Struggling to activate serratus anterior

Hey everyone, so im having problems with my scapular stability as i have realised when i do excercises like one-arm dumbbell rows, my scapular doesnt feel like its moving smoothly, its feelsjerky.
I have been told by my physio that this is anissue with a weak serrratus anterior. Anyway so he gave me an excercise where i get on all fours and retract and protract the scapular, ive been doing this at home for a while and seen no improvements, i cant even feel the muscle working, it just feels as if im actually pulling my shoulder forward and not actually protracting the scapular. Could anyone give me any tips or excercises to activate this muscle so i can strengthen it.

Thank you

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Originally Posted by amjrules

Hey everyone, so im having problems with my scapular stability as i have realised when i do excercises like one-arm dumbbell rows, my scapular doesnt feel like its moving smoothly, its feelsjerky.
I have been told by my physio that this is anissue with a weak serrratus anterior. Anyway so he gave me an excercise where i get on all fours and retract and protract the scapular, ive been doing this at home for a while and seen no improvements, i cant even feel the muscle working, it just feels as if im actually pulling my shoulder forward and not actually protracting the scapular. Could anyone give me any tips or excercises to activate this muscle so i can strengthen it.

Thank you

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I would suggest that you are possibly now too strong for simple scapula setting. Have you tried adding resistance to this? An exercise I do with one of my clients who has similar issues is straight arm cable push sat on a swiss ball. Forces a setting of the core before movement. You need the cable pulley about shoulder height, and weight wise, well this will depend on your current strength. I work him for 5 sets of 10. You could try this lying similar to this Scapula Protraction with DB (www.trainatp.com) - YouTube , but you may find that the movement of your scapula is interfered with by the bench.

First of all, we should really know whether you have really a weak serratus anterior muscles and in case would be interesting trying to understand why it is weak (neurological/functional wing scapulae?). Maybe you don't need any strengthening excercise at all, maybe the problem could come from a poor posture (e.g. rounded-shoulder) or from a hypertrophic/contracted muscle groups on your shoulder girdle. Unluckily from here is, without a proper evaluation, impossible to tell you what exactly you should do. I guess the best thing you can do is to go and have a chat again with the colleague, and let him/her know that the excercises proposed didn't achieve any particular good results and see if the management plan can be changed or modified.

All the best!