Click “the road of Ashtanga Yoga” above to subscribe! Have you ever thought about what is the position that supports the handstand? Obviously, the hands and upper arms are the foundation of this pose, because they are all attached to the floor
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But how does the body weight of the trunk transfer to this foundation, and how does my spine gain strength from the foundation of the arms to stand up? The pivot of this key force connection is the shoulder blade..
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Two wings behind it; It’s like the wings of a secret angel
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Of course, it’s not only the scapula that supports the body from the base, but also all the muscles that support the scapula
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We all know that the pelvis can be seen as the base of the spine; Similar to this metaphor, you can also think of a pair of shoulder blades as the base of two arms
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When you use your arms to bear the weight of your body, whether it’s in cat pose or dog pose, the arms are only partially loaded; Or hand handstand, crane Zen, such as full load-bearing arm posture; The shoulder blades are responsible for transferring the weight of the body from the spine and upper body to the arms and then to the contact surface between the hand and the ground
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Therefore, the position of the scapula and the stability of the scapula are the most basic settings for the body to rise up“ The foundation of the handstand requires the participation of the shoulder back muscles and the strength of the shoulder back
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The position of the scapula is determined by the clavicle and several less famous muscles
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In fact, the clavicle is the only connection between the arm bone and the central skeletal system
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The upper arm (humerus) meets the shoulder blade at a spherical groove joint, but the shoulder blade is connected to the clavicle, the clavicle to the sternum, and the sternum to the spine
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The clavicle can guide and restrict the body movement; Some people have no clavicle because of a natural or acquired accident
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At this time, the two shoulders can touch each other in front of the chest, but if the clavicle is sound, you can’t do it
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The clavicle supports the shoulders on both sides and fixes the scapula behind the back ribs
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The scapula and the arm meet in a groove joint, but there is no joint relationship between the scapula and the sternum; The scapula is “floating” on the back of the sternum, with muscles between the scapula and sternum
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Without too many restrictions of the skeletal system, the scapula can move in many directions: for example, you can shrug (the scapula is lifted up to the ear), slide (the scapula is far away from the ear), hug (the scapula is facing each other), and shrink (the scapula is close to each other to the spine); Of course, there are also the rotation movements we want to see in this article, such as the upward rotation of the shoulder blade when lifting the arm
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There are many kinds of movement modes of the shoulder blade itself and the shoulder arm, which are more complex and are not the focus of this article
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We will explain them in detail in another article later
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Now let’s talk about the theme of this article: as long as the arm is up, the shoulder blade needs to cooperate with the upward rotation action (below)
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If your shoulder blade does not cooperate, the flexion action of your shoulder (the flexion of the shoulder means the arm is up) will be limited
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This phenomenon is that our shoulders can’t hold up in the video lesson of head handstand introduced by Kino a few days ago (review here), that is, when we do dog or hand handstand, our shoulders can’t be opened, and our shoulders are all crowded under our ears (just like this dog video lesson) – Let’s review the situation of the teacher’s presentation in the first 2 minutes and 52 seconds
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I hope you see a brain hole here: your so-called shoulder does not open, in fact, you can not control the movement of the scapula – the so-called can not control: either you have not found the awareness of the scapula, or your related muscles are in a sleep state, Or some of your muscles are overdeveloped (due to lifestyle) but others are very weak..
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Either you don’t feel like your scapula, or you can’t control the movement of your scapula
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And this is the specific meaning of “shoulder is not open” in arm lifting and handstand support““ An important key to “shoulder opening” is to unlock the upward rotation movement of your scapula
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I hope you will have at least a little specific understanding of the concept of “shoulder opening” of a panacea after reading this article: at least the focus of “shoulder opening” when lifting and supporting the right arm, The first should be to unlock the scapula – unlocking means nothing more than finding the key to the nervous system and sharpening the muscles that control it
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Release the restriction of antagonistic muscles If the upward rotation of your scapula is limited, an important limiting factor is that the muscles that rotate under your scapula are relatively stiff; Specifically, the rhomboid muscle, which is between the spine and the inner edge of the scapula
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If this muscle is tight, the upward rotation of the scapula will be limited
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To alleviate this limitation, we need to focus on improving the flexibility of rhomboid muscle
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A better way to stretch rhomboid muscle is eagle style arm
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After entering the posture, let the two elbows cross in front of the chest, and then put the forearm up
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You should be able to feel the stretching of rhomboid muscle
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You can also consciously lift the clavicle up and the elbow up to deepen the stretch
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Increase the strength of the active and cooperative muscles, but it’s not enough to just remove the restrictions on the movement of the scapula
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You also need the strength of the active muscles to help drive the upward rotation of the scapula
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The muscle that drives the shoulder blade upward is the serratus anterior, and of course the serratus anterior has its partner trapezius
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As shown in the figure below, the muscle and pulling force related to the upward rotation of the scapula towards the open shoulder is an important topic because most people’s serratus anterior is unconscious in a deep sleep state, and they are very weak and have no strength
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How to restore the strength of serratus anterior is relatively difficult
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Most people have no chance to develop their upper body strength in life
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Unless some people have done gymnastics or rock climbing, their anterior serratus will be in a very good state, and it will be very easy to do arm balance
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The following video simulates the anterior serratus muscle and its various motor function modes
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Another function of the anterior serratus muscle is to keep your shoulder blades close to your back without cocking up; This is also very important, because once you want to “spread your wings” – your inner and lower shoulder blades are tilted away from the back of your sternum, the function of your shoulder blades to connect the arm and the central bone structure of the human body is lost; That is to say, your arms and body can’t transmit strength to each other
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The simplest way to sense and practice the strength of the serratus anterior is to use a flat plate, where you can feel the flat and wide space of the back scapula, and then do a few push ups: push ups can develop the strength of the serratus anterior themselves, but in this process, don’t forget the order of the scapula, so that they are flat on the back and stretch to both sides, so that the upper back is flat and wide
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Any pose where your arms are above the top of your head, activate these muscles; So once we find the consciousness and muscle control of the shoulder blade supination, we can turn all the postures with arms over the top of the head into opportunities to practice these muscle strength: for example, the first action of the standing three-dimensional Sun Salutation, down dog, warrior 1, tree..
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Another good way is to hold this kind of postures for a long time, such as standing three-dimensional hold for one minute, down dog hold for 3-5 minutes.
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