Serratus Anterior Reactive Activation

Serratus Anterior Reactive Activation is a technique used in rehabilitation and athletic conditioning to improve muscle control, strength, and coordination. It typically involves active contraction of the serratus anterior muscles in a repetitive, gentle, and controlled manner. The goal is to improve posture, positioning, and force balance while improving power and speed of movement. This technique can be used to treat or prevent muscle and tendon pain and injuries, as well as to optimize performance and prevent injury in athletes and

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This is Brent, President B2C Fitness, and

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we're doing serratus anterior reactive

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integration. Now, we do our reactive integration to speed the velocity at

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which our, long, under active or phasing musculature, fire to ensure that we have

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timely firing of that musculature. Now, at this point, doing serratus anterior

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active integration, I'm assuming, at the least, you've done an assessment that

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shows you that we have some sort of upper body dysfunction. I am also assuming

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that you've done your release and stretching techniques for those short,

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overactive structures, and you've done some isolated activation for your long,

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under active structures, including your serratus anterior, and you can see

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our serratus anterior isolated activation, in a video that we have

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previously published. I'm going to have my friend, Mike, come out here and

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demonstrate this exercise. Now, I'm already thinking, when I'm doing serratus

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anterior reactive integration, about what my overactive synergists are. My

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overactive synergists, those muscles that have a potential to become

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synergistically dominant for the serratus anterior, are my subscapularis,

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and my pec minor. So, when I set Mike up to do this exercise, the first thing I'm

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going to think is, how do I reciprocally inhibit that musculature? Well, I know I

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can inhibit my subscapularis by having him externally rotate. So I'm going to

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have Mike reach out, and externally rotate for me. I know that my pec

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minor is an anterior tipper of the scapula, so what I'm going to have Mike do is posteriorly

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tip the scapula. The easiest way to get somebody to posteriorly tip their

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scapula, is to go into some thoracic extension, so big chest, as well as

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depression. Now, what I'm going to have Mike do to ensure that we have serratus

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anterior activation, is get in that position, and then protract as far as he

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can. So he's going to reach out with the shoulders,

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but make sure you keep depressed, there you go. Good. So now he's in position, the

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serratus anterior is firing, and his overactive synergists are reciprocally

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inhibited. Now, what I'm going to do is make him react to something that I

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throw at him. In this case we're doing what looks like a chest pass, only I want to

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focus on eccentric deceleration. So what I want Mike to be able to do, is to catch

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and receive this ball, without losing form. I want him to receive this like

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he's catching an egg. I don't want him to stop the ball and then bring it in. I

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want him to receive it, so there should be no sound. So, just for the first couple,

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I'm not even going to have you throw it back really hard, I just want you to concentrate

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on catching. So, here we go Mike. That was pretty good, you can see his shoulders

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went up a little bit. So, let's try that again, try to keep nice and back.

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There you go, Good. Oops, my fault. Bad throw, I'll try to throw a little higher for you

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here. Good. You can see he's catching nice and soft, trying to keep this posture up. Now

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once he's got that mastered we can start working on, almost like, a plyometric

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activity, but this is going to be a proprioceptivly enriched plyometric

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activity. So, he's going to start in this position, I'm going to have him receive it, and

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then, without stopping, fire the ball right back at me. Let's try it again. And,

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of course, with your athletes this is a great way to start integrating your

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serratus anterior and start working on passing mechanics.

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Trying to get them to

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receive the ball, and turn it right back around with good aim. Mike's doing a great

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job with this. Do you feel it a little bit? -Little bit. Is it a little tough to get the

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technique down? -It is. Alright, so this is a basketball, this is a little

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smaller object, a little heavier object, and it's hard, so as soon as the fingers

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hit it, it taps pretty loud, which makes it hard to catch softly. We could regress

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this exercise, go to something a little bigger and softer. Stability balls are

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really good, like your smaller sized stability balls. Let's see that good form, Mike.

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They're actually a great place to start with this exercise. And of course, if a

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baseball, or not a baseball rather, but a basketball, becomes too easy, we could

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switch to weighted medicine balls, and this becomes really, really, challenging

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to accept, maintain good form, and throw back. Let's try one of these.

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Mike did a

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pretty good job there. So, there you go, serratus anterior reactive

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integration. I'm going to assume you've released, stretched, then did the isolated

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activation, and then this would be the next step in your warm up. Maybe we do

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some some sub system integration, and then he can move on with the rest of his

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upper body activity, knowing that he's not only warm, but moving better. We want

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not just more quantity of movement, but better quality movement. Thanks again to

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Serratus Anterior Reactive Activation

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Serratus Anterior Reactive Activation

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