How to Fix Scapular Winging in 4 Easy Exercises (NO EQUIPMENT)

Trying to figure out how to fix scapular winging? Here are four easy exercises, a few important things you need to know, and a couple things to ignore.

Coach E from Precision Movement here. Today, we’re going to talk about the shoulder, specifically the scapula, which is a big part of your shoulder. If you’ve ever been told you have winging scapula, or you think you have it, or scapular dyskinesis, which means altered dysfunctional movement of the scapula, then this article is going to help you out.

The Six Ways Your Shoulder Blade Should Move

First, we need to understand what the scapula is and how it should function.

The scapula is also known as the shoulder blade, and it sits right on top of your rib cage. It’s very unique in that basically just floats on your rib cage here. And there are 17 muscular attachments to the scapula.

In terms of movement, it can move in all different directions. It can move forward around the ribcage, which is protraction. It can move backward around the ribcage, which is retraction. It can move up, which is elevation. It can move down, which is depression.

But it also has two other movements and one of these is really, really critical to healthy, pain-free shoulders.

We’ve got anterior tilt, which is as if you had a cup of water on your shoulder and spilled it down your front. And you can go posteriorly, posterior tilt. So, if you had a cup of water, you’d dump it behind you.

I’ve found posterior tilt to be the most critical movement to healthy, pain-free shoulders. Most people don’t do well with it because they don’t know about it or are not strong in that position.

Now, it’s not just about static positioning.

How you sit and rest right now, just reading this article, and how your shoulder blade is sitting are not the most important things. What’s most important is that you have good control and strength throughout the full range of motion of the arm.

As your arm moves, the scapula should move with it. It provides the base from which your arm moves around in the shoulder joint.

If the scapula isn’t stable, or if it doesn’t move sufficiently when your arm is moving, that will create havoc – especially in the front of the shoulder. That’s when you can run into rotator cuff tears, an impingement in the front of the shoulder on the bursa, and a whole bunch of pain – specifically in the front of the shoulder.

We want to avoid all that. So how do we do it?

We develop strength and control through the full range of motion in the muscles, and you need to ensure that the scapula is in the right position throughout.

That’s important to understand when it comes to any problems with the shoulder or the scapula.

Now, one thing that we often hear about when it comes to the shoulder blades and doing exercises, especially in the gym, is that we’ve got to keep the shoulder blades down and back. But it’s not about retraction and pulling your shoulder blades together. It’s more about that posterior tilt. Yes, you need retraction. You need all of the movements. But it’s that posterior tilt that is often missing at rest and, more importantly, throughout the range of motion.

That’s what we’re going to focus on today.

How to Fix Winged Scapula At Home

Now, we’re going to go through four winged shoulder blades exercises, and I’m also going to cover some research that I found that will strengthen the approach we’re going to take today.

If you want to follow along with the video, click here to watch 4 Exercises to Fix Winged Scapula & Build STABLE Shoulder Blades on YouTube.

Exercise 1: ASMR Lateral Neck

The first exercise we’re going to do is active self-myofascial release for the lateral neck muscles, specifically targeting the upper trapezius.

This is a very simple technique, and if you can get somebody else to help you with it, great. But we can ultimately only rely on ourselves, so that’s why I like these self-massage techniques.

1. Start by digging your fingers in right behind the ear and tilting that same ear toward the shoulder.
2. Put as much pressure as you can and slide your fingers down the meaty upper trapezius muscle as you bring your ear away from that shoulder.
3. Move do a different spot and repeat.

Do this for 1-2 minutes per side.

Remember, left ear toward the left shoulder. Right ear toward the right shoulder.

Simply repeat and go in different areas of the upper trap muscle. Breathe and try to relax the muscle as much as possible. You’ll get the levator scapula in there as well..

This is really important because the upper trapezius is related to the motion of the scapula as you move your arm around. The research finds that this muscle often dominates this movement pattern and puts the scapula in a poor position, creating problems like subacromial impingement, rotator cuff tendonitis, and tears.

