Dr. Patrick Denard, an orthopedic surgeon who has performed over 10,000 shoulder surgeries, demonstrates why scapular control matters before advancing arm strength. He walks through four progressive exercises: standing and prone scapular retraction, bent-over Y-W progressions, and the lawnmower exercise, each designed to isolate and strengthen the scapula with proper form and controlled tempo.
I'm Dr. Patrick Denard. I'm a shoulder surgeon, which is 100% of my practice. I've done over 10,000 shoulder surgeries, and one of the key things for rehabilitation of the shoulder is the scapula. The scapula is really the foundation of the shoulder. Picture this like the foundation of the house. You have to have that shoulder blade be working properly if you're going to achieve movement further out. So scapular exercises begin by getting coordinated movement. We'll walk through scapular retraction, Move into prone position scapular retraction, and then as you advance up, you can do YWs followed by lawnmower exercises. I really like the YW exercises and the lawnmower exercise because by leaning over, you inhibit the pec minor, which is in the front of the shoulder. This really allows the scapula to retract more and isolates the scapula to get strengthening.
Scapular retraction is a good exercise just to work on coordinating the scapula. You're simply just pinching the shoulder blades together to really get the muscle memory down. So I'm going to start standing straight forward and I'm going to rest my shoulders and I'm going to picture pinching my shoulder blades together. I want to make sure that I'm pulling straight back as opposed to shrugging the shoulders up. I'm just simply pulling back and picturing that I have something right in between my shoulder blades and hold it in that position. Prone scapular retraction is a slight advancement from the standing scapular retraction exercise because you're working against Gravity, so it's the same concept here: pinching your shoulder blades together. I'm going to start by lying face down. You can do this on a bed, even on the floor. You want to start with your arms down, and then just simply bring up and pinch the shoulder blades together. If you're starting on the floor, you'll be here, and then you'll just be pulling up a bit. But pinch the shoulder blades together, sort of in a W configuration. Bent over Y W's are an excellent exercise for core. They're one of my favorite exercises for scapular coordination because when you're bent forward, the pec minor is inhibited and the pec tends to pull you forward. So I want to start by leaning over and I'll start in a Y configuration and then I'll come back to a W configuration, pinching the shoulder blades together. And you want to start with doing that without weights and then as you advance up, try just a couple of pounds. It really doesn't take a whole lot. These are 3 pounds. I'm going to start with a Y bent over. I'm going to pinch the shoulder blades back in a W configuration. We want to do this very slow in a controlled manner. If you do 10 of these with light weights, it really doesn't take much. The lawnmower exercise is another strengthening exercise for the scapula. Again, the idea is to be bent forward because when you're bent forward, the pec minor is inhibited. So here I'm going to be demonstrating working on my right arm. I'm gonna put a band under my left foot. I'll lean over here, and I'm gonna start down and just kind of pull back in a lawnmower kind of pull exercise. So I'll come up here, pulling my shoulder blade up and back, picturing that my shoulder blade is pinching on the back of my spine. You wanna start with pretty light weight here. So I can do this without pulling to the side.
