that shoulder blade isn't held tight to your rib cage and the inside border this inside part of your shoulder blade right here starts to come up like that it gives the appearance of wings in the back now in and of itself that's not necessarily harmful that's not necessarily painful but it can alter shoulder mechanics how your shoulder moves and eventually lead to pain so it's certainly something that we want to be aware of this is corrected by strengthening the weak muscles or the muscles that aren't firing correctly to hold your shoulder blade closer to your back specifically we're going to look at the serratus anterior and the lower trapezius muscles so what i want to do in this video is run you through three exercise progressions that are going to target those areas and hopefully help you to improve that scapular winging it is important that you perform all of these as they do target different areas so make sure you watch the video through to the end that being said first exercise is coming your way now the first motion that we need to master is called the serratus punch that is activation of your serratus anterior muscle that's going to be the important thing throughout the remainder of these exercises to do that what i want you to do is simply raise both arms straight above you just like this now watch this if i bring my arms into this position i can pull my shoulder blades apart and reach another six inches or so so you'll see from right here what i'm going to do is pull my shoulder blades apart and reach forward there's no motion in my elbow i'm not actually punching like this but from right here with a straight elbow reach forward another six or so inches and then come right back to that starting position and so that is what a serratus punch looks like i usually recommend patients do that oh about 10 or so times just so they can get the feel for what activating that muscle feels like now let's get into this first progression what i want you to do is get down into a quadruped or all four position and then we're just going to do that serratus punch with some resistance or the resistance of our body weight so from here what i'll tell people is first i want you to pinch your shoulder blades together so it looks just like this is the starting position keep your core nice and tight now what i want you to do is raise your back as high as you can towards the ceiling performing one of those serratus punches and then right back down so down pinch your shoulder blades together and then up pull your shoulder blades apart so pull your shoulder blades apart try to kind of reach with your shoulder blades down towards the floor what i recommend is about a set of 10 to 15 reps and then you can repeat that three times if that's easy what we want to do is increase the resistance increase the pressure on our hands we can get into a full push-up position now the mechanics are just the same so i'm going to start with pinching my shoulder blades together that's the bottom position and then what i can do is use that serratus anterior to pull my shoulder blades apart push down into the floor and then return to that starting position so push down into the floor really try to arch through your back and then come right back down to the start that would be progression number two now that serratus anterior actually if we go forward and then up a little bit that will kind of max out all the range of motion in that serratus anterior we want our shoulder blades to come around and then up a little bit so that is a good way to do it the third part of this progression would be to include that so we're going to start down in the shoulder blades together position now as i pull out i also want to bring my hips up so you kind of finish in what we call this like dolphin push-up position and then back down to the starting position so shoulder blades together i'm going to perform that serratus punch all the way up and then i'm going to push my hand so if you kind of vision pushing your hands up and away from you or like pushing somebody or something in this direction that's what you want to do to the floor so from here we're all the way up and then i want to really push dig in with my hands try to push the floor up in that direction it'd be kind of activation that we're after and once again 10 to 15 repetitions repeated three times that's kind of the progression of the serratus punches that i like to go through try it out exercise progression number two is going to be for your lower trapezius these are going to be a's t's and y's and they're named because of the motion that it looks like with your arms if i go like this that kind of looks like an a that one looks like a t and then up here looks like a y we're just going to do that over a ball now i prefer to do these over ball because you can get a little more range of motion in but if you don't have one you can go ahead and just lay face down on your floor and do the same thing not quite as effective because we're not moving as much but still better than nothing okay so what we're going to do is kneel on the ground put that ball underneath our torso and then we're going to perform the a motion so arms are out to the side and what i'm going to do is lift back in this direction right here squeezing my shoulder blades together trying to feel that again in the lower trapezius pulling the shoulder blades down and into kind of my back pocket and then back to the starting position what i like to do is recommend about 10 a's and then we can move into the t's t's are going to be arms straight out to the side shoulder blades together and down so we're going to pull the shoulder blades together and then try to tuck them down into the t looks just like that we're going to perform 10 of these repetitions really trying to fill that in your lower trapezius those muscles kind of down below your shoulder blade and then finally we're going to get into the y's wise starting position is the same we're going to come right up here into this y motion once again shoulder blades are tucking down and back up at the top and then return down to the starting position and so we're going to do 10 repetitions of each one of those and then i like to repeat that three times our final exercise is not only great for your shoulders it's a great way to keep your walls clean this is going to be a wall slide all you're going to need is a clean towel what we want to do is come and pin that towel against the wall with our forearms now first step is we want to activate the serratus anterior so pull your shoulder blades apart what i tell people is kind of push your elbows into the wall if you can envision that if you can feel that that's a good way to keep that muscle active so we're not right here that's my shoulder blades together what i want you to do is push with your elbows into the wall and then hold that contraction while you're doing this motion so we're going to push and hold nice and slow now i'm going to raise i'm still pushing my elbows into the wall my shoulder blades are still pulled apart and then come right back down to that starting position that was one and then back up and then back down try to keep your core nice and tight try to keep your elbows pressed into the wall the further away your feet are the more difficult this becomes but that's what it looks like right there we're combining all the motions of that serratus anterior we're protracting the shoulder blades and we're getting that upward rotation as we slide up and down what i recommend is perform that 10 times and then then repeat three sets of ten just make sure that you do it in a different place each time and then that's how you clean your entire wall the other question that a lot of people ask is hey jared how often should i do these once a daily is once once daily is recommended per your tolerance so just listen to your body and keep that in mind now of course if you're looking for more great exercises more great shoulder stability workouts i've got you covered right here on tone and titan check out this video that one could potentially help you out youtube for some reason thinks you might like this one right here so you might click on that one to see if youtube's right also if you haven't subscribed to tone and titan yet hit the circle button right here to do that i'd love to see you back for future videos until next time we'll see you again soon on tone and titan