Emma’s Exercise
“Shoulder Blade Isolations Part 2- Retraction/Protraction”

This is the shortest video with the longest description! It’s time to wrap up the other movement of our shoulder blades. We only touched base on elevation/depression of the scap iso’s (fancy way of saying shoulder blade isolations). This is why in the video you hear me say day 4. It was after filming that I realized that elevation/depression and retraction/protraction needed separate videos. I apologize for having my back to you. But watch my shoulder blades move!😁

Isolations are exciting!! They take tons of body awareness and precision! I know-I get excited just talking about it. SIDENOTE- scap iso’s tend to be the most fun for two reasons. #1 you cannot see what you are doing! It’s happening on your upper back #2 to move your blades you have to find and fire your serratus to make your blades move! This muscle tends to be deconditioned and a challenge to find it to fire it. BUT I am here for you and there’s nothing I love more than getting students to find muscles they never knew they had! I am here for you!!🌷

Super quicky version. Here goes. Pick a comfortable position (standing, kneeling, seated) and find your form and set your core. Float your arms up so that your hands are in line with your shoulders. They are straight with a micro bend in the elbows. FIRST we will attempt RETRACTION bc out of the two moves, I think it’s the easiest to start with. Imagine you have a lemon between your shoulder blades. Now move ONLY your blades (not your spine-you have to keep all 24 vertebrae from moving (!), not your ribcage, not your arms–your arms ‘move’ but they are only going along for the ride) together by firing serratus and try and squeeze the lemon. That is Retraction! Be careful here-your blades will want to ELEVATE and half the fun is resisting that!
Then, continue to fire serratus (keep the feeling of scooping out your armpits!) and move your blades around your ribcage! This is PROTRACTION! You are moving the blades in the exact opposite movement that you did for retraction.
(Your arms get magically long here-but they only moved bc you moved your blades! Exciting! I know!!👍👍👍).

Coordinate your breath with the movement once you feel like you have the choreography.

INHALE- to retract
EXHALE- to protract

There are so many layers to this! It’s like peeling back the layers on an onion.

Body Awareness- when you are moving your scaps at the same time notice – does one blade get ahead of the other? Is one side easier to fire your serratus than the other side?