Muscles in the body diagrams (anterior view)
Fix Scapular Winging - A Deep Dive Article to Correct Your Asymmetries
2021.09.15 17:30 wawawawaka Fix Scapular Winging - A Deep Dive Article to Correct Your Asymmetries
Howdy Posture peeps,
It's been a while since I've posted. Things got a little crazy with Covid and all that, but I'm back with, what I believe, is some good info on scapular winging. Straight up, I've been working on this deep-dive and the accompanying YouTube video for about a month, so I really hope the info helps your shoulders out like it has mine :)
TLDR;
Scapular winging seems like a really big deal, but in fact, it gets a bad rep. Scapular winging isn't so much the root cause of shoulder problems, but rather just a symptom of lacking shoulder internal rotation that occurs with having a sunken chest & rounded shoulder type posture. It's simply the compensation your body meets this limitation with so that you can still move your shoulder properly. So if you have a little bit of winging, that's okay! That said, it is still beneficial to improve your scapular winging or shoulder internal rotation as there's a lot of exercises/movements that require this shoulder motion such as push-ups, bench press, throwing, etc. So, you should test for proper shoulder internal rotation and scapular winging in order to see how severe it may be and be objective with your improvements. A posterior view posture assessment can tell us a lot as well as the internal rotation component of the Apley's scratch test (here's a YouTube guide to both tests). Once you know if you have scapular winging or a limitation in shoulder internal rotation, it's time to do something about it. Most people want to do normal scapular stabilizing exercises, but we're going to shake things up by first creating expansion qualities at the anterior & posterior ribcage. We utilize breathing to stretch from the inside out and create proper mechanical leverage for muscles like the serratus anterior. Here's a self-massage routine to relax some of those gnarly muscles and loosen you up, followed by a series of 3 breathing/repositioning exercises that place your ribcage and scapulas in optimal positioning. We then take full advantage of this optimal position with 3 exercises to strengthen the crap out of the serratus and accompany scapula stabilizers. Be sure to test overtime to make sure that you're seeing results (you also don't have to use my exercises lol just, please be objective)
Sorry, that was a long TLDR lol.
Alright, so let's talk about when those shoulder blades stick out A.K.A. scapular winging, winged scapula, scapular dyskinesia, and of, course the medical term, scapula alata (fancy). I personally suffered from this issue back when my posture was all “bleh” and I could hardly keep my chin from falling on the floor. It was so bad that I was able to hook my shoulder blades onto the backrest of my chair! A weird party trick, right?
Pretty straightforward, right? Funny thing is, this is pretty much how you find out if you have scapular winging. Just look at the shoulder blade at rest or during movement and see if it does some wonky stuff, but we’ll dive into that soon enough.
Now the most common reason we’ll see scapular winging is due to postural deficits. Having a posture biased more forward onto the toes as well as 100 other reasons can cause a poor positional relationship between the scapula and ribcage. Positional relationship meaning that these structures just aren’t fitting together very nice - and it shows! It’s a combination of a ribcage that is compressed (tight muscles everywhere) and muscles like the serratus anterior, low trapezius, and others attempting to gain muscular leverage from a subpar foundation. Okay, I may have lost you there but let’s look at this photo for an analogy.
Imagine pulling a shirt out of your dirty laundry. You really want to wear the shirt, but… it’s wrinkled and kinda gross… but damn it would look good with those jeans.
So, you shamefully put it on in hopes it won’t look “too bad,” but dear god it smells and it fits like a wrinkled, plastic grocery bag. It’s all wedge up under your armpits., you lift your arms up and a little bit of your belly shows, and you stand there hoping the problem will just fix itself. A minor adulthood existential crisis sets in about responsibility, chores, should you even go…? AND you quickly deflect and put on the clean but definitely not as good, second choice shirt.
I really hope at least one of you reading this has had this experience and I’m not some weird person that digs through his laundry.
ANYWAYS, that wrinkled shirt does not move very well while on, right? This is sorta similar to what happens when your ribcage is “compressed” from muscles like the intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats. All these muscles are just doing their best to get the job done i.e. moving around your shoulder blade effectively.
Now, you’re not going to go burn your wrinkled, slightly smelly shirt because it’s wrinkled right? Nah, you’re going to wash it, dry it, iron it, and treat it with the love it deserves. It’s not the shirt’s fault. The same goes for your ribcage. The intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats aren’t tight and squeezing the bones together in weird ways because your body hates you. It’s simply doing the best it can. So think of the right exercises as ironing these muscles out. Pick the right ones and it can help to reduce these tensions and scapular winging.
Now, imagine putting your favorite shirt on fresh out of the dryer. There aren’t any wrinkles, it’s kind of warm, and it moves freely over the body. This can be analogous to your ribcage “decompressed” (reduced tight muscles/increased space). The muscles aren’t too stretches out or overly tight (no wrinkles), you have full shoulder range of motion (shirt doesn’t show your belly), and your shoulder blade or blades moving freely without or reduced scapular winging.
Specific Biomechanics (If You’re Into That)
I’m sure you’re just amazed by my “airing of dirty laundry” analogy. But let’s be honest, it doesn’t really give the concrete mechanics of what muscles to target from a biomechanical standpoint. But, I do hope my vulnerability and potentially weird behavior set the stage for how this all can work.
To preface this section, here's a diagram I put together of how poor posture can cause scapular winging.
So typically a scapula may wing due to a shoulder, or both shoulders, being biased into internal rotation. Think of this as when the chest sinks in and shoulders roll forward. Muscles like the pecs, obliques, subclavius, etc. grab the shoulder pulling it toward the sternum and get stuck in a concentric (tight position).
This in turn pulls on the shoulder and scapulas in a forward direction causing the muscle on the back to become lengthened and taunt (think about pulling a rope tight). This long but tense musculature (rhomboids, traps, etc.) push the ribcage forward. While the posterior ribcage is being smooshed, the tight anterior muscles at the chest are pulling on the shoulder and lift the scapula away from the ribcage, like in this diagram.
Now, unless you have thoracic nerve damage, you may not really have any problems with the scapular winging minus some aesthetics. There are statistically more people walking around with scapular winging, having no idea that they have it (and without pain/loss of motion/decreased stability) than there are people that do know they have it or have “related” symptoms. I don’t have the actual statistics but I am 99% sure this is the case. Prove me wrong.
Sorry that was aggressive. But really, if you have proof, prove me wrong… Why does that still sound so aggressive?
Scapular winging can be an issue with some instability or pain but it is generally NOT the cause of these symptoms, but rather, just another symptom. Maybe that’s a hard pill to swallow but stick with me. Scapular winging is more an indicator of the scapula’s behavior on the above-mentioned compressed ribcage via muscles that can’t quite get leverage. That’s really it. Other than that, it may be again, aesthetically unappealing to some, but that’s a whole-nother’ blog topic.
Now, those tight/long muscles CAN limit your shoulder range of motion. The scapular winging you see happening is actually a “cheat code” compensation the body uses to get around the shoulder lacking internal rotation. The shoulder is already biased in that direction so you can’t really internally rotate anymore (can’t go to the living room if you’re already in the living room), so the body just pops the scapula off the back of the ribcage to allow for the movement occur when, for example, you lift your arm overhead.
Simple and effective.
Side note - scapular winging, in my opinion, is more a testament to the resilience and adaptability of the human body. If some people weren’t able to do this, they’d have horrible shoulder range of motion. The silver lining, am I right?
Anyways, in a perfect world, we would want to improve the body’s ability to internally rotate the shoulder without having to wing the scapula (or as much). Maybe you’re doing activities like bench pressing which requires a good amount of internal rotation to perform. Then we can go and hammer on exercises to improve that specific shoulder motion, though that doesn’t mean you CAN’T bench press when you present with scapular winging. Like I said above - it’s really only a problem if it becomes a problem.
So if you've made it this far, I want to say thanks for reading and I hope you're finding some useful info. I'd also like to offer a free 20-minute posture and movement assessment. I do these 1) because I wish someone was doing this back when I was scouring posture forums because it could have saved me a lot of time, and 2) because maybe we can work together... and I like to listen to myself talk lol.
You can find out more at this link here.
Okay, the real reason you’re here.
Let’s Test for and Fix that Scapular Winging
You’ll want to video yourself and start the test by reaching behind the back to the opposite side shoulder blade. When reviewing your video, you may see that the scapula pops away from the ribcage at certain points of the motion. Whenever it first starts to pop off, that’s where you stop the test.
I love this test for objectively improving scapular winging and shoulder internal rotation as you can continuously retest how far your arm can go up to your back before the scapula wings out. The further you’re able to go, the better your shoulder internal rotation and the less scapular winging.
TESTING SUMMARY
I use both of these tests to see the severity of the scapular winging. If you have scapular winging at rest, then it’s more severe whereas if you can reach your arm behind your back and touch the opposite shoulder blade without it winging, you’re good to go.
So areas such as the pump handle (anterior ribcage or chest) and posterior mediastinum (posterior ribcage) are the targets. But, how do we expand/relax/stretch/decompress these areas? It’s pretty hard to stretch around there, massages can only get you so far.
So we’re going to utilize our breathing to open up these areas. We can use the breath and the pressure it creates in the thorax to pop open ribcage and get those shoulder blades gliding smoothly. Think, your lungs sit nice and snug in the top of the ribcage. If we get this amazing organ to expand, we can stretch the front and back part of the ribcage from the inside out. That said, we can still use some self-massage / myofascial release to reduce some muscle tone around these areas.
Now that we loosen some things up and pressurize the system (sounds fancy), it’s time to load it up. This wouldn’t be a scapular winging article without talking about strengthening the ole’ serratus anterior muscle. This is the primary muscle the pulls the ribcage back the scapula and the scapula to the ribcage. Many people have a hard time feeling this muscle work so they think it’s weak, and it may be. But I believe that the muscle can’t get enough leverage due to the poor postural positioning of the ribcage, hence why we do the breathing stuff to move the ribs into the correct position and set the serratus muscle up for success.
a) Banded Posterior Expansion 3x5 breaths
b) Bear Position Breathing 3x5 breaths
c) Door Supported Squat Hold 3x5 breaths
a) Seated Serratus Wall Slides 3x10-20 reps
b) Rough Country Bear Crawls 3x30-60 second bouts
C) Off-set Push-up/Incline Push-up with Reach 3x10-15 reps
Scapular Winging Summary
Well first, thank you a ton for making it this far in the post. It means a lot that you get something from all this rambling. In summary, scapular winging isn’t a bad thing. It happens and it’s not going to wreck your shoulder stability. The best way to improve it is to improve your ribcage’s positioning against gravity and shoulder internal rotation. Really focus on the repositioning & breathing exercises followed by the strength routine and I guarantee you’ll see improvements. Hit this routine 2-3 times per week and reap the benefits!
If you enjoyed this information, please consider signing up for my newsletter where I send blog posts, exercise tips, posture deep dives, and much more. You'll also get a free APT eBook :)
Newsletter Sign Up
Instagram: @waughfit
Free Posture & Movement Assessments
Btw, we've got a lot of deep dives like this over at AdvancedPosture and are updating the wiki with all sorts of free info
submitted by wawawawaka to PostureTipsGuide [link] [comments]
It's been a while since I've posted. Things got a little crazy with Covid and all that, but I'm back with, what I believe, is some good info on scapular winging. Straight up, I've been working on this deep-dive and the accompanying YouTube video for about a month, so I really hope the info helps your shoulders out like it has mine :)
Scapular Winging - A Deep Dive
So, this is what this post will cover:- We’ll Define Scapular Winging
- Why It Happen & What Muscles Are Involved (Biomechanics)
- Why Scapular Winging Matters
- How To "Fix" Your Scapular Winging
- How To Test If You Have Scapular Winging
- Exercises To Fix Scapular Winging
TLDR;
Scapular winging seems like a really big deal, but in fact, it gets a bad rep. Scapular winging isn't so much the root cause of shoulder problems, but rather just a symptom of lacking shoulder internal rotation that occurs with having a sunken chest & rounded shoulder type posture. It's simply the compensation your body meets this limitation with so that you can still move your shoulder properly. So if you have a little bit of winging, that's okay! That said, it is still beneficial to improve your scapular winging or shoulder internal rotation as there's a lot of exercises/movements that require this shoulder motion such as push-ups, bench press, throwing, etc. So, you should test for proper shoulder internal rotation and scapular winging in order to see how severe it may be and be objective with your improvements. A posterior view posture assessment can tell us a lot as well as the internal rotation component of the Apley's scratch test (here's a YouTube guide to both tests). Once you know if you have scapular winging or a limitation in shoulder internal rotation, it's time to do something about it. Most people want to do normal scapular stabilizing exercises, but we're going to shake things up by first creating expansion qualities at the anterior & posterior ribcage. We utilize breathing to stretch from the inside out and create proper mechanical leverage for muscles like the serratus anterior. Here's a self-massage routine to relax some of those gnarly muscles and loosen you up, followed by a series of 3 breathing/repositioning exercises that place your ribcage and scapulas in optimal positioning. We then take full advantage of this optimal position with 3 exercises to strengthen the crap out of the serratus and accompany scapula stabilizers. Be sure to test overtime to make sure that you're seeing results (you also don't have to use my exercises lol just, please be objective)
Sorry, that was a long TLDR lol.
Alright, so let's talk about when those shoulder blades stick out A.K.A. scapular winging, winged scapula, scapular dyskinesia, and of, course the medical term, scapula alata (fancy). I personally suffered from this issue back when my posture was all “bleh” and I could hardly keep my chin from falling on the floor. It was so bad that I was able to hook my shoulder blades onto the backrest of my chair! A weird party trick, right?
What Is Scapular Winging?
Scapula Alata (Winging Scapulae) - The medial border of the scapula protruding, like wings, due to the muscles of the scapula being too weak or paralyzed, resulting in a limited ability to effectivly stabilize the scapula. - PhysiopediaBasically, at rest and/or with shoulder movement, the inside portion of the shoulder blade (closest to your spine) pops off the ribcage as shown in this photo. This can happen when you move your shoulder OR while you’re just standing upright.
Pretty straightforward, right? Funny thing is, this is pretty much how you find out if you have scapular winging. Just look at the shoulder blade at rest or during movement and see if it does some wonky stuff, but we’ll dive into that soon enough.
Why Does Scapular Winging Happen & What Muscles Are Involved?
So, there are different reasons as to why scapular winging occurs. One of the more rare reasons is due to the nerves affecting the serratus anterior muscle. The nerve that innervates this muscle is the long thoracic nerve, and sometimes it can be damaged or impinged, leading to malfunction. This makes the serratus anterior unable to do the job of keeping the scapula pulled flush against the ribcage, as well as supporting the shoulder through its normal movements (Park SB, et Al. 2020). Now, nerve impingement or muscular paralysis is rather rare. This typically occurs due to traumatic events such as car accidents, sports injuries, etc. This will also result in a lot of shoulder weakness and have some other weird symptoms that present alongside the scapula’s winged position.Now the most common reason we’ll see scapular winging is due to postural deficits. Having a posture biased more forward onto the toes as well as 100 other reasons can cause a poor positional relationship between the scapula and ribcage. Positional relationship meaning that these structures just aren’t fitting together very nice - and it shows! It’s a combination of a ribcage that is compressed (tight muscles everywhere) and muscles like the serratus anterior, low trapezius, and others attempting to gain muscular leverage from a subpar foundation. Okay, I may have lost you there but let’s look at this photo for an analogy.
Imagine pulling a shirt out of your dirty laundry. You really want to wear the shirt, but… it’s wrinkled and kinda gross… but damn it would look good with those jeans.
So, you shamefully put it on in hopes it won’t look “too bad,” but dear god it smells and it fits like a wrinkled, plastic grocery bag. It’s all wedge up under your armpits., you lift your arms up and a little bit of your belly shows, and you stand there hoping the problem will just fix itself. A minor adulthood existential crisis sets in about responsibility, chores, should you even go…? AND you quickly deflect and put on the clean but definitely not as good, second choice shirt.
I really hope at least one of you reading this has had this experience and I’m not some weird person that digs through his laundry.
ANYWAYS, that wrinkled shirt does not move very well while on, right? This is sorta similar to what happens when your ribcage is “compressed” from muscles like the intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats. All these muscles are just doing their best to get the job done i.e. moving around your shoulder blade effectively.
Now, you’re not going to go burn your wrinkled, slightly smelly shirt because it’s wrinkled right? Nah, you’re going to wash it, dry it, iron it, and treat it with the love it deserves. It’s not the shirt’s fault. The same goes for your ribcage. The intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats aren’t tight and squeezing the bones together in weird ways because your body hates you. It’s simply doing the best it can. So think of the right exercises as ironing these muscles out. Pick the right ones and it can help to reduce these tensions and scapular winging.
