The Exercises

Start with a drill to relax the neck and upper back.  Try lying on the floor and bridging, then relaxing your neck and pulling your shoulders up, back, and down.  You should find this helps to relax the whole shoulder and neck area, so that you can train more safely.

Exercise 1: Pull-Aparts

Band pull-aparts are a move for your scapular retractors.  Hold an exercise band in both hands and extend your hands out in front of you, then pull them slowly apart.  At the end of the movement, pull your scapulae together tight and then slowly return to the start. 

Exercise 2: Elbow Lifts

Lie face-down with your hands clasped behind your head, your elbows on the floor.  Pull your elbows up off the floor slowly and hold them there for a count of three to five seconds.  Repeat the movement about ten to fifteen times.  These make our retractors work harder than you’d expect, so take it slow –don’t dismiss them because they sound too easy!

Exercise 3: Wall Angels

We’ve all seen snow angels – wall angels are the same sort of movement.  Instead of making a pretty pattern in the snow, though, you’ll be making yourself horrified at how un-mobile and un-stable you are.  Wall angels are a real eye opener as well as a highly effective move for the whole array of scapular muscles.

Stand with your heels touching a wall.  Now, press your shoulderblades, elbows and the back of your head against the wall too, with your hands up.  Touch your hands against the wall, then try to put as much of your spine as you can against the wall too.  Push your hands up overhead till your arms are fully extended, then retract them til they’re as low as you can go, all while never taking your hands, elbows or spine off the wall. 

Exercise 4: Klokov Press

Klokov Presses are named for the Russian weightlifter who popularized them, Dmitry Klokov.  Begin with a light weight – an empty bar is a good choice of starting load, but so is a broomstick – and place the bar on your upper trapezius muscles.  Now slowly press the bar overhead until you’re in the top position of a snatch, with your arms wide and the bar above the top and back of your head, in line with your spine.  Concentrate on ‘pulling the bar apart’ – act like you’re trying to rip the bar in two in the middle by pulling its ends apart.  When you can move up to using some weight with this movement you can expect great benefits in shoulder flexibility and stability as your lower traps come online in a big way to stabilize the shoulder blade.

Read More: Human muscle groups and exercises

Exercise 5: Protraction/Retraction Supersets

Scapular protraction simply means pushing up with just the scapular muscles.  Use a dumbbell for scapular rows, where you’ll do as much of the rowing movement as you can with a straight arm, and then immediately switch to doing scapular bench presses, where you’ll do as much of the bench press movement as you can using only your scapular muscles.

If you have favourites I haven’t mentioned or you’re getting stuck anywhere, get hold of me in the comments section below