What if I told you that by activating the serratus anterior, all your shoulder problems would go away forever.
Shoulder pain when doing push-ups? Activate the serratus. Difficulty getting your arms over your head? Activate the serratus. Want to break the world marathon record? Activate the serratus.
Did I go too far?
I do this right from the beginning to make an important disclosure before you read the rest of this article.
It’s a sort of PSA that goes contrary to most of the other content you’ll find on the inter-webs. There is no one muscle that will fix all your shoulder and/or movement problems.
The message that activating a certain muscle group will fix and bulletproof your movement is a great title for a blog article or YouTube video, though. It's a good hook.
Isolating individual muscles with exercise has a purpose sometimes for some people.
But if you don’t have problems recruiting your serratus in a push-up then you’re just wasting your time with all those activation drills.
If you want your serratus to get stronger, you should just do more pushing exercises.
What is the Serratus Anterior Muscle?
The serratus anterior is located right underneath the armpits. It connects the ribs to the scapulae.
Serratus Anterior Exercises
I don’t like doing things that I don’t need to do. I’m a minimalist at heart and I encourage readers to do the same.
Did you feel your serratus activate? Great! That’s it.