Now, imagine putting your favorite shirt on fresh out of the dryer. There aren’t any wrinkles, it’s kind of warm, and it moves freely over the body. This can be analogous to your ribcage “decompressed” (reduced tight muscles/increased space). The muscles aren’t too stretches out or overly tight (no wrinkles), you have full shoulder range of motion (shirt doesn’t show your belly), and your shoulder blade or blades moving freely without or reduced scapular winging.
Specific Biomechanics (If You’re Into That)
I’m sure you’re just amazed by my “airing of dirty laundry” analogy. But let’s be honest, it doesn’t really give the concrete mechanics of what muscles to target from a biomechanical standpoint. But, I do hope my vulnerability and potentially weird behavior set the stage for how this all can work.
To preface this section, here's a diagram I put together of how poor posture can cause scapular winging.
So typically a scapula may wing due to a shoulder, or both shoulders, being biased into internal rotation. Think of this as when the chest sinks in and shoulders roll forward. Muscles like the pecs, obliques, subclavius, etc. grab the shoulder pulling it toward the sternum and get stuck in a concentric (tight position).
This in turn pulls on the shoulder and scapulas in a forward direction causing the muscle on the back to become lengthened and taunt (think about pulling a rope tight). This long but tense musculature (rhomboids, traps, etc.) push the ribcage forward. While the posterior ribcage is being smooshed, the tight anterior muscles at the chest are pulling on the shoulder and lift the scapula away from the ribcage, like in this diagram.
Why Does Scapular Winging Matter?
Now that you know too much about my laundry habits, let’s jump into why scapular winging even matters. This is a great segue into the fact that scapular winging doesn’t really matter until it matters.Now, unless you have thoracic nerve damage, you may not really have any problems with the scapular winging minus some aesthetics. There are statistically more people walking around with scapular winging, having no idea that they have it (and without pain/loss of motion/decreased stability) than there are people that do know they have it or have “related” symptoms. I don’t have the actual statistics but I am 99% sure this is the case. Prove me wrong.
Sorry that was aggressive. But really, if you have proof, prove me wrong… Why does that still sound so aggressive?
Scapular winging can be an issue with some instability or pain but it is generally NOT the cause of these symptoms, but rather, just another symptom. Maybe that’s a hard pill to swallow but stick with me. Scapular winging is more an indicator of the scapula’s behavior on the above-mentioned compressed ribcage via muscles that can’t quite get leverage. That’s really it. Other than that, it may be again, aesthetically unappealing to some, but that’s a whole-nother’ blog topic.
Now, those tight/long muscles CAN limit your shoulder range of motion. The scapular winging you see happening is actually a “cheat code” compensation the body uses to get around the shoulder lacking internal rotation. The shoulder is already biased in that direction so you can’t really internally rotate anymore (can’t go to the living room if you’re already in the living room), so the body just pops the scapula off the back of the ribcage to allow for the movement occur when, for example, you lift your arm overhead.
Simple and effective.
Side note - scapular winging, in my opinion, is more a testament to the resilience and adaptability of the human body. If some people weren’t able to do this, they’d have horrible shoulder range of motion. The silver lining, am I right?
Anyways, in a perfect world, we would want to improve the body’s ability to internally rotate the shoulder without having to wing the scapula (or as much). Maybe you’re doing activities like bench pressing which requires a good amount of internal rotation to perform. Then we can go and hammer on exercises to improve that specific shoulder motion, though that doesn’t mean you CAN’T bench press when you present with scapular winging. Like I said above - it’s really only a problem if it becomes a problem.
So if you've made it this far, I want to say thanks for reading and I hope you're finding some useful info. I'd also like to offer a free 20-minute posture and movement assessment. I do these 1) because I wish someone was doing this back when I was scouring posture forums because it could have saved me a lot of time, and 2) because maybe we can work together... and I like to listen to myself talk lol.
You can find out more at this link here.
Okay, the real reason you’re here.
Let’s Test for and Fix that Scapular Winging
1) VISUAL ASSESSMENT
The first test is pretty straightforward with scapular winging. Typically if you have it, you’ll see it while just standing or sitting in a relaxed posture. You don’t have to move your arms or anything. Take a video of yourself, turn around and you’ll be able to pick it out real quick. If you have scapular winging with resting posture, then you’re probably pretty dang limited in your shoulder internal rotation and could use a little help (we’ll get there).2) APLEY'S SCRATCH TEST (INTERNAL ROTATION FOCUSED)
This is a great test for those that may not have a resting scapular winging but instead have the scapula pop off the ribcage with movement. I personally only use the internal rotation portion of this test (yes, there is an external rotation portion you can do) as that motion is typically associated with scapular winging.You’ll want to video yourself and start the test by reaching behind the back to the opposite side shoulder blade. When reviewing your video, you may see that the scapula pops away from the ribcage at certain points of the motion. Whenever it first starts to pop off, that’s where you stop the test.
I love this test for objectively improving scapular winging and shoulder internal rotation as you can continuously retest how far your arm can go up to your back before the scapula wings out. The further you’re able to go, the better your shoulder internal rotation and the less scapular winging.
TESTING SUMMARY
I use both of these tests to see the severity of the scapular winging. If you have scapular winging at rest, then it’s more severe whereas if you can reach your arm behind your back and touch the opposite shoulder blade without it winging, you’re good to go.
How To Fix Your Scapular Winging
So in order to “fix” scapular winging, we need to essentially relax all those muscles previously stated and decompress the posterior ribcage. I keep putting “fix” in quotations because you really never “fix” scapular winging. It’s a part of being human and can play a key role in our movement as it can yield great ranges of motion for people. That said, we can totally manage the scapular winging that occurs by improving shoulder internal rotation so that it’s not a movement strategy that’s potentially overutilized. Got it? cool.So areas such as the pump handle (anterior ribcage or chest) and posterior mediastinum (posterior ribcage) are the targets. But, how do we expand/relax/stretch/decompress these areas? It’s pretty hard to stretch around there, massages can only get you so far.
So we’re going to utilize our breathing to open up these areas. We can use the breath and the pressure it creates in the thorax to pop open ribcage and get those shoulder blades gliding smoothly. Think, your lungs sit nice and snug in the top of the ribcage. If we get this amazing organ to expand, we can stretch the front and back part of the ribcage from the inside out. That said, we can still use some self-massage / myofascial release to reduce some muscle tone around these areas.
Now that we loosen some things up and pressurize the system (sounds fancy), it’s time to load it up. This wouldn’t be a scapular winging article without talking about strengthening the ole’ serratus anterior muscle. This is the primary muscle the pulls the ribcage back the scapula and the scapula to the ribcage. Many people have a hard time feeling this muscle work so they think it’s weak, and it may be. But I believe that the muscle can’t get enough leverage due to the poor postural positioning of the ribcage, hence why we do the breathing stuff to move the ribs into the correct position and set the serratus muscle up for success.
Exercise Routine To Fix Scapular Winging
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The Exercises to fix that mangled chicken wing. Too vulgar? My bad. But really! Here are some step-by-step moves that can all be done at home and for all strength levels. We’ll start with some self-massage, move to reposition the ribcage and scapula, and lastly, strengthen it to make it all stick. Huzzah!1) SELF MASSAGE
You’re going to want to use a tennis ball, lacrosse ball, or a baseball (if you’re really crazy like that) to dig into these areas. No, we’re not breaking down any muscle fibers or fascia with this technique. We’re simply spending 30 seconds to 2 minutes max at each muscle group (pecs, subclavius, lats, serratus, traps, and rhomboids) in order to get some blood flow and decrease muscle tone. This tames the body a bit so that the breathing and repositioning exercises stick a bit more. The full routine breakdown is in the video below.2) BREATHING & REPOSITIONING EXERCISES
We’re going to use three exercises to expand and reposition the ribcage. The common theme between the exercises is that we need to fully exhale to feel abs, and then maintain that tension while we inhale in order to expand into the ribcage. Think of it like inflating a hot air balloon with the ribcage being the balloon, and your abs/ diaphragm as the fiery torch thing that pumps the hot air up… I think that’s how hot air balloons work... Let me know if that analogy clicks. Anyways, watch this video for an in-depth walk-through of each exercise.a) Banded Posterior Expansion 3x5 breaths
b) Bear Position Breathing 3x5 breaths
c) Door Supported Squat Hold 3x5 breaths
3) STRENGTHENING EXERCISES
This is where the rubber meets the road. We’re going to use the new internal rotation we have available at the shoulder and the repositioning of the ribcage to get these muscles working. We’re targeting the serratus anterior, pecs, and midback muscle all with these exercises to improve your strength and maintain your scapular position.a) Seated Serratus Wall Slides 3x10-20 reps
b) Rough Country Bear Crawls 3x30-60 second bouts
C) Off-set Push-up/Incline Push-up with Reach 3x10-15 reps
Scapular Winging Summary
Well first, thank you a ton for making it this far in the post. It means a lot that you get something from all this rambling. In summary, scapular winging isn’t a bad thing. It happens and it’s not going to wreck your shoulder stability. The best way to improve it is to improve your ribcage’s positioning against gravity and shoulder internal rotation. Really focus on the repositioning & breathing exercises followed by the strength routine and I guarantee you’ll see improvements. Hit this routine 2-3 times per week and reap the benefits!
If you enjoyed this information, please consider signing up for my newsletter where I send blog posts, exercise tips, posture deep dives, and much more. You'll also get a free APT eBook :)
Newsletter Sign Up
Instagram: @waughfit
Free Posture & Movement Assessments
Btw, we've got a lot of deep dives like this over at AdvancedPosture and are updating the wiki with all sorts of free info
2021.09.15 17:23 wawawawaka Fix Scapular Winging - A Deep Dive Guide
Howdy Posture peeps,
It's been a while since I've posted here. Things got a little crazy with Covid and all that, but I'm back with, what I believe, is some good info on scapular winging. Straight up, I've been working on this deep-dive and the accompanying YouTube video for about a month, so I really hope the info helps your shoulders out like it has mine :)
Btw, I'll be cleaning up AdvancedPosture over the coming week as I now have more time to moderate and grow the subreddit.
TLDR;
Scapular winging seems like a really big deal, but in fact, it gets a bad rep. Scapular winging isn't so much the root cause of shoulder problems, but rather just a symptom of lacking shoulder internal rotation that occurs with having a sunken chest & rounded shoulder type posture. It's simply the compensation your body meets this limitation with so that you can still move your shoulder properly. So if you have a little bit of winging, that's okay! That said, it is still beneficial to improve your scapular winging or shoulder internal rotation as there's a lot of exercises/movements that require this shoulder motion such as push-ups, bench press, throwing, etc. So, you should test for proper shoulder internal rotation and scapular winging in order to see how severe it may be and be objective with your improvements. A posterior view posture assessment can tell us a lot as well as the internal rotation component of the Apley's scratch test (here's a YouTube guide to both tests). Once you know if you have scapular winging or a limitation in shoulder internal rotation, it's time to do something about it. Most people want to do normal scapular stabilizing exercises, but we're going to shake things up by first creating expansion qualities at the anterior & posterior ribcage. We utilize breathing to stretch from the inside out and create proper mechanical leverage for muscles like the serratus anterior. Here's a self-massage routine to relax some of those gnarly muscles and loosen you up, followed by a series of 3 breathing/repositioning exercises that place your ribcage and scapulas in optimal positioning. We then take full advantage of this optimal position with 3 exercises to strengthen the crap out of the serratus and accompany scapula stabilizers. Be sure to test overtime to make sure that you're seeing results (you also don't have to use my exercises lol just, please be objective)
Sorry, that was a long TLDR lol.
Alright, so let's talk about when those shoulder blades stick out A.K.A. scapular winging, winged scapula, scapular dyskinesia, and of, course the medical term, scapula alata (fancy). I personally suffered from this issue back when my posture was all “bleh” and I could hardly keep my chin from falling on the floor. It was so bad that I was able to hook my shoulder blades onto the backrest of my chair! A weird party trick, right?
Pretty straightforward, right? Funny thing is, this is pretty much how you find out if you have scapular winging. Just look at the shoulder blade at rest or during movement and see if it does some wonky stuff, but we’ll dive into that soon enough.
Now the most common reason we’ll see scapular winging is due to postural deficits. Having a posture biased more forward onto the toes as well as 100 other reasons can cause a poor positional relationship between the scapula and ribcage. Positional relationship meaning that these structures just aren’t fitting together very nice - and it shows! It’s a combination of a ribcage that is compressed (tight muscles everywhere) and muscles like the serratus anterior, low trapezius, and others attempting to gain muscular leverage from a subpar foundation. Okay, I may have lost you there but let’s look at this photo for an analogy.
Imagine pulling a shirt out of your dirty laundry. You really want to wear the shirt, but… it’s wrinkled and kinda gross… but damn it would look good with those jeans.
So, you shamefully put it on in hopes it won’t look “too bad,” but dear god it smells and it fits like a wrinkled, plastic grocery bag. It’s all wedge up under your armpits., you lift your arms up and a little bit of your belly shows, and you stand there hoping the problem will just fix itself. A minor adulthood existential crisis sets in about responsibility, chores, should you even go…? AND you quickly deflect and put on the clean but definitely not as good, second choice shirt.
I really hope at least one of you reading this has had this experience and I’m not some weird person that digs through his laundry.
ANYWAYS, that wrinkled shirt does not move very well while on, right? This is sorta similar to what happens when your ribcage is “compressed” from muscles like the intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats. All these muscles are just doing their best to get the job done i.e. moving around your shoulder blade effectively.
Now, you’re not going to go burn your wrinkled, slightly smelly shirt because it’s wrinkled right? Nah, you’re going to wash it, dry it, iron it, and treat it with the love it deserves. It’s not the shirt’s fault. The same goes for your ribcage. The intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats aren’t tight and squeezing the bones together in weird ways because your body hates you. It’s simply doing the best it can. So think of the right exercises as ironing these muscles out. Pick the right ones and it can help to reduce these tensions and scapular winging.
Now, imagine putting your favorite shirt on fresh out of the dryer. There aren’t any wrinkles, it’s kind of warm, and it moves freely over the body. This can be analogous to your ribcage “decompressed” (reduced tight muscles/increased space). The muscles aren’t too stretches out or overly tight (no wrinkles), you have full shoulder range of motion (shirt doesn’t show your belly), and your shoulder blade or blades moving freely without or reduced scapular winging.
Specific Biomechanics (If You’re Into That)
I’m sure you’re just amazed by my “airing of dirty laundry” analogy. But let’s be honest, it doesn’t really give the concrete mechanics of what muscles to target from a biomechanical standpoint. But, I do hope my vulnerability and potentially weird behavior set the stage for how this all can work.
To preface this section, here's a diagram I put together of how poor posture can cause scapular winging.
So typically a scapula may wing due to a shoulder, or both shoulders, being biased into internal rotation. Think of this as when the chest sinks in and shoulders roll forward. Muscles like the pecs, obliques, subclavius, etc. grab the shoulder pulling it toward the sternum and get stuck in a concentric (tight position).
This in turn pulls on the shoulder and scapulas in a forward direction causing the muscle on the back to become lengthened and taunt (think about pulling a rope tight). This long but tense musculature (rhomboids, traps, etc.) push the ribcage forward. While the posterior ribcage is being smooshed, the tight anterior muscles at the chest are pulling on the shoulder and lift the scapula away from the ribcage, like in this diagram.
Now, unless you have thoracic nerve damage, you may not really have any problems with the scapular winging minus some aesthetics. There are statistically more people walking around with scapular winging, having no idea that they have it (and without pain/loss of motion/decreased stability) than there are people that do know they have it or have “related” symptoms. I don’t have the actual statistics but I am 99% sure this is the case. Prove me wrong.
Sorry that was aggressive. But really, if you have proof, prove me wrong… Why does that still sound so aggressive?
Scapular winging can be an issue with some instability or pain but it is generally NOT the cause of these symptoms, but rather, just another symptom. Maybe that’s a hard pill to swallow but stick with me. Scapular winging is more an indicator of the scapula’s behavior on the above-mentioned compressed ribcage via muscles that can’t quite get leverage. That’s really it. Other than that, it may be again, aesthetically unappealing to some, but that’s a whole-nother’ blog topic.
Now, those tight/long muscles CAN limit your shoulder range of motion. The scapular winging you see happening is actually a “cheat code” compensation the body uses to get around the shoulder lacking internal rotation. The shoulder is already biased in that direction so you can’t really internally rotate anymore (can’t go to the living room if you’re already in the living room), so the body just pops the scapula off the back of the ribcage to allow for the movement occur when, for example, you lift your arm overhead.
