shoulder protraction in push up

Hi, 

I was working on HB/PE3, but had to come back to HB/PE2

cuz I found out that through out the motion shoulder should be stably PROTRACTED!! ( a.k.a. externally rotated scapular).

I've been doing it wrong for so long time. My scapular internally rotates when I go down, which made it 

extremely hard to do pseudo planche push up which need strongly protracted and depressed shoulder.

I tried to correct the bad habit

but I have been retracting my shoulders for more than ten years when I do push up

so it was pretty difficult to keep them protracted. 

Any tips?  or any self videos that recorded the push up above the back?  I want to see how the muscles and joints move...  

The degree of protraction is NOT the same at the top and at the bottom.

The scapula is :

- fully depressed and fully protracted at the top

- fully depressed and neutral at the bottom (it will be slightly protracted if you don't have a full ROM)

You should not try to keep protraction all the way. Do not confuse HBP work with sPL work

Video?

To maintain some scapula protraction at the bottom of the pseudo planche push ups, keep your shoulders rolled forward.

forward and back shoulders rolling should be independent from protraction and depression. Also if you engage strongly the lats with depression you will notice some difference:

-forward rotation has more amplitude without depression

-depression leads to limit the forward roll of shoulders, this is showed by the fact that with strong depression if you attempt to roll the shoulders forward, the forearm will do the 80% of the roll basically with pronation.

since the ppp must be done with depression I could suppose that rolling forward is not something doable.

protraction in ppp should be reached by continuing push yourself of the floor.

Somalie said:

Video?

Here it is the video

 http://youtu.be/DGqq-bH1VkQ

I fixed a little pike on hips by squeezing my legs and hips.

please point out other issues.

thnks

The most important issue is that your elbows are flaring too much, and that's going to be a big problem going into PPP.

Spend some time working on the flair, and I bet the other questions you have will resolve themselves.

At least for myself, this is more than just thinking of elbows int, thought that can help. Its all about the positioning of the heads of the shoulders.

Sometimes it can happen that a person will actually over depress the shoulders which can actually lead to this flaring. Which is actually due to rotating the tops of the scaps inward. You don't want to depress so much that this rotation occurs and you need to stabilise the orientation of the scaps so you can keep those elbows pointing back.

Keep those elbows in! Start with a smooth back at the top, with activated lats. Keep that tension on the way down, don't let the elbow flare even a little bit.

Cole Dano said:

 

At least for myself, this is more than just thinking of elbows int, thought that can help. Its all about the positioning of the heads of the shoulders.

 

 

you mean if heads of shoulders are positioned wrong, whatever because of my old bad habit or so, 

I cannot fix it by conscious control over my body? 

Jason Dupree said:

Keep those elbows in! Start with a smooth back at the top, with activated lats. Keep that tension on the way down, don't let the elbow flare even a little bit.

'smooth back at the top' means strongly protracted shoulders like hollow position? 

Yes, just another way to put it

Hanlim Lee said:

you mean if heads of shoulders are positioned wrong, whatever because of my old bad habit or so, 

 

I cannot fix it by conscious control over my body? 

Of course you can fix it by conscious control over your body, otherwise it would be 'magic' There is something very real you have to do, you may just have to spend some time figuring out what it is, because with a deeply ingrained habit, it's hard to see at first.

Bring your elbows to the sides and stry to relate that to a movement of the scapula. So it's not JUST the arms coming to the sides. One result of this is that the top of your chest will feel broader.

The actual amount of movement you feel may be very small, but the way it feels could be very different.