Upgrading The Arm Swing Through Attention To The Scapula
About Kyle
Outside Hitter
Concordia University of Edmonton
AWA and Kyle’s History
Kyle came in a month ago looking to see what he could do to hit the ball harder. We assessed his quality of movement, throwing and video analysis of his serve and attack. Kyle is a great mover, super strong and already has pretty awesome technique, where he had the most potential to create some changes was through his upgrading his scap (shoulder blade), so we spent lots of time there.
Assessment
Our assessment revealed a few different situations where his shoulder blades were devolved to more of a quadrupedal state (evolutionary terms - thanks to the Evolved Coaching Course :)). When thinking about what quadrupedal shoulders do, imagine a cat moving around where their shoulder blades create big humps off their backs. Checkout Kyle bear crawling and watch how his shoulder blades wing off his back as he moves, this is what we are talking about when we say quadrupedal.
We want to evolve his shoulders from quadrupedal to human for a number of reasons but one clear reason is when the shoulder blade works better the shoulder joint has more freedom to move. When the shoulder moves more freely, the brain takes off the brakes and allows the hand to accelerate effortlessly to create more velocity behind the ball.
Process
So Kyle spent a few weeks working hard on a few key movements, including LOTS of hanging variations and learning how to bend his elbows and wrists without retracting (squeezing) his shoulder blades together.
He was also given the instruction to prepare his arm swing in practice by throwing in a way that allowed his shoulder blades to stay wide as he initiated his rotation.
What we found to work in our follow-up session
When Kyle came back after a few weeks he reported he was clocking multiple serves over 100km in a practice which was new grounds for him. This was super exciting! So we looked to see if anything had changed to allow him to see these new improvements.
We checked out his hanging capacity where he improved his single arm hang capacity by almost double on both sides. This was an exciting start but didn’t tell the full story.
We then checked his bear crawl and noticed his shoulder blades were staying better on his rib cage - they were beginning to evolve! Now we are seeing a quality and capacity change.
Did this improve anything else? We checked to see if his shoulder range of motion improved and it did dramatically.
Now we felt confident that we were on to something, so we reassessed his throw to see if all these changes were translating into dynamic, fast movements. YES, when you look at the before and after pictures below of his throw, you will see his forearm is now parallel with the ground in the “after” photo. This shows he is able to create greater a greater “lag” between when his body is rotating and when his hand is following through. This lag allows the hand to accelerate faster through which will allow him to both throw and hit harder.
So he was able to change his shoulders capacity, quality, range of motion, and translate it into fast, athletic movements (throwing) in just a few weeks AND he was already starting to see the results on court.
To me this is super exciting, it’s another case of improved velocity without really addressing the technical end of the arm swing. Some athletes need to work on the physical, some the technical and some the mental. Most will work on all 3 at some point but to create efficient changes an examination into all three will likely show things that may have been left untouched in the past.
Kyle still has some work to do to continue evolving his shoulder and see more changes in his velocity. I have no doubt these changes will continue to happen for him because he has a mindset that seeks out change!
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