Simple and effective.
Side note - scapular winging, in my opinion, is more a testament to the resilience and adaptability of the human body. If some people weren’t able to do this, they’d have horrible shoulder range of motion. The silver lining, am I right?
Anyways, in a perfect world, we would want to improve the body’s ability to internally rotate the shoulder without having to wing the scapula (or as much). Maybe you’re doing activities like bench pressing which requires a good amount of internal rotation to perform. Then we can go and hammer on exercises to improve that specific shoulder motion, though that doesn’t mean you CAN’T bench press when you present with scapular winging. Like I said above - it’s really only a problem if it becomes a problem.
So if you've made it this far, I want to say thanks for reading and I hope you're finding some useful info. I'd also like to offer a free 20-minute posture and movement assessment. I do these 1) because I wish someone was doing this back when I was scouring posture forums because it could have saved me a lot of time, and 2) because maybe we can work together... and I like to listen to myself talk lol.
You can find out more at this link here.
Okay, the real reason you’re here.
Let’s Test for and Fix that Scapular Winging
You’ll want to video yourself and start the test by reaching behind the back to the opposite side shoulder blade. When reviewing your video, you may see that the scapula pops away from the ribcage at certain points of the motion. Whenever it first starts to pop off, that’s where you stop the test.
I love this test for objectively improving scapular winging and shoulder internal rotation as you can continuously retest how far your arm can go up to your back before the scapula wings out. The further you’re able to go, the better your shoulder internal rotation and the less scapular winging.
TESTING SUMMARY
I use both of these tests to see the severity of the scapular winging. If you have scapular winging at rest, then it’s more severe whereas if you can reach your arm behind your back and touch the opposite shoulder blade without it winging, you’re good to go.
So areas such as the pump handle (anterior ribcage or chest) and posterior mediastinum (posterior ribcage) are the targets. But, how do we expand/relax/stretch/decompress these areas? It’s pretty hard to stretch around there, massages can only get you so far.
So we’re going to utilize our breathing to open up these areas. We can use the breath and the pressure it creates in the thorax to pop open ribcage and get those shoulder blades gliding smoothly. Think, your lungs sit nice and snug in the top of the ribcage. If we get this amazing organ to expand, we can stretch the front and back part of the ribcage from the inside out. That said, we can still use some self-massage / myofascial release to reduce some muscle tone around these areas.
Now that we loosen some things up and pressurize the system (sounds fancy), it’s time to load it up. This wouldn’t be a scapular winging article without talking about strengthening the ole’ serratus anterior muscle. This is the primary muscle the pulls the ribcage back the scapula and the scapula to the ribcage. Many people have a hard time feeling this muscle work so they think it’s weak, and it may be. But I believe that the muscle can’t get enough leverage due to the poor postural positioning of the ribcage, hence why we do the breathing stuff to move the ribs into the correct position and set the serratus muscle up for success.
a) Banded Posterior Expansion 3x5 breaths
b) Bear Position Breathing 3x5 breaths
c) Door Supported Squat Hold 3x5 breaths
a) Seated Serratus Wall Slides 3x10-20 reps
b) Rough Country Bear Crawls 3x30-60 second bouts
C) Off-set Push-up/Incline Push-up with Reach 3x10-15 reps
Scapular Winging Summary
Well first, thank you a ton for making it this far in the post. It means a lot that you get something from all this rambling. In summary, scapular winging isn’t a bad thing. It happens and it’s not going to wreck your shoulder stability. The best way to improve it is to improve your ribcage’s positioning against gravity and shoulder internal rotation. Really focus on the repositioning & breathing exercises followed by the strength routine and I guarantee you’ll see improvements. Hit this routine 2-3 times per week and reap the benefits!
If you enjoyed this information, please consider signing up for my newsletter where I send blog posts, exercise tips, posture deep dives, and much more. You'll also get a free APT eBook :)
Newsletter Sign Up
Instagram: @waughfit
Free Posture & Movement Assessments
submitted by wawawawaka to AdvancedPosture [link] [comments]
It's been a while since I've posted here. Things got a little crazy with Covid and all that, but I'm back with, what I believe, is some good info on scapular winging. Straight up, I've been working on this deep-dive and the accompanying YouTube video for about a month, so I really hope the info helps your shoulders out like it has mine :)
Btw, I'll be cleaning up AdvancedPosture over the coming week as I now have more time to moderate and grow the subreddit.
Scapular Winging - A Deep Dive
So, this is what this post will cover:- We’ll Define Scapular Winging
- Why It Happen & What Muscles Are Involved (Biomechanics)
- Why Scapular Winging Matters
- How To "Fix" Your Scapular Winging
- How To Test If You Have Scapular Winging
- Exercises To Fix Scapular Winging
TLDR;
Scapular winging seems like a really big deal, but in fact, it gets a bad rep. Scapular winging isn't so much the root cause of shoulder problems, but rather just a symptom of lacking shoulder internal rotation that occurs with having a sunken chest & rounded shoulder type posture. It's simply the compensation your body meets this limitation with so that you can still move your shoulder properly. So if you have a little bit of winging, that's okay! That said, it is still beneficial to improve your scapular winging or shoulder internal rotation as there's a lot of exercises/movements that require this shoulder motion such as push-ups, bench press, throwing, etc. So, you should test for proper shoulder internal rotation and scapular winging in order to see how severe it may be and be objective with your improvements. A posterior view posture assessment can tell us a lot as well as the internal rotation component of the Apley's scratch test (here's a YouTube guide to both tests). Once you know if you have scapular winging or a limitation in shoulder internal rotation, it's time to do something about it. Most people want to do normal scapular stabilizing exercises, but we're going to shake things up by first creating expansion qualities at the anterior & posterior ribcage. We utilize breathing to stretch from the inside out and create proper mechanical leverage for muscles like the serratus anterior. Here's a self-massage routine to relax some of those gnarly muscles and loosen you up, followed by a series of 3 breathing/repositioning exercises that place your ribcage and scapulas in optimal positioning. We then take full advantage of this optimal position with 3 exercises to strengthen the crap out of the serratus and accompany scapula stabilizers. Be sure to test overtime to make sure that you're seeing results (you also don't have to use my exercises lol just, please be objective)
Sorry, that was a long TLDR lol.
Alright, so let's talk about when those shoulder blades stick out A.K.A. scapular winging, winged scapula, scapular dyskinesia, and of, course the medical term, scapula alata (fancy). I personally suffered from this issue back when my posture was all “bleh” and I could hardly keep my chin from falling on the floor. It was so bad that I was able to hook my shoulder blades onto the backrest of my chair! A weird party trick, right?
What Is Scapular Winging?
Scapula Alata (Winging Scapulae) - The medial border of the scapula protruding, like wings, due to the muscles of the scapula being too weak or paralyzed, resulting in a limited ability to effectivly stabilize the scapula. - PhysiopediaBasically, at rest and/or with shoulder movement, the inside portion of the shoulder blade (closest to your spine) pops off the ribcage as shown in this photo. This can happen when you move your shoulder OR while you’re just standing upright.
Pretty straightforward, right? Funny thing is, this is pretty much how you find out if you have scapular winging. Just look at the shoulder blade at rest or during movement and see if it does some wonky stuff, but we’ll dive into that soon enough.
Why Does Scapular Winging Happen & What Muscles Are Involved?
So, there are different reasons as to why scapular winging occurs. One of the more rare reasons is due to the nerves affecting the serratus anterior muscle. The nerve that innervates this muscle is the long thoracic nerve, and sometimes it can be damaged or impinged, leading to malfunction. This makes the serratus anterior unable to do the job of keeping the scapula pulled flush against the ribcage, as well as supporting the shoulder through its normal movements (Park SB, et Al. 2020). Now, nerve impingement or muscular paralysis is rather rare. This typically occurs due to traumatic events such as car accidents, sports injuries, etc. This will also result in a lot of shoulder weakness and have some other weird symptoms that present alongside the scapula’s winged position.Now the most common reason we’ll see scapular winging is due to postural deficits. Having a posture biased more forward onto the toes as well as 100 other reasons can cause a poor positional relationship between the scapula and ribcage. Positional relationship meaning that these structures just aren’t fitting together very nice - and it shows! It’s a combination of a ribcage that is compressed (tight muscles everywhere) and muscles like the serratus anterior, low trapezius, and others attempting to gain muscular leverage from a subpar foundation. Okay, I may have lost you there but let’s look at this photo for an analogy.
Imagine pulling a shirt out of your dirty laundry. You really want to wear the shirt, but… it’s wrinkled and kinda gross… but damn it would look good with those jeans.
So, you shamefully put it on in hopes it won’t look “too bad,” but dear god it smells and it fits like a wrinkled, plastic grocery bag. It’s all wedge up under your armpits., you lift your arms up and a little bit of your belly shows, and you stand there hoping the problem will just fix itself. A minor adulthood existential crisis sets in about responsibility, chores, should you even go…? AND you quickly deflect and put on the clean but definitely not as good, second choice shirt.
I really hope at least one of you reading this has had this experience and I’m not some weird person that digs through his laundry.
ANYWAYS, that wrinkled shirt does not move very well while on, right? This is sorta similar to what happens when your ribcage is “compressed” from muscles like the intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats. All these muscles are just doing their best to get the job done i.e. moving around your shoulder blade effectively.
Now, you’re not going to go burn your wrinkled, slightly smelly shirt because it’s wrinkled right? Nah, you’re going to wash it, dry it, iron it, and treat it with the love it deserves. It’s not the shirt’s fault. The same goes for your ribcage. The intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats aren’t tight and squeezing the bones together in weird ways because your body hates you. It’s simply doing the best it can. So think of the right exercises as ironing these muscles out. Pick the right ones and it can help to reduce these tensions and scapular winging.
Now, imagine putting your favorite shirt on fresh out of the dryer. There aren’t any wrinkles, it’s kind of warm, and it moves freely over the body. This can be analogous to your ribcage “decompressed” (reduced tight muscles/increased space). The muscles aren’t too stretches out or overly tight (no wrinkles), you have full shoulder range of motion (shirt doesn’t show your belly), and your shoulder blade or blades moving freely without or reduced scapular winging.
Specific Biomechanics (If You’re Into That)
I’m sure you’re just amazed by my “airing of dirty laundry” analogy. But let’s be honest, it doesn’t really give the concrete mechanics of what muscles to target from a biomechanical standpoint. But, I do hope my vulnerability and potentially weird behavior set the stage for how this all can work.
To preface this section, here's a diagram I put together of how poor posture can cause scapular winging.
So typically a scapula may wing due to a shoulder, or both shoulders, being biased into internal rotation. Think of this as when the chest sinks in and shoulders roll forward. Muscles like the pecs, obliques, subclavius, etc. grab the shoulder pulling it toward the sternum and get stuck in a concentric (tight position).
This in turn pulls on the shoulder and scapulas in a forward direction causing the muscle on the back to become lengthened and taunt (think about pulling a rope tight). This long but tense musculature (rhomboids, traps, etc.) push the ribcage forward. While the posterior ribcage is being smooshed, the tight anterior muscles at the chest are pulling on the shoulder and lift the scapula away from the ribcage, like in this diagram.
Why Does Scapular Winging Matter?
Now that you know too much about my laundry habits, let’s jump into why scapular winging even matters. This is a great segue into the fact that scapular winging doesn’t really matter until it matters.Now, unless you have thoracic nerve damage, you may not really have any problems with the scapular winging minus some aesthetics. There are statistically more people walking around with scapular winging, having no idea that they have it (and without pain/loss of motion/decreased stability) than there are people that do know they have it or have “related” symptoms. I don’t have the actual statistics but I am 99% sure this is the case. Prove me wrong.
Sorry that was aggressive. But really, if you have proof, prove me wrong… Why does that still sound so aggressive?
Scapular winging can be an issue with some instability or pain but it is generally NOT the cause of these symptoms, but rather, just another symptom. Maybe that’s a hard pill to swallow but stick with me. Scapular winging is more an indicator of the scapula’s behavior on the above-mentioned compressed ribcage via muscles that can’t quite get leverage. That’s really it. Other than that, it may be again, aesthetically unappealing to some, but that’s a whole-nother’ blog topic.
Now, those tight/long muscles CAN limit your shoulder range of motion. The scapular winging you see happening is actually a “cheat code” compensation the body uses to get around the shoulder lacking internal rotation. The shoulder is already biased in that direction so you can’t really internally rotate anymore (can’t go to the living room if you’re already in the living room), so the body just pops the scapula off the back of the ribcage to allow for the movement occur when, for example, you lift your arm overhead.
Simple and effective.
Side note - scapular winging, in my opinion, is more a testament to the resilience and adaptability of the human body. If some people weren’t able to do this, they’d have horrible shoulder range of motion. The silver lining, am I right?
Anyways, in a perfect world, we would want to improve the body’s ability to internally rotate the shoulder without having to wing the scapula (or as much). Maybe you’re doing activities like bench pressing which requires a good amount of internal rotation to perform. Then we can go and hammer on exercises to improve that specific shoulder motion, though that doesn’t mean you CAN’T bench press when you present with scapular winging. Like I said above - it’s really only a problem if it becomes a problem.
So if you've made it this far, I want to say thanks for reading and I hope you're finding some useful info. I'd also like to offer a free 20-minute posture and movement assessment. I do these 1) because I wish someone was doing this back when I was scouring posture forums because it could have saved me a lot of time, and 2) because maybe we can work together... and I like to listen to myself talk lol.
You can find out more at this link here.
Okay, the real reason you’re here.
Let’s Test for and Fix that Scapular Winging
1) VISUAL ASSESSMENT
The first test is pretty straightforward with scapular winging. Typically if you have it, you’ll see it while just standing or sitting in a relaxed posture. You don’t have to move your arms or anything. Take a video of yourself, turn around and you’ll be able to pick it out real quick. If you have scapular winging with resting posture, then you’re probably pretty dang limited in your shoulder internal rotation and could use a little help (we’ll get there).2) APLEY'S SCRATCH TEST (INTERNAL ROTATION FOCUSED)
This is a great test for those that may not have a resting scapular winging but instead have the scapula pop off the ribcage with movement. I personally only use the internal rotation portion of this test (yes, there is an external rotation portion you can do) as that motion is typically associated with scapular winging.You’ll want to video yourself and start the test by reaching behind the back to the opposite side shoulder blade. When reviewing your video, you may see that the scapula pops away from the ribcage at certain points of the motion. Whenever it first starts to pop off, that’s where you stop the test.
I love this test for objectively improving scapular winging and shoulder internal rotation as you can continuously retest how far your arm can go up to your back before the scapula wings out. The further you’re able to go, the better your shoulder internal rotation and the less scapular winging.
TESTING SUMMARY
I use both of these tests to see the severity of the scapular winging. If you have scapular winging at rest, then it’s more severe whereas if you can reach your arm behind your back and touch the opposite shoulder blade without it winging, you’re good to go.
How To Fix Your Scapular Winging
So in order to “fix” scapular winging, we need to essentially relax all those muscles previously stated and decompress the posterior ribcage. I keep putting “fix” in quotations because you really never “fix” scapular winging. It’s a part of being human and can play a key role in our movement as it can yield great ranges of motion for people. That said, we can totally manage the scapular winging that occurs by improving shoulder internal rotation so that it’s not a movement strategy that’s potentially overutilized. Got it? cool.So areas such as the pump handle (anterior ribcage or chest) and posterior mediastinum (posterior ribcage) are the targets. But, how do we expand/relax/stretch/decompress these areas? It’s pretty hard to stretch around there, massages can only get you so far.
So we’re going to utilize our breathing to open up these areas. We can use the breath and the pressure it creates in the thorax to pop open ribcage and get those shoulder blades gliding smoothly. Think, your lungs sit nice and snug in the top of the ribcage. If we get this amazing organ to expand, we can stretch the front and back part of the ribcage from the inside out. That said, we can still use some self-massage / myofascial release to reduce some muscle tone around these areas.
Now that we loosen some things up and pressurize the system (sounds fancy), it’s time to load it up. This wouldn’t be a scapular winging article without talking about strengthening the ole’ serratus anterior muscle. This is the primary muscle the pulls the ribcage back the scapula and the scapula to the ribcage. Many people have a hard time feeling this muscle work so they think it’s weak, and it may be. But I believe that the muscle can’t get enough leverage due to the poor postural positioning of the ribcage, hence why we do the breathing stuff to move the ribs into the correct position and set the serratus muscle up for success.
