Your upper back is a reservoir of great strength in all your movements. You do not believe me? Take Bruce Lee, for example. He is shown to have incredible punching power, it is reported that he is able to pump push-ups with one hand as if they were going out of style, and could hold a dragon flag simply by swinging it on his shoulder blades.
There is something to this. His scapula strength and control was phenomenal, as demonstrated in the photo above of his warm-up scene before fighting Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon. Why is this so important? Because the scapula has seventeen different muscles attached to it. your traps? Those are connected to the scapula. What about biceps and triceps? Those are also connected. The serratus? Even the pecs? Can you train your chest back by training your back?!! YES! All of these muscles and more are connected to the scapula.
So let me simplify this: STRENGTHENING THE SHOULDER MEANS STRENGTHENING THE ENTIRE UPPER BODY.
If that’s the case, why isn’t there some kind of specific scapula training to make everyone Bruce Lee? Well, not everyone trains like Bruce Lee did, but there is definitely a great exercise that can build great strength in the scapula, it will blow your mind.
The pull.
I can almost hear a collective “ugh” as you can read that word if you’ve had trouble doing pull-ups in the past. But this exercise will strengthen all the tendons that connect to the scapula, IF DONE CORRECTLY.
There are many pull-ups that target different muscle groups, but not all of them specifically target the scapula. Pulling up on wide bars really helps build scapular strength, but you need to offload your shoulders for maximum effectiveness.
What does that mean? Well, if you’re holding on to the pull-up bars, you might be at a dead end, but notice that your shoulders are hunched up, to the point where they’re almost touching your ears. What you want to do is shrug them backwards, so that your shoulders are… well… shoulder-width apart, and your scapulae are fully engaged. In fact, a great precursor to doing pull-ups is simply doing reps of this reverse shrug to strengthen your shoulder blades as much as possible. Add an isometric hold toward the end (hold the shrug for 7-12 seconds) for a REAL strength gain.
Your upper back will begin to bristle with muscle in no time, but even better, you’ll be much stronger in all upper body movements by stabilizing and strengthening your shoulder blades.
If you were curious about what the other muscles were, here they are connected:
serratus anterior
supraspinatus
subscapular
trapeze
teres major
teres minor
triceps brachii
Brachial biceps
Rhomboid Major
rhomboid minor
coracobrachialis
Omohyoid, Lower Belly
latissimus dorsi
Deltoid
levator scapulae
infraspinatus
pectoralis minor