A good study on this is titled “Activation Profile of Scapular Stabilizing Muscles in Asymptomatic People: Does Scapular Dyskinesis Have an Impact on It?” The researchers discovered that there is “a significant increase (approximately 24%- 61% and 23%—70%) in upper trapezius/lower trapezius and upper trapezius/serratus anterior ratios in those with scapular dyskinesia.” [1]

This means that the upper trapezius worked more relative to the lower trapezius and the serratus anterior in those with dyskinesis, that poor movement of the scapula when the arm moves. While these people were asymptomatic in the study, this can lead to the problems that I talked about before, such as acromial bursitis, rotator cuff tendonitis, tear, and general pain in the shoulder.

That’s why we want to relax and inhibit the upper trapezius muscle before we do exercises to improve the serratus anterior and lower trapezius muscles and restore proper function and movement to the scapula.

Exercise 2: Slumpy Serratus Activator

The second exercise we’ll do today to treat scapula winging or dyskinesis is the Slumpy Serratus Activator.

This is by far my favorite exercise to start off for anybody with any kind of shoulder pain or dysfunction, not necessarily anybody, but for most people with shoulder pain dysfunction, there are always edge cases that might not benefit from this exercise.

If you have general shoulder pain and are not thinking about going to the ER, try this exercise.

1. Start off with bad posture, getting your body into a C-shape, rounding the shoulders, jutting the head forward.
2. Simultaneously stand up straight as you internally rotate the shoulders (twist your shoulders so your palms point backwards) and lift your arms back behind you.
3. Hold for 5 – 10 seconds
4. Maintaining tension, return to neutral position
5. Gradually relax the muscles

Do 2 sets of 4-6 reps with 5-10 second holds.

You need to focus on a few things when straightening into good posture.

One is tucking the chin in so that you’re nice and tall. Two is to bring your shoulder down so you’re not overusing those upper trapezius muscles, and three, perhaps most importantly, is the posterior tilt of the scapula. So the scapula is dumping that water behind you. Those three things you’re focusing on throughout, holding here, as you’re trying to lift the arms higher and trying to fight with those other motions.

This exercise strengthens the serratus anterior and the lower trapezius and keeps the upper trapezius out of the movement, restoring the ratio I mentioned in the study in the previous exercise.

It’s a great exercise and one of the cornerstones of rehab programs that are appropriate for most people with shoulder pain.

Now, this exercise also serves as a foundation for exercises that I use later in rehab programs because you can start here and then move in all different positions. But if you don’t have this fundamental starting point and all of those activation patterns down, all these other fancy exercises where you’re moving your arms around will not be done well. Start by creating the foundation, and we progress from there. I do that in our programs, but we’ll talk about those later.

Exercise 3: ER/IR Ratcheting

The third exercise we’re going through today is ER/IR Ratcheting, which is external rotation and internal rotation ratcheting.

This technique is particularly important for anybody who participates in sports involving throwing or hitting something, like baseball, tennis, or golf. You want to ensure that your shoulder is healthy for the long term so you can keep playing those sports for the rest of your life. Keep having fun out there!

For this technique, I’m going to show you one arm at a time, but you can do both at the same time. What I suggest is that you get good at one arm at a time first, getting that muscular control and awareness. Then, when you’re good at it, do both arms at the same time.

We will start with the arm out straight but in the scapular plane, which is about 30 degrees forward of arms straight out to the side. So I’m in the scapular plane. Make a fist. That will increase the activation of the shoulder girdle muscles.

1. From the starting posiiton, start with external rotation – rotate your bicep up.
2. Anteriorly tilt your scapula (water pours down the front)
3. Hold for 5 seconds, trying to activate the muscles and get deeper into the range of motion.
4. Switch to internal rotation (bicep down) and posterior tilt of the scapula
5. Hold for 5 seconds

Do 2 sets of 4-6 reps.

With external rotation, you will see that your scapula naturally wants to go into posterior tilt. The opposite tends to happen with external rotation, which is why we’re doing this exercise. Getting deeper into that range of motion is the most important function or part of this exercise. You want to get deeper into internal rotation and deeper into the posterior tilt of the scapula.

I’m going to share a study that explains exactly why in a second.

Make sure your shoulder doesn’t hike up into your ear. Breathe naturally. I like to maintain tension in those muscles and then gradually relax them as I bring my arm down to the side.

This can be a funky technique. At first you might not feel like you’re doing the right motion, especially the anterior and posterior tilt of the scapula because the shoulder blade is on the back of our body. How often do you focus on moving it and being precise with the movement of our shoulder blades? Not very often. But when you develop that awareness and that control, that’s going to create advantages to the long-term health of your shoulder.