Exercise Routine To Fix Scapular Winging
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The Exercises to fix that mangled chicken wing. Too vulgar? My bad. But really! Here are some step-by-step moves that can all be done at home and for all strength levels. We’ll start with some self-massage, move to reposition the ribcage and scapula, and lastly, strengthen it to make it all stick. Huzzah!1) SELF MASSAGE
You’re going to want to use a tennis ball, lacrosse ball, or a baseball (if you’re really crazy like that) to dig into these areas. No, we’re not breaking down any muscle fibers or fascia with this technique. We’re simply spending 30 seconds to 2 minutes max at each muscle group (pecs, subclavius, lats, serratus, traps, and rhomboids) in order to get some blood flow and decrease muscle tone. This tames the body a bit so that the breathing and repositioning exercises stick a bit more. The full routine breakdown is in the video below.2) BREATHING & REPOSITIONING EXERCISES
We’re going to use three exercises to expand and reposition the ribcage. The common theme between the exercises is that we need to fully exhale to feel abs, and then maintain that tension while we inhale in order to expand into the ribcage. Think of it like inflating a hot air balloon with the ribcage being the balloon, and your abs/ diaphragm as the fiery torch thing that pumps the hot air up… I think that’s how hot air balloons work... Let me know if that analogy clicks. Anyways, watch this video for an in-depth walk-through of each exercise.a) Banded Posterior Expansion 3x5 breaths
b) Bear Position Breathing 3x5 breaths
c) Door Supported Squat Hold 3x5 breaths
3) STRENGTHENING EXERCISES
This is where the rubber meets the road. We’re going to use the new internal rotation we have available at the shoulder and the repositioning of the ribcage to get these muscles working. We’re targeting the serratus anterior, pecs, and midback muscle all with these exercises to improve your strength and maintain your scapular position.a) Seated Serratus Wall Slides 3x10-20 reps
b) Rough Country Bear Crawls 3x30-60 second bouts
C) Off-set Push-up/Incline Push-up with Reach 3x10-15 reps
Scapular Winging Summary
Well first, thank you a ton for making it this far in the post. It means a lot that you get something from all this rambling. In summary, scapular winging isn’t a bad thing. It happens and it’s not going to wreck your shoulder stability. The best way to improve it is to improve your ribcage’s positioning against gravity and shoulder internal rotation. Really focus on the repositioning & breathing exercises followed by the strength routine and I guarantee you’ll see improvements. Hit this routine 2-3 times per week and reap the benefits!
If you enjoyed this information, please consider signing up for my newsletter where I send blog posts, exercise tips, posture deep dives, and much more. You'll also get a free APT eBook :)
Newsletter Sign Up
Instagram: @waughfit
Free Posture & Movement Assessments
2021.09.15 17:13 wawawawaka Scapular Winging - A Deep Dive Guide - How To Fix Your Asymmetry
Howdy Posture peeps,
It's been a while since I've posted here. Things got a little crazy with Covid and all that, but I'm back with, what I believe, is some good info on scapular winging. Straight up, I've been working on this deep-dive and the accompanying YouTube video for about a month, so I really hope the info helps your shoulders out like it has mine :)
TLDR;
Scapular winging seems like a really big deal, but in fact, it gets a bad rep. Scapular winging isn't so much the root cause of shoulder problems, but rather just a symptom of lacking shoulder internal rotation that occurs with having a sunken chest & rounded shoulder type posture. It's simply the compensation your body meets this limitation with so that you can still move your shoulder properly. So if you have a little bit of winging, that's okay! That said, it is still beneficial to improve your scapular winging or shoulder internal rotation as there's a lot of exercises/movements that require this shoulder motion such as push-ups, bench press, throwing, etc. So, you should test for proper shoulder internal rotation and scapular winging in order to see how severe it may be and be objective with your improvements. A posterior view posture assessment can tell us a lot as well as the internal rotation component of the Apley's scratch test (here's a YouTube guide to both tests). Once you know if you have scapular winging or a limitation in shoulder internal rotation, it's time to do something about it. Most people want to do normal scapular stabilizing exercises, but we're going to shake things up by first creating expansion qualities at the anterior & posterior ribcage. We utilize breathing to stretch from the inside out and create proper mechanical leverage for muscles like the serratus anterior. Here's a self-massage routine to relax some of those gnarly muscles and loosen you up, followed by a series of 3 breathing/repositioning exercises that place your ribcage and scapulas in optimal positioning. We then take full advantage of this optimal position with 3 exercises to strengthen the crap out of the serratus and accompany scapula stabilizers. Be sure to test overtime to make sure that you're seeing results (you also don't have to use my exercises lol just, please be objective)
Sorry, that was a long TLDR lol.
Alright, so let's talk about when those shoulder blades stick out A.K.A. scapular winging, winged scapula, scapular dyskinesia, and of, course the medical term, scapula alata (fancy). I personally suffered from this issue back when my posture was all “bleh” and I could hardly keep my chin from falling on the floor. It was so bad that I was able to hook my shoulder blades onto the backrest of my chair! A weird party trick, right?
Basically, at rest and/or with shoulder movement, the inside portion of the shoulder blade (closest to your spine) pops off the ribcage as shown in this photo. This can happen when you move your shoulder OR while you’re just standing upright.
Pretty straightforward, right? Funny thing is, this is pretty much how you find out if you have scapular winging. Just look at the shoulder blade at rest or during movement and see if it does some wonky stuff, but we’ll dive into that soon enough.
Now the most common reason we’ll see scapular winging is due to postural deficits. Having a posture biased more forward onto the toes as well as 100 other reasons can cause a poor positional relationship between the scapula and ribcage. Positional relationship meaning that these structures just aren’t fitting together very nice - and it shows! It’s a combination of a ribcage that is compressed (tight muscles everywhere) and muscles like the serratus anterior, low trapezius, and others attempting to gain muscular leverage from a subpar foundation. Okay, I may have lost you there but let’s look at this photo for an analogy.
Imagine pulling a shirt out of your dirty laundry. You really want to wear the shirt, but… it’s wrinkled and kinda gross… but damn it would look good with those jeans.
So, you shamefully put it on in hopes it won’t look “too bad,” but dear god it smells and it fits like a wrinkled, plastic grocery bag. It’s all wedge up under your armpits., you lift your arms up and a little bit of your belly shows, and you stand there hoping the problem will just fix itself. A minor adulthood existential crisis sets in about responsibility, chores, should you even go…? AND you quickly deflect and put on the clean but definitely not as good, second choice shirt.
I really hope at least one of you reading this has had this experience and I’m not some weird person that digs through his laundry.
ANYWAYS, that wrinkled shirt does not move very well while on, right? This is sorta similar to what happens when your ribcage is “compressed” from muscles like the intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats. All these muscles are just doing their best to get the job done i.e. moving around your shoulder blade effectively.
Now, you’re not going to go burn your wrinkled, slightly smelly shirt because it’s wrinkled right? Nah, you’re going to wash it, dry it, iron it, and treat it with the love it deserves. It’s not the shirt’s fault. The same goes for your ribcage. The intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats aren’t tight and squeezing the bones together in weird ways because your body hates you. It’s simply doing the best it can. So think of the right exercises as ironing these muscles out. Pick the right ones and it can help to reduce these tensions and scapular winging.
Now, imagine putting your favorite shirt on fresh out of the dryer. There aren’t any wrinkles, it’s kind of warm, and it moves freely over the body. This can be analogous to your ribcage “decompressed” (reduced tight muscles/increased space). The muscles aren’t too stretches out or overly tight (no wrinkles), you have full shoulder range of motion (shirt doesn’t show your belly), and your shoulder blade or blades moving freely without or reduced scapular winging.
To preface this section, here's a diagram I put together of how poor posture can cause scapular winging.
So typically a scapula may wing due to a shoulder, or both shoulders, being biased into internal rotation. Think of this as when the chest sinks in and shoulders roll forward. Muscles like the pecs, obliques, subclavius, etc. grab the shoulder pulling it toward the sternum and get stuck in a concentric (tight position).
This in turn pulls on the shoulder and scapulas in a forward direction causing the muscle on the back to become lengthened and taunt (think about pulling a rope tight). This long but tense musculature (rhomboids, traps, etc.) push the ribcage forward. While the posterior ribcage is being smooshed, the tight anterior muscles at the chest are pulling on the shoulder and lift the scapula away from the ribcage, like in this diagram.
Now, unless you have thoracic nerve damage, you may not really have any problems with the scapular winging minus some aesthetics. There are statistically more people walking around with scapular winging, having no idea that they have it (and without pain/loss of motion/decreased stability) than there are people that do know they have it or have “related” symptoms. I don’t have the actual statistics but I am 99% sure this is the case. Prove me wrong.
Sorry that was aggressive. But really, if you have proof, prove me wrong… Why does that still sound so aggressive?
Scapular winging can be an issue with some instability or pain but it is generally NOT the cause of these symptoms, but rather, just another symptom. Maybe that’s a hard pill to swallow but stick with me. Scapular winging is more an indicator of the scapula’s behavior on the above-mentioned compressed ribcage via muscles that can’t quite get leverage. That’s really it. Other than that, it may be again, aesthetically unappealing to some, but that’s a whole-nother’ blog topic.
Now, those tight/long muscles CAN limit your shoulder range of motion. The scapular winging you see happening is actually a “cheat code” compensation the body uses to get around the shoulder lacking internal rotation. The shoulder is already biased in that direction so you can’t really internally rotate anymore (can’t go to the living room if you’re already in the living room), so the body just pops the scapula off the back of the ribcage to allow for the movement occur when, for example, you lift your arm overhead.
Simple and effective.
Side note - scapular winging, in my opinion, is more a testament to the resilience and adaptability of the human body. If some people weren’t able to do this, they’d have horrible shoulder range of motion. The silver lining, am I right?
Anyways, in a perfect world, we would want to improve the body’s ability to internally rotate the shoulder without having to wing the scapula (or as much). Maybe you’re doing activities like bench pressing which requires a good amount of internal rotation to perform. Then we can go and hammer on exercises to improve that specific shoulder motion, though that doesn’t mean you CAN’T bench press when you present with scapular winging. Like I said above - it’s really only a problem if it becomes a problem.
So if you've made it this far, I want to say thanks for reading and I hope you're finding some useful info. I'd also like to offer a free 20-minute posture and movement assessment. I do these 1) because I wish someone was doing this back when I was scouring posture forums because it could have saved me a lot of time, and 2) because maybe we can work together... and I like to listen to myself talk lol.
You can find out more at this link here.
Okay, the real reason you’re here.
You’ll want to video yourself and start the test by reaching behind the back to the opposite side shoulder blade. When reviewing your video, you may see that the scapula pops away from the ribcage at certain points of the motion. Whenever it first starts to pop off, that’s where you stop the test.
I love this test for objectively improving scapular winging and shoulder internal rotation as you can continuously retest how far your arm can go up to your back before the scapula wings out. The further you’re able to go, the better your shoulder internal rotation and the less scapular winging.
So areas such as the pump handle (anterior ribcage or chest) and posterior mediastinum (posterior ribcage) are the targets. But, how do we expand/relax/stretch/decompress these areas? It’s pretty hard to stretch around there, massages can only get you so far.
So we’re going to utilize our breathing to open up these areas. We can use the breath and the pressure it creates in the thorax to pop open ribcage and get those shoulder blades gliding smoothly. Think, your lungs sit nice and snug in the top of the ribcage. If we get this amazing organ to expand, we can stretch the front and back part of the ribcage from the inside out. That said, we can still use some self-massage / myofascial release to reduce some muscle tone around these areas.
Now that we loosen some things up and pressurize the system (sounds fancy), it’s time to load it up. This wouldn’t be a scapular winging article without talking about strengthening the ole’ serratus anterior muscle. This is the primary muscle the pulls the ribcage back the scapula and the scapula to the ribcage. Many people have a hard time feeling this muscle work so they think it’s weak, and it may be. But I believe that the muscle can’t get enough leverage due to the poor postural positioning of the ribcage, hence why we do the breathing stuff to move the ribs into the correct position and set the serratus muscle up for success.
a) Banded Posterior Expansion 3x5 breaths
b) Bear Position Breathing 3x5 breaths
c) Door Supported Squat Hold 3x5 breaths
a) Seated Serratus Wall Slides 3x10-20 reps
b) Rough Country Bear Crawls 3x30-60 second bouts
C) Off-set Push-up/Incline Push-up with Reach 3x10-15 reps
If you enjoyed this information, please consider signing up for my newsletter where I send blog posts, exercise tips, posture deep dives, and much more. You'll also get a free APT eBook :)
Newsletter Sign Up
Instagram: @waughfit
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submitted by wawawawaka to Posture [link] [comments]
It's been a while since I've posted here. Things got a little crazy with Covid and all that, but I'm back with, what I believe, is some good info on scapular winging. Straight up, I've been working on this deep-dive and the accompanying YouTube video for about a month, so I really hope the info helps your shoulders out like it has mine :)
Scapular Winging - A Deep Dive
So, this is what this post will cover:- We’ll Define Scapular Winging
- Why It Happen & What Muscles Are Involved (Biomechanics)
- Why Scapular Winging Matters
- How To "Fix" Your Scapular Winging
- How To Test If You Have Scapular Winging
- Exercises To Fix Scapular Winging
TLDR;
Scapular winging seems like a really big deal, but in fact, it gets a bad rep. Scapular winging isn't so much the root cause of shoulder problems, but rather just a symptom of lacking shoulder internal rotation that occurs with having a sunken chest & rounded shoulder type posture. It's simply the compensation your body meets this limitation with so that you can still move your shoulder properly. So if you have a little bit of winging, that's okay! That said, it is still beneficial to improve your scapular winging or shoulder internal rotation as there's a lot of exercises/movements that require this shoulder motion such as push-ups, bench press, throwing, etc. So, you should test for proper shoulder internal rotation and scapular winging in order to see how severe it may be and be objective with your improvements. A posterior view posture assessment can tell us a lot as well as the internal rotation component of the Apley's scratch test (here's a YouTube guide to both tests). Once you know if you have scapular winging or a limitation in shoulder internal rotation, it's time to do something about it. Most people want to do normal scapular stabilizing exercises, but we're going to shake things up by first creating expansion qualities at the anterior & posterior ribcage. We utilize breathing to stretch from the inside out and create proper mechanical leverage for muscles like the serratus anterior. Here's a self-massage routine to relax some of those gnarly muscles and loosen you up, followed by a series of 3 breathing/repositioning exercises that place your ribcage and scapulas in optimal positioning. We then take full advantage of this optimal position with 3 exercises to strengthen the crap out of the serratus and accompany scapula stabilizers. Be sure to test overtime to make sure that you're seeing results (you also don't have to use my exercises lol just, please be objective)
Sorry, that was a long TLDR lol.
Alright, so let's talk about when those shoulder blades stick out A.K.A. scapular winging, winged scapula, scapular dyskinesia, and of, course the medical term, scapula alata (fancy). I personally suffered from this issue back when my posture was all “bleh” and I could hardly keep my chin from falling on the floor. It was so bad that I was able to hook my shoulder blades onto the backrest of my chair! A weird party trick, right?
What Is Scapular Winging?
Scapula Alata (Winging Scapulae) - The medial border of the scapula protruding, like wings, due to the muscles of the scapula being too weak or paralyzed, resulting in a limited ability to effectivly stabilize the scapula. - Physiopedia
Basically, at rest and/or with shoulder movement, the inside portion of the shoulder blade (closest to your spine) pops off the ribcage as shown in this photo. This can happen when you move your shoulder OR while you’re just standing upright.
Pretty straightforward, right? Funny thing is, this is pretty much how you find out if you have scapular winging. Just look at the shoulder blade at rest or during movement and see if it does some wonky stuff, but we’ll dive into that soon enough.
Why Does Scapular Winging Happen & What Muscles Are Involved?
So, there are different reasons as to why scapular winging occurs. One of the more rare reasons is due to the nerves affecting the serratus anterior muscle. The nerve that innervates this muscle is the long thoracic nerve, and sometimes it can be damaged or impinged, leading to malfunction. This makes the serratus anterior unable to do the job of keeping the scapula pulled flush against the ribcage, as well as supporting the shoulder through its normal movements (Park SB, et Al. 2020). Now, nerve impingement or muscular paralysis is rather rare. This typically occurs due to traumatic events such as car accidents, sports injuries, etc. This will also result in a lot of shoulder weakness and have some other weird symptoms that present alongside the scapula’s winged position.Now the most common reason we’ll see scapular winging is due to postural deficits. Having a posture biased more forward onto the toes as well as 100 other reasons can cause a poor positional relationship between the scapula and ribcage. Positional relationship meaning that these structures just aren’t fitting together very nice - and it shows! It’s a combination of a ribcage that is compressed (tight muscles everywhere) and muscles like the serratus anterior, low trapezius, and others attempting to gain muscular leverage from a subpar foundation. Okay, I may have lost you there but let’s look at this photo for an analogy.
