When exercising, I am often told by my coach or old friend to tighten my shoulder blades. Many people don't understand. What should I do when practicing my hips? What is this scapula?

Today, Ma Niu will answer them one by one and talk to you about the scapula.

The scapula here is actually our scapula. First of all, let's see what role the scapula plays in life and sports.

The scapula is in the shape of a triangular flat bone, attached to the back and outside of the chest, between the second and seventh ribs, and 16 muscles such as deltoid, biceps brachii, subscapularis, teres major and latissimus dorsi are attached to it.

In life, the scapula, as an indispensable part of the human body, participates in the activities of the shoulder and back, and a wave or a bend requires the scapula to play a role;

In sports, different training scapula plays different roles, but the effect is the same, which is to make sports more effective.

Part number 1

Scapular activity during back training

There is no doubt that the shoulder blade is the most important role in back training. To some extent, the activity of scapula determines the efficiency of training back.

Back training requires a large degree of compression and contraction. At this time, the scapula needs to play the role of abduction or adduction in order to achieve the effect of training.

If the abduction or adduction of scapula is not done well during exercise, shoulder-arm compensation may occur, which may affect the training effect.

At the same time, if you don't do the scapula well, it will lead to insufficient force of latissimus dorsi, excessive pressure on the waist and injury to the waist.

the second part

Scapular activity during chest training

When practicing chest, especially some chest squeezing movements, as the antagonistic muscles of the chest muscles, the scapula on the back muscles will also contract. At this time, the correct role of scapula in training can avoid shoulder joint compensation caused by relieving resistance in chest training, and the chest can not be better trained.

the third part

Scapular activity during leg training

Many leg exercises, our shoulder blades will also participate, such as squatting with sharp tools to practice legs and hips.

In order to ensure the effect of doing squats, we often emphasize keeping the back straight and tight, and at this time, the scapula needs to be stable, otherwise there will be hunchback, which will greatly reduce the training effect and even cause more serious sports injuries.

part four

How to feel the stress on the scapula?

Next, Ma Niu introduces how to make the scapula play a greater role.

There are six main movements of scapula: abduction, adduction, lifting, pressing, internal rotation and external rotation.

Due to long-term sedentary standing and other reasons, the shoulder is stiff, the scapula activity is less and less, the scapula and its affiliated muscles are stiff and weak, and the shoulder joint connected with it bears more activities, which is prone to shoulder and neck problems and back pain over time.

Therefore, we should not only use the scapula correctly in sports, but also carry out some training specifically for the scapula to improve the perception ability of the scapula, so as to improve the sports performance of the scapula in training.

We can do the following actions to feel how the scapula moves.

Shoulder abduction: when the angle between the arm and the body is greater than 90, lift the arm upward? When, that is, abduction;

Shoulder blade adduction: hold your hands behind your back, which is adduction at this time;

Shoulder blades up: When you shrug your shoulders up, you lift them up;

Shoulder blade downward pressure: when the shoulder sinks, it is downward pressure;

Shoulder blade pronation: the arm is extended backwards, which is called pronation;

Shoulder blade external rotation: hold your arms forward, at this time it is external rotation;

Little friends can try the difference of scapular activity in these six movements and feel the trajectory of scapular activity.

In fitness, adduction and abduction of scapula are more important and common exercises. In order to make everyone understand better, Ma Niu uses two examples to illustrate the correct use of scapula during exercise.

For example, rowing basically needs to start the scapula and increase the squeezing feeling of the back through adduction, thus reducing the compensation probability of the arm and exercising the back more effectively.

There is also a squat movement, such as hard pulling. In order to reduce the moving distance of the barbell and increase the stability and safety, the scapula is not needed to be adducted at this time, and the scapula is needed to stabilize the back.

In short, in sports, the correct movement of the scapula is very important, which can not only get twice the result with half the effort, but also avoid unnecessary sports injuries, because the daily ability of adduction, descent and up-and-down rotation of the scapula is often ignored, so here Ma Niu gives several training methods of these four kinds for reference:

Elastic band scapular retraction

Stimulate muscles: trapezius intermedia and rhomboid muscles.

Each group 12 times, do three groups.

Shoulder lift

Stimulate muscles: the lower part of trapezius muscle

Each group 12 times, do three groups.

Y-lift and shoulder rotation

Stimulate muscles: upper and lower trapezius muscle and serratus anterior muscle.

Each group 12 times, do three groups.

Straight arm downward rotation under scapula

Stimulate muscles: our latissimus dorsi and rhomboid muscles.

Each group 12 times, do three groups.