How to Complete the Push-Up Plus

How To Complete a Push Up Plus

Serratus Anterior Strengthening

Our shoulders were built to move, but in order for them to functional properly we need good clean shoulder blade movement! A lot of us tend to focus on lift and pull movements of our shoulder, but forget about the push movement which our "scapula" do. This movement is important as it not only strengthens our shoulder but also gives it the stability it needs so that it can do all the awesome things you want it to. Here is exacty how to perform the push up plus and strengthen those serratus anterior muscles of yours.

Exercise Begin on your hands and knees, and line up in a push-up position – with your elbows locked and low back neutral. Keeping your core engaged, squeeze your bum and focus on maintaining a neutral spine. Now, push your shoulder blades away from each other spreading them apart. Slowly bring your shoulder blades back together and repeat.

Time Do this for 6-8 reps and repeat 3 times (as tolerable).

Video Transcript

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Mitch Starkman

Hey guys. Welcome to The Movement Library where we've compiled mobility, strength and corrective exercises so that you can move like you mean it.

Hey guys. Today we're talking about shoulder strength and our serratus push up plus exercise. So to do this what you guys are goanna want to do and make sure you're awesome with, is just shoulder blade movement. So for a lot of people whose shoulder blades actually are weighing or almost are tilted out … I can't really make this, don't mean to fake this, but are tilted out in this sort of upper position.

You can feel that sharpness against the wall. This one you really want to work on because these muscles really control our shoulder blade movement as we got to go through our day-to-day. So to start with, I'm goanna show you guys a couple quick progressions. So the movement itself is shoulder blades pulling away from your body and coming back. To check with this and making sure your neutral core, your kinetic chain, your neck is set, your arms are against the wall like this. And you're goanna push your shoulder blades away. Push ups are separating away.

So if I show you guys like this, they're pulling away from each other and then slowly coming back in. So the easiest way to do this is starting up against the wall. Right, there's more in your incline, the more difficult this becomes. So if I'm on my imaginary wall and I'm here and I'm leaning into the wall. And then I'm just pushing the wall away from my body and then coming back in. But of course my body would be moving back and back in.

If that's easy, our next progression we're goanna do is come over here into all fours. So in this position … Or you move to a desk. [inaudible 00:01:27] to do that or a different kind of incline. And then once you can go to the great gravity, you're goanna go on all fours. Find that neutral [inaudible 00:01:34] core position, come up tall like this, neck stacked and then you're goanna do that plus again. So you're goanna come here push your shoulder blades away from each other and slowly bring them back together and then push them away. And slowly back to this window of pain with it. You should feel your shoulder blades moving. And only shoulder blades moving.

Your elbows are locked, they're not bending up and down as you do this. The next level from this obviously going into a full push up on your knees and you're doing the same movement there. And then into a full push up doing that plus position.

Okay and we want to feel the push up plus as you're in the push up position but you're just doing this plus part of it. And all of that whole push through set. That stuff's too tough, right? We don't want to do that. We want to just focus on the shoulder blade awesomeness. So any questions, leave them below. You going to go through again. Vertical, a little more incline, all fours, on your knees and then into full plank position for your push up plus.

Alright. If you like this guys? Give us a like, we appreciate that. Subscribe the channel if you haven't already and please more than anything move like you mean it. Thanks a lot guys.