Imagine pulling a shirt out of your dirty laundry. You really want to wear the shirt, but… it’s wrinkled and kinda gross… but damn it would look good with those jeans.
So, you shamefully put it on in hopes it won’t look “too bad,” but dear god it smells and it fits like a wrinkled, plastic grocery bag. It’s all wedge up under your armpits., you lift your arms up and a little bit of your belly shows, and you stand there hoping the problem will just fix itself. A minor adulthood existential crisis sets in about responsibility, chores, should you even go…? AND you quickly deflect and put on the clean but definitely not as good, second choice shirt.
I really hope at least one of you reading this has had this experience and I’m not some weird person that digs through his laundry.
ANYWAYS, that wrinkled shirt does not move very well while on, right? This is sorta similar to what happens when your ribcage is “compressed” from muscles like the intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats. All these muscles are just doing their best to get the job done i.e. moving around your shoulder blade effectively.
Now, you’re not going to go burn your wrinkled, slightly smelly shirt because it’s wrinkled right? Nah, you’re going to wash it, dry it, iron it, and treat it with the love it deserves. It’s not the shirt’s fault. The same goes for your ribcage. The intercostals, serratus, traps, pecs, and lats aren’t tight and squeezing the bones together in weird ways because your body hates you. It’s simply doing the best it can. So think of the right exercises as ironing these muscles out. Pick the right ones and it can help to reduce these tensions and scapular winging.
Now, imagine putting your favorite shirt on fresh out of the dryer. There aren’t any wrinkles, it’s kind of warm, and it moves freely over the body. This can be analogous to your ribcage “decompressed” (reduced tight muscles/increased space). The muscles aren’t too stretches out or overly tight (no wrinkles), you have full shoulder range of motion (shirt doesn’t show your belly), and your shoulder blade or blades moving freely without or reduced scapular winging.
Specific Biomechanics (If You’re Into That)
I’m sure you’re just amazed by my “airing of dirty laundry” analogy. But let’s be honest, it doesn’t really give the concrete mechanics of what muscles to target from a biomechanical standpoint. But, I do hope my vulnerability and potentially weird behavior set the stage for how this all can work.To preface this section, here's a diagram I put together of how poor posture can cause scapular winging.
So typically a scapula may wing due to a shoulder, or both shoulders, being biased into internal rotation. Think of this as when the chest sinks in and shoulders roll forward. Muscles like the pecs, obliques, subclavius, etc. grab the shoulder pulling it toward the sternum and get stuck in a concentric (tight position).
This in turn pulls on the shoulder and scapulas in a forward direction causing the muscle on the back to become lengthened and taunt (think about pulling a rope tight). This long but tense musculature (rhomboids, traps, etc.) push the ribcage forward. While the posterior ribcage is being smooshed, the tight anterior muscles at the chest are pulling on the shoulder and lift the scapula away from the ribcage, like in this diagram.
Why Does Scapular Winging Matter?
Now that you know too much about my laundry habits, let’s jump into why scapular winging even matters. This is a great segue into the fact that scapular winging doesn’t really matter until it matters.Now, unless you have thoracic nerve damage, you may not really have any problems with the scapular winging minus some aesthetics. There are statistically more people walking around with scapular winging, having no idea that they have it (and without pain/loss of motion/decreased stability) than there are people that do know they have it or have “related” symptoms. I don’t have the actual statistics but I am 99% sure this is the case. Prove me wrong.
Sorry that was aggressive. But really, if you have proof, prove me wrong… Why does that still sound so aggressive?
Scapular winging can be an issue with some instability or pain but it is generally NOT the cause of these symptoms, but rather, just another symptom. Maybe that’s a hard pill to swallow but stick with me. Scapular winging is more an indicator of the scapula’s behavior on the above-mentioned compressed ribcage via muscles that can’t quite get leverage. That’s really it. Other than that, it may be again, aesthetically unappealing to some, but that’s a whole-nother’ blog topic.
Now, those tight/long muscles CAN limit your shoulder range of motion. The scapular winging you see happening is actually a “cheat code” compensation the body uses to get around the shoulder lacking internal rotation. The shoulder is already biased in that direction so you can’t really internally rotate anymore (can’t go to the living room if you’re already in the living room), so the body just pops the scapula off the back of the ribcage to allow for the movement occur when, for example, you lift your arm overhead.
Simple and effective.
Side note - scapular winging, in my opinion, is more a testament to the resilience and adaptability of the human body. If some people weren’t able to do this, they’d have horrible shoulder range of motion. The silver lining, am I right?
Anyways, in a perfect world, we would want to improve the body’s ability to internally rotate the shoulder without having to wing the scapula (or as much). Maybe you’re doing activities like bench pressing which requires a good amount of internal rotation to perform. Then we can go and hammer on exercises to improve that specific shoulder motion, though that doesn’t mean you CAN’T bench press when you present with scapular winging. Like I said above - it’s really only a problem if it becomes a problem.
So if you've made it this far, I want to say thanks for reading and I hope you're finding some useful info. I'd also like to offer a free 20-minute posture and movement assessment. I do these 1) because I wish someone was doing this back when I was scouring posture forums because it could have saved me a lot of time, and 2) because maybe we can work together... and I like to listen to myself talk lol.
You can find out more at this link here.
Okay, the real reason you’re here.
Let’s Test for and Fix that Scapular Winging
1) VISUAL ASSESSMENT
The first test is pretty straightforward with scapular winging. Typically if you have it, you’ll see it while just standing or sitting in a relaxed posture. You don’t have to move your arms or anything. Take a video of yourself, turn around and you’ll be able to pick it out real quick. If you have scapular winging with resting posture, then you’re probably pretty dang limited in your shoulder internal rotation and could use a little help (we’ll get there).2) APLEY'S SCRATCH TEST (INTERNAL ROTATION FOCUSED)
This is a great test for those that may not have a resting scapular winging but instead have the scapula pop off the ribcage with movement. I personally only use the internal rotation portion of this test (yes, there is an external rotation portion you can do) as that motion is typically associated with scapular winging.You’ll want to video yourself and start the test by reaching behind the back to the opposite side shoulder blade. When reviewing your video, you may see that the scapula pops away from the ribcage at certain points of the motion. Whenever it first starts to pop off, that’s where you stop the test.
I love this test for objectively improving scapular winging and shoulder internal rotation as you can continuously retest how far your arm can go up to your back before the scapula wings out. The further you’re able to go, the better your shoulder internal rotation and the less scapular winging.
TESTING SUMMARY
I use both of these tests to see the severity of the scapular winging. If you have scapular winging at rest, then it’s more severe whereas if you can reach your arm behind your back and touch the opposite shoulder blade without it winging, you’re good to go.How To Fix Your Scapular Winging
So in order to “fix” scapular winging, we need to essentially relax all those muscles previously stated and decompress the posterior ribcage. I keep putting “fix” in quotations because you really never “fix” scapular winging. It’s a part of being human and can play a key role in our movement as it can yield great ranges of motion for people. That said, we can totally manage the scapular winging that occurs by improving shoulder internal rotation so that it’s not a movement strategy that’s potentially overutilized. Got it? cool.So areas such as the pump handle (anterior ribcage or chest) and posterior mediastinum (posterior ribcage) are the targets. But, how do we expand/relax/stretch/decompress these areas? It’s pretty hard to stretch around there, massages can only get you so far.
So we’re going to utilize our breathing to open up these areas. We can use the breath and the pressure it creates in the thorax to pop open ribcage and get those shoulder blades gliding smoothly. Think, your lungs sit nice and snug in the top of the ribcage. If we get this amazing organ to expand, we can stretch the front and back part of the ribcage from the inside out. That said, we can still use some self-massage / myofascial release to reduce some muscle tone around these areas.
Now that we loosen some things up and pressurize the system (sounds fancy), it’s time to load it up. This wouldn’t be a scapular winging article without talking about strengthening the ole’ serratus anterior muscle. This is the primary muscle the pulls the ribcage back the scapula and the scapula to the ribcage. Many people have a hard time feeling this muscle work so they think it’s weak, and it may be. But I believe that the muscle can’t get enough leverage due to the poor postural positioning of the ribcage, hence why we do the breathing stuff to move the ribs into the correct position and set the serratus muscle up for success.
Exercise Routine To Fix Scapular Winging
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The Exercises to fix that mangled chicken wing. Too vulgar? My bad. But really! Here are some step-by-step moves that can all be done at home and for all strength levels. We’ll start with some self-massage, move to reposition the ribcage and scapula, and lastly, strengthen it to make it all stick. Huzzah!1) SELF MASSAGE
You’re going to want to use a tennis ball, lacrosse ball, or a baseball (if you’re really crazy like that) to dig into these areas. No, we’re not breaking down any muscle fibers or fascia with this technique. We’re simply spending 30 seconds to 2 minutes max at each muscle group (pecs, subclavius, lats, serratus, traps, and rhomboids) in order to get some blood flow and decrease muscle tone. This tames the body a bit so that the breathing and repositioning exercises stick a bit more. The full routine breakdown is in the video below.2) BREATHING & REPOSITIONING EXERCISES
We’re going to use three exercises to expand and reposition the ribcage. The common theme between the exercises is that we need to fully exhale to feel abs, and then maintain that tension while we inhale in order to expand into the ribcage. Think of it like inflating a hot air balloon with the ribcage being the balloon, and your abs/ diaphragm as the fiery torch thing that pumps the hot air up… I think that’s how hot air balloons work... Let me know if that analogy clicks. Anyways, watch this video for an in-depth walk-through of each exercise.a) Banded Posterior Expansion 3x5 breaths
b) Bear Position Breathing 3x5 breaths
c) Door Supported Squat Hold 3x5 breaths
3) STRENGTHENING EXERCISES
This is where the rubber meets the road. We’re going to use the new internal rotation we have available at the shoulder and the repositioning of the ribcage to get these muscles working. We’re targeting the serratus anterior, pecs, and midback muscle all with these exercises to improve your strength and maintain your scapular position.a) Seated Serratus Wall Slides 3x10-20 reps
b) Rough Country Bear Crawls 3x30-60 second bouts
C) Off-set Push-up/Incline Push-up with Reach 3x10-15 reps
Scapular Winging Summary
Well first, thank you a ton for making it this far in the post. It means a lot that you get something from all this rambling. In summary, scapular winging isn’t a bad thing. It happens and it’s not going to wreck your shoulder stability. The best way to improve it is to improve your ribcage’s positioning against gravity and shoulder internal rotation. Really focus on the repositioning & breathing exercises followed by the strength routine and I guarantee you’ll see improvements. Hit this routine 2-3 times per week and reap the benefits!
If you enjoyed this information, please consider signing up for my newsletter where I send blog posts, exercise tips, posture deep dives, and much more. You'll also get a free APT eBook :)
Newsletter Sign Up
Instagram: @waughfit
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2021.02.11 14:32 mangeshsingh05 The effect of vestibular stimulation on eye-hand coordination
 | It is important to understand the mechanisms at play when this important system is being put to the test in a sporting environment. Understanding this system well, means that the system can be trained and improved for better performance outcomes. submitted by mangeshsingh05 to SportsNeurotechnology [link] [comments] What is the Vestibular System The vestibular system detects the motion of the head in space and in turn, generates reflexes that are crucial for our daily activities, such as stabilising our vision and maintaining head and body posture. The vestibular system provides us with our sense of movement and orientation in space. https://preview.redd.it/8dxnmow5pug61.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=62050652a40f1fcfad25a0b68e5f2845578daabd What Is the Function of the Semicircular Canals? Semicircular canals are the part of the inner ear associated with balance.These three canals have cilia and fluid to transmit data to the brain on position and balance. The semicircular canals are three canals used to provide information to the brain on directional balance. Each canal is lined with cilia and filled with fluid. As the head and body move, the fluid moves and pushes the cilia back and forth to create a motion sensor. The three main parts of the semicircular canals are the horizontal, posterior and superior. The superior or anterior semicircular canal detects rotations of the head in around the lateral axis, or in other words rotation in the sagittal plane. This occurs, for example, when nodding your head. The posterior semicircular canal detects rotation of the head around the left-right (frontal) axis, or in other words rotation in the coronal plane. This occurs, for example, when you move your head to touch your shoulders, or when doing a cartwheel). The lateral or horizontal canal (external semicircular canal) is the shortest of the three canals. Movement of fluid within this canal corresponds to rotation of the head around a vertical axis (i.e. the neck), or in other words rotation in the transverse plane. This occurs, for example, when you turn your head to the left and right- hand sides before crossing a road The vestibular systems job is maintaining steady vision during movement. As we navigate through the environment, our visual system is faced with two challenges: (1) The maintenance of a stable and clear image of the world during head movements. (2) The accurate understanding of the origin of the visual motion. Is the body moving or is the object/environment moving? In order to do this, the central nervous system combines visual and vestibular information. Visual information from the eyes and vestibular information from the semicircular canals. Maintaining a clear and stable vision is enabled by a natural ‘steady-cam’ mechanism called the vestibular-ocular reflex (VOR). The VOR involves a brainstem reflex that begins with the detection of head acceleration. This head motion signal is designed to keep the eyes steady and ‘locked on’ to the visual target of interest despite head motion. This maintains visual acuity and a stable visual world by reducing slippage of the visual image across the retina. How this translates into sport. Having clear vision is important, BOTH eyes need to work well. This means clear and accurate visual information is being sent to the brain. Having accurate information from the vestibular system is just as important. The more accurate the information being sent to the brain, the better and faster the brain can process that information and react to it. Faster processing is massively important in sport where there is a constant influx of information coming in. The vestibular system is not usually targeted specifically. It usually just gets trained as a consequence of playing sport. Many athletes have a deficit and do not know. Symptoms of a deficit can be subtle discrepancies in performance that can often be put down to ‘tiredness’ or ‘lack of focus’ Training the vestibular (and visual) system can help an athlete stabilize quicker and then react faster. Research has proven it. The vestibular system is also responsible for extensor muscles . The extensor muscles are commonly preached about because so many athletes in varying sports end up with injuries in this area. Training extensor muscles for strength and endurance is one obvious intervention. However, athletes that really want to increase their motor output and decrease issues, really need to turn to the origin of control of this area and start adding in some vestibular work into their training. It’s a big deal. The vestibulospinal tract is a neural tract in the central nervous system. Like other descending motor pathways, the vestibulospinal fibers of the tract relay information from nuclei) to motor neurons. The vestibular nuclei receive information through the vestibulocochlear nerve about changes in the orientation of the head. The nuclei relay motor commands through the vestibulospinal tract. The function of these motor commands is to alter muscle tone, extend, and change the position of the limbs and head with the goal of supporting posture and maintaining balance of the body and head. The medial vestibulospinal tract promotes stabilization of head position by innervating the neck muscles, which helps with head coordination and eye movement. The lateral vestibulospinal tract provides excitatory signals to interneurons, which relay the signal to the motor neurons in antigravity muscles. These antigravity muscles are extensor muscles in the legs that help maintain upright and balanced posture. Training the vestibular system Training this system does not have to be complicated. Simply introducing the right amount of stimulating drills and combining this with BET can build a strong foundation, eliminate deficits in the area and provide the brain with more accurate information. Think, faster reactions, a speedier more resilient and fluid athlete. How to Stimulate the Semi Circular Canals https://preview.redd.it/yr6ga5g8pug61.png?width=392&format=png&auto=webp&s=71e89fd5a777c5778dab60a14b5dc0c2ed7c869e How to Integrate Vestibular Training with BET Using Dynamic Fusion in Soma NPT Focus on the two circles and squeeze the two circles together with your eyes. A third circle should appear in the middle of the 2 circles and should be floating towards you (3d). This will indicate both eyes are fused onto the target. Try to maintain the 3 circles https://preview.redd.it/eo25tdi9pug61.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=f3e35de9166a892073b0f97a58d12ec490251f3d Now turn your head left to right like your saying NO-NO for 10 reps and then change to flexion extension like your saying YES-YES for 10 reps take a short break for 10s — 15s then repeat this sequence for 60s (see diagram above) If you feel dizzy or sick please use common sense and stop immediately. You may need to use less reps and build up more slowly. To increase difficulty stand in a tandem stance (one foot infront of the other) or try standing on one leg and repeating the above sequence. Below are some research articles showing the importance of the vestibular system in sports performance context. By using Soma NPT you are killing two birds with one stone by working on stereo vision at the same time as stimulating your vestibular system. Read more about suppression and visual information here. Failure to integrate visual information can drastically affect athletic performance. What is Binocular Vision? Failure to integrate visual information can drastically affect athletic performance. What is Binocular Vision?https://medium.com/sswitch/failure-to-integrate-visual-information-can-drastically-affect-athletic-performance-7d0f957ce668 The Effect of Vestibular Stimulation on Eye-Hand Coordination and Postural Control in Elite Basketball PlayersThe Effect of Vestibular Stimulation on Eye-Hand Coordination and Postural Control in Elite Basketball Players American Journal of Sports Science Volume 2, Issue 2, March 2014, Pages: 17-22 Received: Jan. 9, 2014; Published: Feb. 28, 2014 Views Downloads Authors William W. N. Tsang , Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Shirley S. M. Fong , Institute of Human Performance, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Yoyo T. Y. Cheng , Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong;Institute of Child Health, University College London, UK Dinisha D. Daswani , Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Hiu Yan Lau , Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Carina K. Y. Lun , Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Shamay S. M. Ng , Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong The game of basketball requires complex eye-hand coordination and exceptional postural control ability. This study compared eye-hand coordination and postural control before and after vestibular stimulation in trained basketball players with healthy, age-matched controls. Fifteen trained basketball players and 17 healthy adults (all male, age range 19-25 years) were recruited. The participants were required to perform a fast finger-pointing task involving a moving visual target in a standing position, before and after whole head-and-body rotation at 150ºs-1 for 30 s seated in a rotational chair. Results show that the trained basketball players had shorter reaction times in eye-hand coordination tasks (a decrease of 23.3% vs an increase of 8.1% of controls, p=0.008) and regained postural control more quickly (mediolateral direction: 0.4% vs 43.3%; p=0.009; anteroposterior direction: 3.9% vs 21.5%, p=0.038) after vestibular stimulation. These data suggest that vestibular stimulation could enhance balance and eye-hand coordination among young basketball players. The findings may provide information for sports training and further research work. William W. N. Tsang, Shirley S. M. Fong, Yoyo T. Y. Cheng, Dinisha D. Daswani, Hiu Yan Lau, Carina K. Y. Lun, Shamay S. M. Ng, The Effect of Vestibular Stimulation on Eye-Hand Coordination and Postural Control in Elite Basketball Players, American Journal of Sports Science . Vol. 2, No. 2, 2014, pp. 17-22. doi: 10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.12 [1] A.S. Fu, and C.W. Hui-Chan. Ankle joint prhttp://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo?journalid=155&doi=10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.12 https://preview.redd.it/nomehducpug61.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=23814b16afbdaeea8c5fc8804bece91c77b8cddf Trained basketball players had shorter reaction times in eye-hand coordination tasks (a decrease of 23.3% vs an increase of 8.1% of controls, p=0.008) and regained postural control more quickly (mediolateral direction: 0.4% vs 43.3%; p=0.009; anteroposterior direction: 3.9% vs 21.5%, p=0.038) after vestibular stimulation. This data suggests that vestibular stimulation could enhance balance and eye-hand coordination in young basketball players. Catchers with a lack of stereopsis had only a moderate or a non-significant improvement in catching performance after intensive training (more than 1400 trials), while the group with good stereo vision improved from a catching percentage of 18 to 59%. https://www.tye.dk/media/7979/The-Effects-of-Sports-Vision-Training-on-Binocular-Vision-Function-in-Female-University-Athletes.pdf There is proof in targeted, deliberate training of the visual and vestibular systems. Integration can be simple and effective when armed with the right information and training tools. Neurotechnolgy for Sports Performance Cognitive Sports Technology Eye Tracking & Sports Vision Training Soma NPT Soma NPT VisionSoma Technologies is neurotechnology specifically designed to increase the capacity of the brain. We train the brain to fatigue and the brain responds by becoming more resilient to both mental and physical fatigue. Mental fatigue impacts our perception of effort which will in turn decrease our mental and physical capacity. The higher our perceived effort, the less access we have to our physical and mental reserves. No matter how well trained or elite we are. This therefore creates a detrimental knock on effect to performance. Additionally, it has also been shown that mental fatigue decreases prefrontal oxygenation which will also limit our capacity. Brain Endurance Training (BET) can alter prefrontal oxygention and give athletes greater cognitive and physical capacity. This is an absolute game changer for human performance and pushing the limits. You could have the best physical prep in the world but if you are not looking at conditioning the brain appropriately, you are leaving a lot on the table.https://soma-npt.ch/technology Schedule a call with Soma Technologies 30 Minute Meeting - sswitchGetting Started with Soma TechnologiesIndependent Integration Get started from 448 CHF/month This solution is designed for individuals who want to take their mental capacity into their own hands or for those coaches and trainers who want to up-skill themselves in the field of brain endurancehttps://calendly.com/sswitch/30min |
2021.02.06 09:58 Random_Username9105 The Biology of Valfalk (/Valphalk/Valstrax) with drawings and diagrams!
