[Caesar Power]

Thought I should report back some good rehab news.
Scap pressups really seem to work. I've been doing 15 x3 everyday for 2 weeks now and the whole area feels so much better. The key is to make sure your shoulders are lowered (i.e. not near your ears). Even if it's not the best exercise to do, it really gets the blood flowing to the right areas for repair.
I've combined this with rotator cuff theraband and pullups without using your elbows.
I realise now that my problem was resorting to a 'shoulders forward and up' position whilst doing things like pullups. It felt stronger at the time. It isn't, just leads to 
I've seen an exercise which involves leaning and pushing against a wall with cloth on your hands and moving them up and down against the wall. I'm thinking this makes the postural muscles maintain their posture rather than trying to work them in a dynamic way? Those turkish get ups look good as well as long as you don't use a too heavy weight and crush yourself

[duncan]

Scap pressups really seem to work.

Sounds like you’ve made a good start.  To reinforce what sausage has said, the main job of serratus is to hold the scapula steady in its ideal orientation as muscles like latissimus are pulling hard.  Currently your scapula is moving too much (winging).  You want to stop this and you need to train both the appropriate muscles (eg serratus, lower traps.) and train them the appropriate way (to hold the scapula still, not to move it).  So the way to train is to focus on holding the scapula still whilst applying a force that will tend to make it wing but stopping before any winging happens.  This means doing the elbow bending component of the press-ups (etc.) but not moving the shoulder-scapula back and forwards.

Huffy gave me the 'push up against a wall' exercise for the same recruitment problem.  I can't see how doing this one armed would be any better than two. 

I think doing press-ups one-armed has two definite advantages and one speculative one:

It is easier to control the amount of force going through shoulder, no chance of favouring the other arm subconsciously.  Also, you can use the free hand to feel the various muscles involved and check whether they are working (or not).  Most people find it hard to know whether serratus is working or whether pecs. is taking over without some additional feedback, at least until they have practiced for some time.  More speculatively, you have to concentrate on maintaining good ‘form’, as Caesar describes, which in turn is a mild ‘core’ stability exercise in itself.  There is some evidence that the stabilizing muscles work as a set, so that engaging e.g. the deep abdominal muscles will encourage the serratus to work (try drawing-in your low abdomen when you do the serratus push-ups).

You can progress the exercise in a number of ways: do the push-up with your hand on a football or some other unstable surface (the cloth idea sounds good), lean further in which leads eventually to a single-arm push-up on the floor, feet up on a gym ball etc.

[Caesar Power]

This means doing the elbow bending component of the press-ups (etc.) but not moving the shoulder-scapula back and forwards.

Does that mean not moving your shoulder forward at the top of a pressup and not moving it backwards at the bottom? This is the only way I can control my scapulae!
This is actually the exercise my PT told me to do...

[duncan]

I think you should ask your physio!  I've probably already strayed too far into giving specific advice rather than making general points here. 

[Serpico]

So, in a case study kind-a-way what do the professionals on this thread reckon about Ondra's right shoulder in this thread:
http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,9174.0.html
@:39-:59seconds
Is that normal? or a sign of trouble to come?

[tobym]

Serpico,

didn't you advocate Swiss-ball push-ups for shoulder stabilizers? would it be particularly good for working Serratus Anterior?

[DubDom]

pushups, dips and pike pushups on rings plus planche pushups, surely that's the way to go for antagonists -any comments?

[Ru]

pushups, dips and pike pushups on rings plus planche pushups, surely that's the way to go for antagonists -any comments?

Read the above posts?

[The Sausage]

So, in a case study kind-a-way what do the professionals on this thread reckon about Ondra's right shoulder in this thread:
http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,9174.0.html
@:39-:59seconds
Is that normal? or a sign of trouble to come?

That's a difficult question...
...certainly at times the lower angle of the scapula can be seen coming away from the chest wall - too much of this with the arm in an overhead position would be likely to cause some impingement of the rotator cuff. He ceratinly seems to get the scapula back under control pretty quickly. I think with the forces that pass through the shoulder complex with bouldering, the scapulae will sometimes not be perfectly controlled.

Not sure that's a particularly helpful answer. Whether it's a sign of trouble to come..? I imagine that many top athletes pay some sort of a price for their youthful endeavours as they get older. The shoulder is not really designed for the forces that steep, huggy bouldering produces.

[pppat]

Found this seems relevent
http://www.theshortspan.com/features/injury/shoulder.htm

Theraband exercises for the shoulders were talked about previously.
better late than never

[i.munro]

Thought I should report back some good rehab news.

I've combined this with rotator cuff theraband and pullups without using your elbows.

Just in case I'm missing something.... pullups without using your elbows??

[ben87]

After reading this thread through I googled scap push ups and decided to try the physio ball excersises here :

http://www.hesfit.com/men/comment/shoulder-dysfunction-neck-pain-and-the-scapula/

I'm finding them desperate! Hoping that means i'm on to a good thing?

[duncan]

Scapular push-up will work Serratus Anterior but I think (from a theoretical perspective) it is better to work Serratus without it shortening or lengthening very much.  The push-up against the wall, above, progressing to Front Planks, Side Planks and single arm Front Planks are good for this.  Planks are not very specific to climbing though and the final progression should be to learning to work Serratus with the arm in various climbing positions, gastoning and so on. 

I'll try and put together some pictures of a typical progression some time.