Spread Your Wings
By Julie Gudmestad
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A good pose for stretching the rhomboids is Garudasana (Eagle Pose). As you come into this pose, crossing your elbows in front of your chest and then intertwining your forearms, you should feel some stretch in the rhomboids. You can intensify the stretch by reaffirming the lift of your breastbone and then lifting the elbows and lengthening them away from your chest.
Even if you have full movement of the scapulae in upward rotation, you will also need strength in the muscles that will create this movement. The prime mover in upward rotation is a muscle called the serratus anterior. The serratus is a bit hard to see and feel because it originates on the sides of your rib cage, then angles back under the scapula and inserts along the medial border of the underside of the scapula. It's easiest to see on people who have done a lot of upper body strength work, like rowers and rock climbers. The serratus is assisted by the upper and lower trapezius. You might expect that the trapezius would be easier to see than the serratus, because it's just under the skin of the mid- and upper back, but it too can be hard to discern because on many people it's a thin, underdeveloped muscle.
The serratus and the upper and lower trapezius work together to rotate the scapula up: The upper trapezius pulls in and up on the outer corner of the scapula, while the lower trapezius fibers pull down on the upper inner corner. And the serratus is ideally situated for positioning the scapula when we bear weight on the arms, since its fibers pull the inner border and the bottom tip of the bone forward along the rib cage, away from the spine. The serratus also helps hold the medial border
of the scapula down on the rib cage, helping to prevent the "winging" of the scapulae that creates a big valley between the shoulder blades.
While commonly known muscles, like the pectorals on the chest and the triceps on the back of the upper arm, are important in poses where you bear weight on your arms, the lesser-known serratus and trapezius are just as important. Remember, your scapulae must be held in upward rotation for you to sustain an arms-overhead position. If you're in Handstand, for example, your serratus muscles must bear nearly your full body weight, minus only the weight of your arms, as they transmit the weight of your legs and torso from your rib cage to your scapulae. Unfortunately, many students come to yoga weak in the trapezius and serratus. Even people who have worked on upper-body weight training are likely to have focused on the triceps, pectorals, and latissimus dorsi (which extend from the lower spine to the upper arm bone) and to have done much less work on the upward rotators.
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