Author's Note: I made this as a kinda Wikipedia style biological summary of Valfalk/Valphalk/Valstrax with speculative features and explanations for its abilities. Do note that this is heavily speculative and mostly based on my very basic understanding of biology and general observation with these monsters. It is all labelled so you can skip to specific parts if you want. However, I put a lot of effort into this one in particular (Almost double the word count on the Zinogre post) and I’d recommend giving the whole thing a read. With that said, longer content means a higher chance for error. I’ve done two Grammarly runs and three proofreads though there may still be some typo’s, grammatical errors or choppy editing, for which I apologize. I also wish to apologize in advance for my poor drawing skills.
Classification:
(Note: Many of the taxonomic classifications are named after the classification of Earth’s species because I don’t have the creative energy to come up with appropriate sounding Latin words for all of them and it simplifies the process and makes it easier to draw connections.)
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Hexapoda
Order: Manipteraniforme
Family: Dracocometidae
Subfamily: Dracocometinae
Genus: Dracocometa
Species: argenpteri
Etymology
Valfalk derives from the English word, “valour” and the Japanese word, “farukon” (meaning falcon). The genus Dracocometa derives from the Latin “Draco” and “Cometa”, respectively meaning dragon and comet, referring to Valfalk’s classification (Elder Dragon), use of dragon energy and common misidentification as a comet. The specific name, argenpteri, derives from the Latin “argenti”, meaning silver, and the greek “pteryga”, meaning wing, pointing at the silver sheen of its scales, particularly evident on its unique wings. Overall, the genus and species name could be interpreted as “silver-winged dragon comet”.
Description:
1.Size and appearance
Valfalk (alternate spelling: Valphalk. Also referred to as Valstrax) is a lean medium-sized Elder Dragon (Hexapoda), of which only a handful of specimens are known, mostly inhabiting remote, high-altitude locations. Particularly large specimens can reach up to 26.75 meters long though on average, the species range from 20 to 25 meters. They are covered in silvery scales. Upon closer inspection, it was found that the metallic appearance is caused by the thin titanium sheets on the surface of the scales. The scleras are ocean blue while the irises glow crimson.
Valfalk possesses several basic Elder Dragon traits. For example, they have six limbs, four of which are long and slender, with an erect posture indicative of more derived species, for terrestrial locomotion. The remaining pair is situated above and partially anterior to the first pair of walking limbs have elongated digits, as seen in all other species of true Elder Dragons where they often form membranous wings, though such membranes are greatly reduced in Shara Ishavalda. The digits themselves are also very wide, with a semi teardrop shape opening up at the bottom. The scales are moderately sized, thin and overlapping.
2.Skull and Head Morphology
The skull is elongated, thin and lightly built, with partially forward-facing eye orbits. The jaws are long and relatively birdlike, with skull and mandible bones expanding from the teeth row and forming base structures for the beaks. The beaks themselves are constructed of keratin and coated in titanium, similarly to the scales, with a curved upper beak. The teeth are close interlocked, laterally compressed and serrated on the back edge (superficially similar to the teeth of Komodo Dragons), allowing them to efficiently lacerate and process flesh. Two to three replacement teeth are constantly on stand-by beneath the functional row, ready to emerge in case of breakage. The skull bones are relatively thin, with large fenestrae. The and the posterior bones of the skull and jaws, namely the parietal, squamosal, and quadratojugal extend into five bony knobs supporting a crown of titanium coated keratin horns. The base of the middle horn also acts as a sagittal crest, supporting surprisingly large jaw muscles that loop through the temporal and supertemporal fenestrae and connect to the lower jaw, producing a substantial bite force. The attachment points at the back of the skull are enlarged, allowing for a better connection with the powerful neck muscles, facilitating a saw-like feeding pattern. The nostrils are large to allow higher air intake for both basic functions and its jet engines. Cone-shaped bones attach within the nostrils to deflect harmful shockwaves, The braincase is moderately large, holding a decently sized brain which is superficially avian in shape.
Skull depiction with jaw musculature: https://imgur.com/gallery/rJJhks7
3.Senses
The large eyes face partially forward, allowing for a fair degree of binocular vision. The retinas are lined with numerous cone cells that detect light across the entire visual spectrum as well as the UV spectrum, with great distinction, as well as sufficient rod cells for adequate night vision. The eyes also possess deep foveas, allowing for better image focusing (similarly to Earth’s eagles) and the blood vessels feeding the retinas concentrate in a pecten-type structure that reduces the amount of light blocked by the capillaries, similarly to the pecten occuli of Earth’s birds. The irises, which glow crimson due to the high levels of dragon element in the capillaries, are powerful and can precisely expand and contract the pupil from a wide oval to a thin slit. The relatively narrow pupil limits the field of view, which does lead to tunnel vision and occasional mid-air collisions with airships and flying wyverns, but also protects its sensitive eyes from excessive glare. The nictitating membranes or third eyelids are very clear and relatively tough, protecting the eyes from airborne particles at high speeds.
The olfactory sense is reduced, with low densities of chemoreceptors due to the lack of delectable airborne particles.
The ears are fairly sensitive, most likely for intraspecies communication. During flight, however, the ear holes are closed via muscles, covering the ear canals with a muffling surface, protecting them from the sound of the jet engine.
The focculus which integrates muscle, tendon, joints and skin signals take up a significant 7% of total brain mass. This system allows Valfalk to precisely manipulate its eye muscles and wings.
4.Integumentary System
As mentioned above, the scales of Valstrax are oval-shaped, overlapping, and coated with titanium. As with fish scales, their scales function similarly to fish scales by creating a streaky surface flow of fluid (air) and reducing drag. Titanium is a very durable biologically inert material and has a relatively high melting point, allowing the scales to resist the heat generated from friction when moving at high velocity. The underside of the scales are lined with blood vessels and are partially exposed due to the overlap, allowing excess internal temperature to radiate out into the air. The scales can be raised, increasing the area of exposed cooling surfaces at the cost of increased drag and turbulence and, thus, is mostly done during cruising flights to maintain a stable internal temperature. The bottom-most layer of the scale, immediately connecting to the dermis is heat insulative. The dermis is filled with compressible connective tissue, allowing it to deform and absorb some energy from a hard impact. The hypodermis is composed of adipose tissue and also acts as shock absorption as well as insulation.
Cross-sectional diagram of skin and scales: https://imgur.com/gallery/ZKTTGKK
5.Skeletal System, Limb, and Tail Morphology
Most of Valfalk’s bones are relatively thin and appear lightweight in construction, yet they can withstand impact with the ground at Mach 1. This is due to its unique construction. These bones, similarly to Valstrax’s scales, incorporate thin grids of titanium as a support structure. Titanium is not overly heavy (though it is still not used fully in the bones to further conserve weight), very strong for its weight, and is biologically inert. The cartilage in the joints and connecting the ribs are fairly flexible and compressible, allowing them to deform and absorb impacts without sustaining permanent damage. The joints across the body are also designed to flex upon frontal impact, reducing trauma and breakage. The bones are loaded with osteoblasts which rapidly repair any fracture or injury on the bones and maintain structural integrity while the bone marrow contains stem cells for the cartilage as well as other parts regularly placed under great strain, namely the circulatory and respiratory system.
The body, particularly the ribcage and overall torso are shaped in such a way that air flows faster across the back than the belly, creating greater pressure on the underside, resulting in a lift force.
The wings’ wrists can swiftly rotate back and forth, allowing for thrust vectoring of its jet nozzles and the ability to use the hands as grasping tools and weapons. The wing finger bones are extended and rigidly connected at the joints by ossified tendons. The bones of the joints project sideways and bowing downwards, similarly to ribs, and support large titanium-reinforced ossified plates between them to form the frame of fingers’ signature teardrop shape. Besides their primary function as thrust nozzles, the fingers are utilized with weapons. The scales along the distal edges and at the proximal end of the first digit are fused and coated with thicker edged titanium shells that function as blades. The tops of the digits are also similarly fused and edged, even to a greater degree. The fingers are also quite bizarre in that they are only weakly attached to the hand and can be ripped free and extended for a far-reaching strike, using the edged titanium plate attached to the back of the first digit as a spear tip, before being pulled back, letting the gaps regenerate. The three digits are connected via greatly reduced but nonetheless crucial membranes. The membrane is highly flexible, allowing the fingers a high degree of flexation without incurring permanent damage or dislocation. A dense network of blood vessels also run between the fingers and the membrane, removing and radiating excess heat from the fingers during combustion.
The legs are of average length for an elder dragon though the forearm and shins are somewhat slim. They are digitigrades, walking on their highly developed toes. The three grounded toes of the hindlimbs are packed closely together and possess shorter claws for optimal terrestrial locomotion, while the toes of the hind limbs can be swung far apart with the first toe, or finger, being able to swing back to oppose the remaining three for a better grasp. The claws of the forelimbs are long and strongly curved, with a somewhat edged inner surface. The fingers also have numerous spiky projections for grasping slippery prey, similarly to Earth’s Osprey.
The bones in the limbs and across the entire body are also designed to interlock once flexed past a certain extent to prevent too much deformation while the force is transferred throughout the skeleton and dampened in the compressible cartilage and connective tissue. For example, when Valstrax strikes a target with the jagged edges on its wings at high velocity, particularly if the wing is fully extended, the limb rotates backwards slightly so as to not instantly shatter the arm, before locking into the shoulder blade, stopping the backwards motion, allowing more force to be transferred into the target, similar to the lance rest of Earth’s human plate armour, while any excessive force would travel through the shoulder, into the ribcage, compressing the cartilage between the ribs. The shoulder and hip joints for the legs also interlock with the legs when they are swung back far enough, enabling them to stay tucked in during flight without the need for muscle power.
The tail vertebrae are rigidly locked by rods of ossified tendons, which prevents the tail from drifting and incurring drag during flight. These rods are fully coated in titanium which, along with the pubis also being strongly reinforced with titanium, shifts the centre of gravity aft, reducing static stability and increasing agility (A similar concept is used in some of Earth’s humans’ technologies such as the F-16, F-22 and Su-35). When in levelled flight, this is compensated for by the bottom thruster fingers being canted downwards.
A double row of moderately sized plates of titanium covered bone run down Valfalk’s back. The plates extend vertically and are only slightly canted away from each other, with the largest pair being roughly above the hip. These plates likely serve as vertical stabilizers, preventing Valfalk from being rolled by the wind. They can also be shifted slightly to act as rudders for subtle manoeuvres.
Depictions of various parts of the skeletal system, showing the titanium reinforcement:
https://i.imgur.com/8TyifC4.jpg
A femur, showing titanium reinforcement grid Titanium reinforced bones and ossified plates of wing digit Titanium plates and scales on wing digit Titanium plated ossified caudal tendon rods Titanium edged keratin claw sheath Cross-sectional view of claw near the base, broader and without titanium Cross sectional view of claw near the tip, with a titanium cutting edge
6.Dragon Element
(Note: This bit is purely headcanon as there isn’t much information on the Dragon Element). All creatures in the world of Monster Hunter possess “bio-energy” which is a mysterious source of energy, perhaps either some sort of microorganism or substance that holds high amounts of potential energy that can be released and used by cells as a supplement to ATP while being more energetic, long-lasting, and able to be found throughout the ambient environment. When roughly refined, ATP becomes a crude form of dragon element, immensely efficient and stable and can be found in vast quantities in all elder dragons and certain other creatures high on the food chain such as Deviljho and Akantor, which can accumulate high concentrations of bio-energy for refining. The dragon element can be refined further into refined dragon element, by further cleansing impurities and/or adding some form of catalyst or oxidizing agent. This more refined state tends to glow crimson, sometimes manifesting in lightning-like crackles (as seen in Stygian Zinogre, Deviljho and Alatreon) and is highly reactive and combustible. It is worth noting that carriers of the dragon element tend to be vulnerable to dragon element from external sources, possibly due to being inadequately equipped to handle the element being delivered offensively from an external source, only being used to their own dragon element, or they are simply overloaded. The purest form of bio-energy glows a brilliant blue and has a tendency to crystallize when accumulated and exposed to air.