The study I found was called “Shoulder kinetic during pitching in baseball players with scapular dyskinesis.” The researcher found that “the abnormal group (scapular dyskinesis) showed a larger maximum value of the glenohumeral normalized anterior joint force than the control group. An increase in GH [glenohumeral] anterior force during pitching causes an excessive increase in external rotation of the GH with an insufficient posterior tilt of the scapula with scapular dyskinesis.” [2]

This study is relevant because those with scapular dyskinesis have limited posterior tilt and excessive anterior scapular tilt. If you’re a baseball player, tennis player, or golfer and you have too much anterior tilt, that will cause that anterior shoulder pain. The study showed that there are excessive anterior forces on the shoulder when you have that dyskinesis.

Now, the study also shows that the traditional approach to shoulder problems, anterior shoulder pain, rotator cuff tears, or tendonitis, is to focus on internal and external rotation. You know, strengthen those external rotators and stretch internal rotation with the sleeper stretch.

That approach ignores what is most important, which is restoring that posterior tilt where you don’t need as much through the external rotators. You don’t need as much range of motion through the rotation of the glenohumeral joint because the scapula sets you up in the right position, you avoid those problems that we’ve spoken about. So scapular tilt is critical to movement health and longevity of the shoulder.

Exercise 4: 4-Point Scap Circle

The last exercise that I’ve got for you today is called the 4-Point Scap Circle. This brings us into a position different from what we’ve been in for the previous exercises, which is the closed chain position.

A closed chain is where my hands are on the ground, and my body moves around my hands. In the other exercises, my hands were moving around, and my feet were anchored to the floor. It’s a different type of movement pattern. It activates muscles in a different way. It also integrates what we’ve already done previously. It’s a great way to finish off the routine.

For this exercise, set up in the 4-point position. 90 degrees at the shoulder. 90 degrees at the hips. Maintain a nice neutral posture with your chin tucked.

1. Put most of your weight through the heel of your palms, keeping your elbows perfectly straight.
2. Slowly do circles with your scapula – retraction, protraction, elevation, and depression – pushing through the heel of your palms
3. Do 5 slow circles
4. Reverse directions
5. Do 5 slow circles

Perform 2-3 sets of 5 circles in each direction.

Go really slow so you can get maximum range of motion of the scapula and build strength through the full range of motion. Remember to maintain a neutral posture with the chin tucked, as best you can.

Keep your elbows straight. And breathe naturally.

That is the 4-point Scap Circle. That is going to take all of the work that we’ve done previous to this and it integrates it into a full range, closed-chain movement that’s going ot build strength and it’s going to help you to take the work that you’re doing here and transfer it to the gym, to your sports, your activities, and everything else in your life.

How to Fix Scapular Winging For Good

That’s my approach to bringing winging scapula. The winging itself, especially in a static position, isn’t what you want to focus on. You want to focus on the function, your control, and your strength.

Do you have a sufficient range of motion to do what you need to do? Do you have sufficient strength and endurance to keep control of the shoulder blades and the shoulder joints through the activities that you do in your everyday life?

That’s what’s most important, not how it looks when you’re just sitting there.

Now you have four great exercises for how to fix a winged scapula. But this article is just meant to open you up to my approach and the approach that I believe will set you up for long-term success.

Since I didn’t want to make this a whole book, we didn’t even touch on the role of thoracic spine posture or the role of the pec minor, or how to progress these exercises to build endurance and strength sufficiently. That’s contained in other articles.

Winged Scapula: Tests, Stretches & Exercises: Although super heroes may have ‘em and energy drink ads promise to give them to you – real life wings aren’t a good thing. An issue called winged scapula can cause serious pain and weakness.

Super Drill to Strengthen Your Scapular Stabilizers: Strong scapular stabilizers are critical for healthy shoulders, especially for those of us who like to hoist heavy weights high up over our heads.

Our Shoulder Pain Solution program also contains more comprehensive information and is laid out in an easy-to-follow approach. If you have any shoulder pain, I highly suggest you check this program out and grab it because it’s worked for many people before and will work for you, too.

Thanks for reading. See you soon. Peace.