7 min read.

Before you assume this is another “strengthen your Serratus Anterior” blog, it’s not.

 

In fact, I’m going to explain why that’s pretty much a pointless focus.

 
There are a lot of articles out there on Scapular Winging and more often than not, they get far too fancy and make people (myself included) feel like “fixing” it is way more complicated than it actually is - and here’s the kicker, you don’t need to “fix” anything. You just need to retrain a position regularly and that is not hard to do at all. I’ve done it for my own winged scapula and helped many others to do the same.

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Let’s have a quick recap of what a Winged Scapula is.

Scapula (plural, Scapulae) is the name of your Shoulder Blade, a triangular(ish) shaped bone which helps facilitate movement and stability of your arm.

When it “wings” it sticks up and out, often making a visible ridge in your back. Your shoulder & arm movement is restricted, and can often be painful.

 

The problem arises when you start reading or being told about Scapular Dyskinesis or Abnormal Scapulohumeral Rhythm or how your Scapular Winging is caused by your weak Serratus Anterior and your Biomechanics are lactose intolerant.... ok that last one’s not real, BUT, calling it more than a "wibbly-wobbly shoulder blade" then you could be shooting yourself in the foot - falling into the trap of believing you’re unlucky and permanently broken.

 

When your Scapula wings, you can experience symptoms such as:
 

·        Neck pain

·        Shoulder pain

·        Shoulder(s) easily fatigues

·        Pain when training

·        Limited flexibility

·        Tightness

·        Weakness

·        Dropped shoulder

·        Bad posture

It sounds scary, but it is easily fixable! And in a much shorter time period than you think. Many treatments advise 18 months to 2 years before seeing improvement. In some extremes cases that can be true, but often this estimate is based on people doing rehab once or twice a week, possibly only twenty minutes at a time.
 

You can extremely shorten that to two to four months with DAILY practice of the exercises in this blog, plus proper integration of the thought process into your gym routine.

 

Basically, a winged scapula is normally a result of your shoulder(s) picking up a bad habit and all you need to do is stop letting them get away with it - relentlessly.

 

First things first: Do you know where a “neutral” position for your shoulder blades is?

Try squeezing your shoulder blades together as much as you can. Then, round your shoulders so that the scapula “scoop” around your ribs.

Finding the centre point between two positions and creating tension there regularly will retrain your shoulder blades where they can feel strong, rest naturally and give you increased Lat awareness - making all your upper body training better. Having active and strong lats will make all your shoulder work better.

 

Find a wall/ doorframe/post, basically anything you can put your hand on and push into:

 

·        Stand slightly in front of it and place your hand on it (palm effacing in or out, try both positions!)

 

·        Roll your shoulders up, back and down

 

·        Do the Pec Slide Test to see if you are in the right position:

(Slide your hand from your chest diagonally up across your shoulder. If it slides smoothly, your shoulder is in a good position. If your fingers hit your shoulder, you’re too rounded – try pulling your shoulders up back and down again.)

·        Keeping your arm straight and your shoulder locked in place, press backwards into the post

 

·        Without losing position, slowly increase the pressure, pressing more with your Lat

 

Once you’ve found a challenging, but maintainable level of tension:
 

·        Move your head left, right, up, down & side to side to relax your traps

 

·        Elevate (lift up) and depress (drop down) your shoulder blade while keeping it glued to the centre point/neutral position. I.e. don’t let your scapula move forwards or backwards

 

·        Finish with a final push and hold, then slowly step away while trying to maintain the tension in your Lat, keeping your arm relaxed, and the shoulder blade is the same neutral position

 

·        Repeat on the other side and see if there is a difference in how they feel

 
Video yourself while doing this and you’ll get a lot more feedback – when you’re struggling with a winged scapula a “good” position can feel strange at first. With more practice you’ll have an intrinsic feeling for a neutral position.

  

The trick for real change is to integrate the new position into things you already do. Being aware of the position of your shoulder blades is far more beneficial than trying to find specific, isolated corrective drills to do. Instead… just do everything you want to do... but properly, the way it is supposed to be done.

 

I cannot stress this enough. When you move better, your normal training becomes your corrective exercises, you just need to build the right foundation.  To be honest, this is the stuff that everyone should be doing anyways as winged scap or not. People just don’t check this stuff and have no idea of imbalances or dominance between each side of their body which could be pushing them towards injury, this is such a big focus point with The Simplistic Mobility Method.

 

Here’s a few examples of how to keep on top of your shoulders in your workouts:

 
Push Ups

Record yourself doing push ups and see if your shoulders are level as you go through reps, or if one is moving differently to the other. If so, try setting your shoulders first “rolling them up back and down” and really focus on the feeling in your shoulders, aiming to get them moving in the same position at the same time.
 

I highly recommend adding a hand release into your push ups, especially if you like to bang out cheeky sets at home! Not only will you give more shoulder blade retraction, but you’ll also get more pec engagement and greater range in your push up making you stronger and more balanced.

 
Make sure your neck & traps are relaxed throughout, the easiest way to do this is to turn your head left and right during reps.

 

For horizontal rowing, which is something you can never do enough of, check if you’re pulling from your back muscles, or are you relying on your biceps while your shoulders stay rounded? Does one arm kick in much quicker than the other? And again, is your neck relaxed throughout? Or are you tensing your traps?

Finally, a cheeky little drill I love that everyone should be adding into their warmups is the deadlift lat raise from End Range Training. These fire-up your hamstrings and lats together in a relatable way to lifting and improve your level of shoulder extension all while teaching you to keep your neck relaxed.

 
Make sure that you can have same feeling in your shoulders & lats as you did on the first awareness drill – your shoulder blades should be flat to your back. If not, go back to the awareness drill for 30s or so, then immediately come back to these and try to replicate the same position while moving!

 

Put it in the right position, and practice moving it well!


All those the fancy muscle/disorder names that may or may not be the problems will sort themselves out because you are actually moving correctly, not giving compensations a chance. It is that simple. It just takes time and awareness.

I can still wing my old injured shoulder but it never causes any problems because of the time I spent building awareness.

The more severe your winging the quicker you’ll fatigue, so just make sure to select rep schemes and timings that suit where you’re at now and build from there. Even if at first it’s only 3 reps at a time, a few weeks of consistent daily practice will see you at ten reps and drastic changes in your symptoms very quickly!

If you want to get into full body muscular retraining make sure to check out our programs in shop, they all focus on proper alignment to build true strength without sacrificing your joints or ending up injured.