Valfalk carries amongst the highest quantities of crude and refined dragon elements of any monster, possibly beaten in both only by White Fatalis. When absorbing nutrients, the membranes of its intestines appear to separate basic impurities from the bio-energy sources, generating crude dragon elements. This process is aided by the immensely powerful gastric acid, which thoroughly breaks down food for efficient refining. This crude energy is used to provide its cells with high quantities of energy, heightening its strength and senses to even a bit above standard elder dragon level and accelerates biological processes such as cellular regeneration. Some of this crude energy is further refined further in the spleen, creating the glowing refined variant, which flows along with lymphocytes in the lymphatic system and can be released into the bloodstream where necessary, such as near the head to feed the brain and eyes with more energy (also causing the irises to glow an intimidating crimson), into the coronary artery to power the heart, within the lungs, allowing them to act as combustion chambers and in the wings to create an afterburner.
During periods of aggression and stress, they release more dragon elements into their fingers, head, and claws, heightening their afterburn effect and imbuing their attacks with the element.
7.Circulatory System
Valfalk has a very high density of relatively slim red blood cells, which holds oxygen for high altitude flights, especially considering that respiratory activities are greatly reduced during combustion (as will be explained below). The small size of the red blood cells facilitates easier circulation. The muscles around the body also carry oxygen binding proteins, similarly to some of Earth’s deep-diving animals. The heart is extremely large and powerful to effectively pump the dense blood. The blood vessel walls are thick and quickly repaired to prevent wear and tear. The spleen also golds extra oxygen-carrying red blood cells which can be released, essentially blood doping Valfalk when oxygen is needed. The blood vessels are intertwined with the musculature of the extremities in such a fashion that Valfalk can selectively clamp those muscles, namely the legs, tails and neck, to restrict blood flow to certain regions, preventing blood pooling, during high velocity and/or high G manoeuvres.
Basic Diagram of parts of the respiratory system:
https://imgur.com/gallery/hTLHGN6
Airflow diagram of inhalation during regular respiratory activity:
https://i.imgur.com/vKCBBZ1.jpg
During inhalation, Valfalk’s thoracic cavity expands, drawing air in through the trachea which flows through to the posterior air sacs. Some of the air flows back out into the lungs where gas exchange occurs. The deoxygenated air flows out of the lungs into the anterior air sacs.
Airflow diagram of exhalation during regular respiratory activity:
https://imgur.com/gallery/M24idHA
During exhalation, Valfalk’s thoracic cavity compresses, pressing the remaining oxygenated air in the posterior air sacs through the lungs for gas exchange, while forcing the deoxygenated air in the anterior air sacs out through the trachea and the air sacs running through the pneumatic humerus, out into the forearm and opening up in the fingers. This breath cycle allows fresh oxygenated air to constantly flow through the lungs during both inhalation and exhalation and eliminates stagnant air.
However, in Valfalk, the respiratory system has also been modified to act as a highly advanced continuous jet propulsion system which works by compressing air and burning refined dragon energy as fuel to accelerate it through thrust nozzles in the wings.
Airflow diagram of inhalation during jet propulsion:
https://i.imgur.com/F8h0qYn.jpg Stages of inhalation during jet propulsion:
The gular pump in the throat (similarly to the ones in Earth’s monitor lizards) expands the trachea, drawing air into the lungs. The vents connecting the anterior thoracic air sacs to the openings in the chest wall open up as the chest cavity expands, drawing significantly more air into the lungs than it would be possible with just the trachea. The air is forced into smaller pipes which partially increases pressure. The ab muscles contract (starting anteriorly and moving posteriorly) and undulate (a rapid cycle of partial expansion and contraction) accordingly to continually compress and move air in the posterior thoracic and abdominal sacs along into the lungs for combustion. The posterior thoracic and abdominal sacs, as well as the pneumatic humerus sac, are relatively thick and composed of highly elastic connective tissue, with an outer backing layer that is mostly loosely connected so that a tear in the inner surface doesn’t result in a total rupture and deflation and could be healed over. The lungs are separated into two sections. The bottom section, taking up roughly 25% of the total volume continues to function for regular gas exchange. The top section secretes a specialized mucous onto its inner surfaces. This mucous serves three main functions: the outermost layer blocks oxygen from entering the lungs, keeping them for combustion; the bottom layer binds escaping CO2, keeping them from building up in the bloodstream and poisoning Valfalk, and the middle layer of the mucous serves as an extremely effective thermal insulator, protecting the lungs. Small breaks occur in the mucous layer to inject the refined dragon elements via the dense network of blood vessels in the lungs before being quickly closed and filled in. The highly reactive dragon element spontaneously combusts in the pressence of the fairly hot and pressurized oxygenated air. The hot burning mix accelerates out into the interclavicular air sac, where a separating plate keeps it from mixing with the regular air and prevents expansion. The regular air takes some of the heat from the lung tissue that manages to conduct through the mucous layer and flows into the interclavicular and cervical air sacs. The burning dragon-air mix flows through the extended air sac in the wings and up to the digits. As they move through the digits, more dragon element is released into the flow, drastically increasing the burn temperature and, thus, the air speed and thrust, essentially working like an afterburner. This air is blasted out through the narrowed opening, generating forward thrust. The interclavicular and cervical air sacs are filled with a far denser network of blood vessels than normal which draws heat from the heated air so that it could be dissipated through the exposed blood vessel filled surfaces beneath the scales.
Airflow diagram of exhalation during jet propulsion:
https://i.imgur.com/6VkYZjN.jpg
Stages of exhalation during jet propulsion:
The gular pump closes the trachea so that air can’t escape through it. The chest cavity compresses, compressing and pushing the remaining air in the anterior thoracic savs out and towards the posterior sacs. The deoxygenated air in the cervical and interclavicular sacs also get pushed out into the flow, quickly mixing with the oxygenated air, which decreases the proportional oxygen content for which the sheer quantity of the air compared to the inhalation compensates. The abdominal muscles expand partially to facilitate easy airflow through them and into the lungs. The air remaining in these sacs could then be used in the next abdominal compression during inhalation. The separation, combustion, and cooling occur as explained above. The heated deoxygenated air flows into the newly emptied interclavicular and cervical sacs. The afterburner effect occurs as explained above.
Behaviour:
While there is no direct evidence, it is also possible, considering the evidence, that they also feed upon small-medium sized Elder Dragons whenever possible. Valfalk’s entire body and attacks are loaded with the dragon element, which is a weakness for most other Elders but not Valfalk itself. While it does have a significant number of other elemental weaknesses, its heavy use of the dragon element can rapidly induce a dragonblight effect, somewhat neutering other Elder Dragons’ advantages against it. This would also explain its extreme adaptations as it would want to strike as fast and hard as possible. Catching flying Elder Dragons off guard with a crippling strike, It would employ its sheer kinetic impact force to deal as crippling a blow as possible. This method of hunting bears similarities to Earth’s peregrine falcon (albeit scaled up to 6-7 tons travelling at up to roughly Mach 1 and wielding titanium spear-tipped wings loaded with a substance poisonous to other Elder Dragons) while Nergigante’s tactics are more akin to big cats, bears, or eagles. They would likely initiate a dive from several, maybe over a dozen kilometres above the Elder Dragon to gain as much speed as possible before alerting their prey to their presence with the sound. However, since most Elder Dragons usually have heightened senses, Valfalk could deliberately stun them with a sudden roar of its jets. This hypothesis could also explain how they efficiently restock their dragon element supply. They would also be able to go for long periods without food if they feed on Elder Dragons due to their high energy and bio-energy content, affording them the peace and solitude they crave. If dragon sightings are too sparse, they would then rely on other prey, such as Ludroth, to sustain their more regular bodily functions.
3.Reproduction and life cycle
There is no information regarding the reproduction and life cycle of Valfalk though it is possible that they could asexually reproduce like Fatalis and Nergigante.
4.Intelligence
As an Elder Dragon, Valfalk likely possesses above-average intelligence. They can accurately wield and aim their complicated attacks as well as their aerial manoeuvres. These manoeuvres would also require them to efficiently process information though they can suffer from tunnel vision and accidentally fly straight through airships or other monsters. They can also distinguish an underwater prey’s actual location from their refracted image. They also appear to be quite passive and won’t engage in an unnecessary conflict unless provoked. Their problem-solving intelligence would require further observations to be determined.
Classification and Evolution:
Valfalk’s evolutionary history is largely unknown though it is likely that it is the closest living relative to Shara Ishavalda as both Elder Dragons have a similar body frame, reduced wing membranes, and a complex respiratory system with the ability to absorb air through their chest and exude it from their wings. However, the two species are likely only somewhat distantly related as they have largely different external appearances and likely diet. The pressures leading to the evolution of its jet propulsion (as well as Shara Ishvalda’s air cannons) is almost a complete mystery. A possible explanation is that the feature originally evolved to improve flight controls and velocity while slowly taking over as the primary method of propulsion. The addition of the dragon element was a gradual shift, adding small boosts of speeds by burning a little at first before increasing as the respiratory system built up resistance towards the heat and pressure. These extremely specialized adaptations could’ve risen out of competition with other Elder Dragons and/or, if the above dietary hypothesis is correct, to hunt Elder Dragons.
See Also:
The Biology of Fatalis: https://www.reddit.com/MonsterHuntecomments/jx10ag/the_biology_of_fatalis/
The Biology of Vaal Hazak:https://www.reddit.com/MonsterHuntecomments/k57iww/the_biology_of_vaal_hazak/
The Biology of Shara Ishvalda: https://www.reddit.com/MonsterHuntecomments/ke8hfthe_biology_of_shara_ishvalda/
The Biology of Zinogre: https://www.reddit.com/MonsterHuntecomments/kt1obd/the_biology_of_zinogre/
The Biology of Nargacuga: https://www.reddit.com/MonsterHuntecomments/l4nwov/the_biology_of_nargacuga/
Avian Respiratory Anatomy: http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/birdrespiration.html
Properties and Plausibility of Metal Bones: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702110700201#:~:text=The%20bones%20in%20your%20body,all%20three%20of%20those%20properties.
Next one: Shagaru/Gore Magala
submitted by Random_Username9105 to MonsterHunter [link] [comments]
Classification:
(Note: Many of the taxonomic classifications are named after the classification of Earth’s species because I don’t have the creative energy to come up with appropriate sounding Latin words for all of them and it simplifies the process and makes it easier to draw connections.)
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Hexapoda
Order: Manipteraniforme
Family: Dracocometidae
Subfamily: Dracocometinae
Genus: Dracocometa
Species: argenpteri
Etymology
Valfalk derives from the English word, “valour” and the Japanese word, “farukon” (meaning falcon). The genus Dracocometa derives from the Latin “Draco” and “Cometa”, respectively meaning dragon and comet, referring to Valfalk’s classification (Elder Dragon), use of dragon energy and common misidentification as a comet. The specific name, argenpteri, derives from the Latin “argenti”, meaning silver, and the greek “pteryga”, meaning wing, pointing at the silver sheen of its scales, particularly evident on its unique wings. Overall, the genus and species name could be interpreted as “silver-winged dragon comet”.
Description:
1.Size and appearance
Valfalk (alternate spelling: Valphalk. Also referred to as Valstrax) is a lean medium-sized Elder Dragon (Hexapoda), of which only a handful of specimens are known, mostly inhabiting remote, high-altitude locations. Particularly large specimens can reach up to 26.75 meters long though on average, the species range from 20 to 25 meters. They are covered in silvery scales. Upon closer inspection, it was found that the metallic appearance is caused by the thin titanium sheets on the surface of the scales. The scleras are ocean blue while the irises glow crimson.
Valfalk possesses several basic Elder Dragon traits. For example, they have six limbs, four of which are long and slender, with an erect posture indicative of more derived species, for terrestrial locomotion. The remaining pair is situated above and partially anterior to the first pair of walking limbs have elongated digits, as seen in all other species of true Elder Dragons where they often form membranous wings, though such membranes are greatly reduced in Shara Ishavalda. The digits themselves are also very wide, with a semi teardrop shape opening up at the bottom. The scales are moderately sized, thin and overlapping.
2.Skull and Head Morphology
The skull is elongated, thin and lightly built, with partially forward-facing eye orbits. The jaws are long and relatively birdlike, with skull and mandible bones expanding from the teeth row and forming base structures for the beaks. The beaks themselves are constructed of keratin and coated in titanium, similarly to the scales, with a curved upper beak. The teeth are close interlocked, laterally compressed and serrated on the back edge (superficially similar to the teeth of Komodo Dragons), allowing them to efficiently lacerate and process flesh. Two to three replacement teeth are constantly on stand-by beneath the functional row, ready to emerge in case of breakage. The skull bones are relatively thin, with large fenestrae. The and the posterior bones of the skull and jaws, namely the parietal, squamosal, and quadratojugal extend into five bony knobs supporting a crown of titanium coated keratin horns. The base of the middle horn also acts as a sagittal crest, supporting surprisingly large jaw muscles that loop through the temporal and supertemporal fenestrae and connect to the lower jaw, producing a substantial bite force. The attachment points at the back of the skull are enlarged, allowing for a better connection with the powerful neck muscles, facilitating a saw-like feeding pattern. The nostrils are large to allow higher air intake for both basic functions and its jet engines. Cone-shaped bones attach within the nostrils to deflect harmful shockwaves, The braincase is moderately large, holding a decently sized brain which is superficially avian in shape.
Skull depiction with jaw musculature: https://imgur.com/gallery/rJJhks7
3.Senses
The large eyes face partially forward, allowing for a fair degree of binocular vision. The retinas are lined with numerous cone cells that detect light across the entire visual spectrum as well as the UV spectrum, with great distinction, as well as sufficient rod cells for adequate night vision. The eyes also possess deep foveas, allowing for better image focusing (similarly to Earth’s eagles) and the blood vessels feeding the retinas concentrate in a pecten-type structure that reduces the amount of light blocked by the capillaries, similarly to the pecten occuli of Earth’s birds. The irises, which glow crimson due to the high levels of dragon element in the capillaries, are powerful and can precisely expand and contract the pupil from a wide oval to a thin slit. The relatively narrow pupil limits the field of view, which does lead to tunnel vision and occasional mid-air collisions with airships and flying wyverns, but also protects its sensitive eyes from excessive glare. The nictitating membranes or third eyelids are very clear and relatively tough, protecting the eyes from airborne particles at high speeds.
The olfactory sense is reduced, with low densities of chemoreceptors due to the lack of delectable airborne particles.
The ears are fairly sensitive, most likely for intraspecies communication. During flight, however, the ear holes are closed via muscles, covering the ear canals with a muffling surface, protecting them from the sound of the jet engine.
The focculus which integrates muscle, tendon, joints and skin signals take up a significant 7% of total brain mass. This system allows Valfalk to precisely manipulate its eye muscles and wings.
4.Integumentary System
As mentioned above, the scales of Valstrax are oval-shaped, overlapping, and coated with titanium. As with fish scales, their scales function similarly to fish scales by creating a streaky surface flow of fluid (air) and reducing drag. Titanium is a very durable biologically inert material and has a relatively high melting point, allowing the scales to resist the heat generated from friction when moving at high velocity. The underside of the scales are lined with blood vessels and are partially exposed due to the overlap, allowing excess internal temperature to radiate out into the air. The scales can be raised, increasing the area of exposed cooling surfaces at the cost of increased drag and turbulence and, thus, is mostly done during cruising flights to maintain a stable internal temperature. The bottom-most layer of the scale, immediately connecting to the dermis is heat insulative. The dermis is filled with compressible connective tissue, allowing it to deform and absorb some energy from a hard impact. The hypodermis is composed of adipose tissue and also acts as shock absorption as well as insulation.
Cross-sectional diagram of skin and scales: https://imgur.com/gallery/ZKTTGKK
5.Skeletal System, Limb, and Tail Morphology
Most of Valfalk’s bones are relatively thin and appear lightweight in construction, yet they can withstand impact with the ground at Mach 1. This is due to its unique construction. These bones, similarly to Valstrax’s scales, incorporate thin grids of titanium as a support structure. Titanium is not overly heavy (though it is still not used fully in the bones to further conserve weight), very strong for its weight, and is biologically inert. The cartilage in the joints and connecting the ribs are fairly flexible and compressible, allowing them to deform and absorb impacts without sustaining permanent damage. The joints across the body are also designed to flex upon frontal impact, reducing trauma and breakage. The bones are loaded with osteoblasts which rapidly repair any fracture or injury on the bones and maintain structural integrity while the bone marrow contains stem cells for the cartilage as well as other parts regularly placed under great strain, namely the circulatory and respiratory system.
