Are You Missing This?

The scapula - perhaps your missing link?

The scapula is the epicenter of a calisthenics athletes’ capabilities, overall performance and strength. Bodyweight strength is defined by the function and performance of your scapula and its surrounding muscles.

Take a look at a handstand - if you’re unable to elevate your scapula and extend up through the shoulders, your handstand will be foundationally weak. The stronger your scapula, the stronger you are all round.

There are 4 key scapular movements in calisthenics:

• Protraction

• Elevation

• Depression

• Retraction

Scapular protraction prepares the body for push movements such as push ups, handstand and planche. Scapula depression and retraction prepares the body for pull movements like pull ups, rows and front lever.

During any calisthenics movement, if the scapula is not engaged as it should be, you risk the movement load being taken over by weaker muscle groups, such as biceps and triceps in the arms.

Let’s look at pull ups. If you try and pull from a dead hang (no scapula retraction), your lats are pretty much non-existent throughout the pull. Your arms will have to work 10x harder to pull your body upwards against gravity. Now, what’s stronger - arms or those big strong lats?…

Not only this, but these muscles are taking on a bigger load than what they’re supposed to, and this could lead to injuries such as elbow tendinitis, shoulder impingements, tennis elbow, golfer’s elbow, etc. No thank you!

To avoid any of this happening, we need to learn how to activate and strengthen our scapula!

Our No.1 Exercise for strengthening the scapula is performing one of its fundamental movements - scapular depression reps. Simply hang from a bar or your rings and repeatedly progress from a dead hang to an active hang. Try and hold the active hang for 2-3 seconds before returning to dead hang.