Filed Under (Scapular Stabilization) by Rick Kaselj on 22-09-2011
Today let’s talk about winging scapula.
As you know I am a big shoulder guy.
No, I don’t have big shoulders, but I am passionate about shoulder injuries and what exercises to do about it. One thing I see in people with shoulder injuries and people with a potential shoulder injury is winging scapula. Let me explain a little further in what I observed last week.
Last Week’s Assessments
One of the cool things I am lucky to do is assessments for a major utility company. They get me to come in and test prospective employees to see if they have the physical ability to do the job. Over the last two weeks, I have tested about 40 of them. Mostly men ranging from 20 to 40.
The tests are not a typical fitness assessment but it more tailored to the type of work they do.
There is a cardiovascular and flexibility testing but many of the strength tests involve carrying, lifting, pulling and squeezing tasks.
Kids These Days
When you test 40 people, you see all kinds of shoulders and you notice a difference between people in their 30′s and those in their 20′s.
From observation, you can see that those in their 20′s have greater winging in their scapula. I think there are a lot of reasons for it. Let me explain a few of the reason why I think they have it.
Here are some reasons why people in their 20′s are more liking to have a winging scapula:
- Not Very Physical After Work - They may be doing a physical job but often times outside of that physical job, a lot of what they do outside is not very physical. There is more TV watching, computer work and less active recreational activities compared to those 30 plus. I know looking at my parents, on their days off or after work they were working on the garden, building stuff, fixing stuff or heading to see their friends to help them out.
- Looking Lean – With men these days, there is a movement to look lean and thin. More and more are tying not to look big and bulky. This affects how much muscle mass their is in the shoulders and the scapula. Leading to more winging scapulae.
- Not Much Time Crawling – My guess is there was less time spent crawling when they were kids. When you have kids, there is an obsession to get them walking. The grandparents are the worst with this. People want to get their kids walking but all of the stages of movement in a baby (from head lifting, head stability, rolling to their stomach, fulling rolling, etc.) are essential and affect things later in life. I know with our second child, it took a longer time to get him to walk. He crawled around and was a crawling machine. He also went through a phase where he dragged himself around the floor. I was okay with this as is part of the development process. It drove the grandparents crazy but that is what their children do. Now our son is walking and has good shoulders and this will help him in the long run.
These are some reasons why but let me move to some other observations that I saw.
Overhead Work Makes it Worse
The guys do two tests where they lift something to waist height and then to head height.
All of them did great when it came to waist height. You may see some scapular lifting but there are so many other muscles that help out (biceps, pectoralis major, rhomboids, rotator cuff, wrist flexors), that it is minor.
When we go from waist height to head height lift, things get worse.
Some of the guys could not do the test because they did not have the stability in their scapula to allow their shoulder to do the work. With the winging scapula, this put more stress on the other muscle groups in the shoulder and they just could not do the test safely.
Another interesting thing was they may be fine for repetition 1 to 9 but when we get to repetition 19 to 27, all hell breaks loose. Interesting. That leads to the next point.
This is lifting to waist height. You can see he had not problem doing it but you can see inferior angle of the scapula winging. From the shine on his neck, you can see he is sweating and working during the test.
Now when we get him to lift to shoulder height, we had an increase in scapular winging. You can see the scapula has protracted and now there is great lift in the medial aspect of the scapula.
Endurance Makes it Worse
As we moved through the tests, you could see the winging scapula get worse.
We would go from pulling, lifting and then to overhead work.
You could see from the start to the end of the test, which was between 45 minutes to 75 minutes, that the scapula would get worse.
Planes of Movement Makes it Worse
We do a strange test overhead where we get them to move a weighted stick across a wall.
You could see that winging of the scapula changed depending on what type of movement they did.
They maybe fine in the sagittal plane, but when they moved into the transverse or frontal, things got worse.
Wrapping it Up
Thanks so much for reading and I hope this article helped you out and got you thinking about winging scapula differently.
If you want more info on what to do about winging scapula, you can attend the live course, Core Stability of the Shoulder or download the Scapular Stabilization Exercise Program.
That is it.
Well kind of. Let me summarize.
Summarizing scapular winging:
- When it comes to winging scapula, endurance places a huge role. This can be during the exercise or over the whole workout.
- The more overhead the exercise, the more the scapular muscle are needed to do the exercise. Remember this. You can see with single arm reverse wood choppers.
- Movement and planes of movement play a big role. People might be great in the forward and back movement (sagittal plane) but may be poor in the side-to-side (frontal plane) or twisting planes (transverse). Consider this in your exercise selection.
Okay, now I am done.
Thank you so much for reading and hey, if you like it, share it.
Have a great day.
Rick Kaselj, MS