The body, particularly the ribcage and overall torso are shaped in such a way that air flows faster across the back than the belly, creating greater pressure on the underside, resulting in a lift force.
The wings’ wrists can swiftly rotate back and forth, allowing for thrust vectoring of its jet nozzles and the ability to use the hands as grasping tools and weapons. The wing finger bones are extended and rigidly connected at the joints by ossified tendons. The bones of the joints project sideways and bowing downwards, similarly to ribs, and support large titanium-reinforced ossified plates between them to form the frame of fingers’ signature teardrop shape. Besides their primary function as thrust nozzles, the fingers are utilized with weapons. The scales along the distal edges and at the proximal end of the first digit are fused and coated with thicker edged titanium shells that function as blades. The tops of the digits are also similarly fused and edged, even to a greater degree. The fingers are also quite bizarre in that they are only weakly attached to the hand and can be ripped free and extended for a far-reaching strike, using the edged titanium plate attached to the back of the first digit as a spear tip, before being pulled back, letting the gaps regenerate. The three digits are connected via greatly reduced but nonetheless crucial membranes. The membrane is highly flexible, allowing the fingers a high degree of flexation without incurring permanent damage or dislocation. A dense network of blood vessels also run between the fingers and the membrane, removing and radiating excess heat from the fingers during combustion.
The legs are of average length for an elder dragon though the forearm and shins are somewhat slim. They are digitigrades, walking on their highly developed toes. The three grounded toes of the hindlimbs are packed closely together and possess shorter claws for optimal terrestrial locomotion, while the toes of the hind limbs can be swung far apart with the first toe, or finger, being able to swing back to oppose the remaining three for a better grasp. The claws of the forelimbs are long and strongly curved, with a somewhat edged inner surface. The fingers also have numerous spiky projections for grasping slippery prey, similarly to Earth’s Osprey.
The bones in the limbs and across the entire body are also designed to interlock once flexed past a certain extent to prevent too much deformation while the force is transferred throughout the skeleton and dampened in the compressible cartilage and connective tissue. For example, when Valstrax strikes a target with the jagged edges on its wings at high velocity, particularly if the wing is fully extended, the limb rotates backwards slightly so as to not instantly shatter the arm, before locking into the shoulder blade, stopping the backwards motion, allowing more force to be transferred into the target, similar to the lance rest of Earth’s human plate armour, while any excessive force would travel through the shoulder, into the ribcage, compressing the cartilage between the ribs. The shoulder and hip joints for the legs also interlock with the legs when they are swung back far enough, enabling them to stay tucked in during flight without the need for muscle power.
The tail vertebrae are rigidly locked by rods of ossified tendons, which prevents the tail from drifting and incurring drag during flight. These rods are fully coated in titanium which, along with the pubis also being strongly reinforced with titanium, shifts the centre of gravity aft, reducing static stability and increasing agility (A similar concept is used in some of Earth’s humans’ technologies such as the F-16, F-22 and Su-35). When in levelled flight, this is compensated for by the bottom thruster fingers being canted downwards.
A double row of moderately sized plates of titanium covered bone run down Valfalk’s back. The plates extend vertically and are only slightly canted away from each other, with the largest pair being roughly above the hip. These plates likely serve as vertical stabilizers, preventing Valfalk from being rolled by the wind. They can also be shifted slightly to act as rudders for subtle manoeuvres.
Depictions of various parts of the skeletal system, showing the titanium reinforcement:
https://i.imgur.com/8TyifC4.jpg
A femur, showing titanium reinforcement grid Titanium reinforced bones and ossified plates of wing digit Titanium plates and scales on wing digit Titanium plated ossified caudal tendon rods Titanium edged keratin claw sheath Cross-sectional view of claw near the base, broader and without titanium Cross sectional view of claw near the tip, with a titanium cutting edge
6.Dragon Element
(Note: This bit is purely headcanon as there isn’t much information on the Dragon Element). All creatures in the world of Monster Hunter possess “bio-energy” which is a mysterious source of energy, perhaps either some sort of microorganism or substance that holds high amounts of potential energy that can be released and used by cells as a supplement to ATP while being more energetic, long-lasting, and able to be found throughout the ambient environment. When roughly refined, ATP becomes a crude form of dragon element, immensely efficient and stable and can be found in vast quantities in all elder dragons and certain other creatures high on the food chain such as Deviljho and Akantor, which can accumulate high concentrations of bio-energy for refining. The dragon element can be refined further into refined dragon element, by further cleansing impurities and/or adding some form of catalyst or oxidizing agent. This more refined state tends to glow crimson, sometimes manifesting in lightning-like crackles (as seen in Stygian Zinogre, Deviljho and Alatreon) and is highly reactive and combustible. It is worth noting that carriers of the dragon element tend to be vulnerable to dragon element from external sources, possibly due to being inadequately equipped to handle the element being delivered offensively from an external source, only being used to their own dragon element, or they are simply overloaded. The purest form of bio-energy glows a brilliant blue and has a tendency to crystallize when accumulated and exposed to air.
Valfalk carries amongst the highest quantities of crude and refined dragon elements of any monster, possibly beaten in both only by White Fatalis. When absorbing nutrients, the membranes of its intestines appear to separate basic impurities from the bio-energy sources, generating crude dragon elements. This process is aided by the immensely powerful gastric acid, which thoroughly breaks down food for efficient refining. This crude energy is used to provide its cells with high quantities of energy, heightening its strength and senses to even a bit above standard elder dragon level and accelerates biological processes such as cellular regeneration. Some of this crude energy is further refined further in the spleen, creating the glowing refined variant, which flows along with lymphocytes in the lymphatic system and can be released into the bloodstream where necessary, such as near the head to feed the brain and eyes with more energy (also causing the irises to glow an intimidating crimson), into the coronary artery to power the heart, within the lungs, allowing them to act as combustion chambers and in the wings to create an afterburner.
During periods of aggression and stress, they release more dragon elements into their fingers, head, and claws, heightening their afterburn effect and imbuing their attacks with the element.
7.Circulatory System
Valfalk has a very high density of relatively slim red blood cells, which holds oxygen for high altitude flights, especially considering that respiratory activities are greatly reduced during combustion (as will be explained below). The small size of the red blood cells facilitates easier circulation. The muscles around the body also carry oxygen binding proteins, similarly to some of Earth’s deep-diving animals. The heart is extremely large and powerful to effectively pump the dense blood. The blood vessel walls are thick and quickly repaired to prevent wear and tear. The spleen also golds extra oxygen-carrying red blood cells which can be released, essentially blood doping Valfalk when oxygen is needed. The blood vessels are intertwined with the musculature of the extremities in such a fashion that Valfalk can selectively clamp those muscles, namely the legs, tails and neck, to restrict blood flow to certain regions, preventing blood pooling, during high velocity and/or high G manoeuvres.
- Respiratory System
Basic Diagram of parts of the respiratory system:
https://imgur.com/gallery/hTLHGN6
Airflow diagram of inhalation during regular respiratory activity:
https://i.imgur.com/vKCBBZ1.jpg
During inhalation, Valfalk’s thoracic cavity expands, drawing air in through the trachea which flows through to the posterior air sacs. Some of the air flows back out into the lungs where gas exchange occurs. The deoxygenated air flows out of the lungs into the anterior air sacs.
Airflow diagram of exhalation during regular respiratory activity:
https://imgur.com/gallery/M24idHA
During exhalation, Valfalk’s thoracic cavity compresses, pressing the remaining oxygenated air in the posterior air sacs through the lungs for gas exchange, while forcing the deoxygenated air in the anterior air sacs out through the trachea and the air sacs running through the pneumatic humerus, out into the forearm and opening up in the fingers. This breath cycle allows fresh oxygenated air to constantly flow through the lungs during both inhalation and exhalation and eliminates stagnant air.
However, in Valfalk, the respiratory system has also been modified to act as a highly advanced continuous jet propulsion system which works by compressing air and burning refined dragon energy as fuel to accelerate it through thrust nozzles in the wings.
Airflow diagram of inhalation during jet propulsion:
https://i.imgur.com/F8h0qYn.jpg Stages of inhalation during jet propulsion:
The gular pump in the throat (similarly to the ones in Earth’s monitor lizards) expands the trachea, drawing air into the lungs. The vents connecting the anterior thoracic air sacs to the openings in the chest wall open up as the chest cavity expands, drawing significantly more air into the lungs than it would be possible with just the trachea. The air is forced into smaller pipes which partially increases pressure. The ab muscles contract (starting anteriorly and moving posteriorly) and undulate (a rapid cycle of partial expansion and contraction) accordingly to continually compress and move air in the posterior thoracic and abdominal sacs along into the lungs for combustion. The posterior thoracic and abdominal sacs, as well as the pneumatic humerus sac, are relatively thick and composed of highly elastic connective tissue, with an outer backing layer that is mostly loosely connected so that a tear in the inner surface doesn’t result in a total rupture and deflation and could be healed over. The lungs are separated into two sections. The bottom section, taking up roughly 25% of the total volume continues to function for regular gas exchange. The top section secretes a specialized mucous onto its inner surfaces. This mucous serves three main functions: the outermost layer blocks oxygen from entering the lungs, keeping them for combustion; the bottom layer binds escaping CO2, keeping them from building up in the bloodstream and poisoning Valfalk, and the middle layer of the mucous serves as an extremely effective thermal insulator, protecting the lungs. Small breaks occur in the mucous layer to inject the refined dragon elements via the dense network of blood vessels in the lungs before being quickly closed and filled in. The highly reactive dragon element spontaneously combusts in the pressence of the fairly hot and pressurized oxygenated air. The hot burning mix accelerates out into the interclavicular air sac, where a separating plate keeps it from mixing with the regular air and prevents expansion. The regular air takes some of the heat from the lung tissue that manages to conduct through the mucous layer and flows into the interclavicular and cervical air sacs. The burning dragon-air mix flows through the extended air sac in the wings and up to the digits. As they move through the digits, more dragon element is released into the flow, drastically increasing the burn temperature and, thus, the air speed and thrust, essentially working like an afterburner. This air is blasted out through the narrowed opening, generating forward thrust. The interclavicular and cervical air sacs are filled with a far denser network of blood vessels than normal which draws heat from the heated air so that it could be dissipated through the exposed blood vessel filled surfaces beneath the scales.
Airflow diagram of exhalation during jet propulsion:
https://i.imgur.com/6VkYZjN.jpg
Stages of exhalation during jet propulsion:
The gular pump closes the trachea so that air can’t escape through it. The chest cavity compresses, compressing and pushing the remaining air in the anterior thoracic savs out and towards the posterior sacs. The deoxygenated air in the cervical and interclavicular sacs also get pushed out into the flow, quickly mixing with the oxygenated air, which decreases the proportional oxygen content for which the sheer quantity of the air compared to the inhalation compensates. The abdominal muscles expand partially to facilitate easy airflow through them and into the lungs. The air remaining in these sacs could then be used in the next abdominal compression during inhalation. The separation, combustion, and cooling occur as explained above. The heated deoxygenated air flows into the newly emptied interclavicular and cervical sacs. The afterburner effect occurs as explained above.
Behaviour:
- Feeding and diet
While there is no direct evidence, it is also possible, considering the evidence, that they also feed upon small-medium sized Elder Dragons whenever possible. Valfalk’s entire body and attacks are loaded with the dragon element, which is a weakness for most other Elders but not Valfalk itself. While it does have a significant number of other elemental weaknesses, its heavy use of the dragon element can rapidly induce a dragonblight effect, somewhat neutering other Elder Dragons’ advantages against it. This would also explain its extreme adaptations as it would want to strike as fast and hard as possible. Catching flying Elder Dragons off guard with a crippling strike, It would employ its sheer kinetic impact force to deal as crippling a blow as possible. This method of hunting bears similarities to Earth’s peregrine falcon (albeit scaled up to 6-7 tons travelling at up to roughly Mach 1 and wielding titanium spear-tipped wings loaded with a substance poisonous to other Elder Dragons) while Nergigante’s tactics are more akin to big cats, bears, or eagles. They would likely initiate a dive from several, maybe over a dozen kilometres above the Elder Dragon to gain as much speed as possible before alerting their prey to their presence with the sound. However, since most Elder Dragons usually have heightened senses, Valfalk could deliberately stun them with a sudden roar of its jets. This hypothesis could also explain how they efficiently restock their dragon element supply. They would also be able to go for long periods without food if they feed on Elder Dragons due to their high energy and bio-energy content, affording them the peace and solitude they crave. If dragon sightings are too sparse, they would then rely on other prey, such as Ludroth, to sustain their more regular bodily functions.
- Defense
3.Reproduction and life cycle
There is no information regarding the reproduction and life cycle of Valfalk though it is possible that they could asexually reproduce like Fatalis and Nergigante.
4.Intelligence
As an Elder Dragon, Valfalk likely possesses above-average intelligence. They can accurately wield and aim their complicated attacks as well as their aerial manoeuvres. These manoeuvres would also require them to efficiently process information though they can suffer from tunnel vision and accidentally fly straight through airships or other monsters. They can also distinguish an underwater prey’s actual location from their refracted image. They also appear to be quite passive and won’t engage in an unnecessary conflict unless provoked. Their problem-solving intelligence would require further observations to be determined.
Classification and Evolution:
Valfalk’s evolutionary history is largely unknown though it is likely that it is the closest living relative to Shara Ishavalda as both Elder Dragons have a similar body frame, reduced wing membranes, and a complex respiratory system with the ability to absorb air through their chest and exude it from their wings. However, the two species are likely only somewhat distantly related as they have largely different external appearances and likely diet. The pressures leading to the evolution of its jet propulsion (as well as Shara Ishvalda’s air cannons) is almost a complete mystery. A possible explanation is that the feature originally evolved to improve flight controls and velocity while slowly taking over as the primary method of propulsion. The addition of the dragon element was a gradual shift, adding small boosts of speeds by burning a little at first before increasing as the respiratory system built up resistance towards the heat and pressure. These extremely specialized adaptations could’ve risen out of competition with other Elder Dragons and/or, if the above dietary hypothesis is correct, to hunt Elder Dragons.
See Also:
The Biology of Fatalis: https://www.reddit.com/MonsterHuntecomments/jx10ag/the_biology_of_fatalis/
The Biology of Vaal Hazak:https://www.reddit.com/MonsterHuntecomments/k57iww/the_biology_of_vaal_hazak/
The Biology of Shara Ishvalda: https://www.reddit.com/MonsterHuntecomments/ke8hfthe_biology_of_shara_ishvalda/
The Biology of Zinogre: https://www.reddit.com/MonsterHuntecomments/kt1obd/the_biology_of_zinogre/
The Biology of Nargacuga: https://www.reddit.com/MonsterHuntecomments/l4nwov/the_biology_of_nargacuga/
Avian Respiratory Anatomy: http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/birdrespiration.html
Properties and Plausibility of Metal Bones: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702110700201#:~:text=The%20bones%20in%20your%20body,all%20three%20of%20those%20properties.
Next one: Shagaru/Gore Magala
2020.05.15 16:12 SecretCatPolicy GitS SAC underscore 2045 is not bad because of how it looks, more importantly it's bad because of how it sucks at telling stories
So this is my episode-by-episode breakdown of how I feel about this...thing. One thing I love about Ghost in the Shell overall is its storytelling, and rather than the "Oh it looks bad" stuff I want to focus on that aspect.
Long post is long. Spoiler-filled, obviously. TLDR version: No mercy for the weak. Learn to read.
EPISODE 1
Based on the first episode, video games are a really good touchstone for this series so far, but not only because of how it looks. I keep thinking about the Zero Wing cutscene meme ("Someone set up us the bomb!" "All your base are belong to us" and so on) because that's really comparable in terms of storytelling, writing and general quality of presentation. Zero Wing exists as a meme because of its terrible translation, but it is not actually impossible to understand, just full of laughable errors. But the reason it's easy to understand is because of the simplicity of the narrative; some rudimentary scene setting and setup of characters precedes a basic action scene to launch the meat of the game.
This is important; in any narrative where the story world isn't a well-known part of our current world (fantasy and sci-fi in particular), it's critical to set up the world where the story occurs. Context is everything. Context, established well, draws you into the story by making you care about the world and characters. Maybe you like them. Maybe you find your curiosity piqued. Maybe there's an element of fear or excitement in there too. But by how the initial state of the world is presented, you should also be forming an emotional connection with the show that draws you in in order to form an intellectual connection that cements your connection to the story. With Zero Wing, since the reason you're there, seeing the cutscene, is to play the game, and the story is basically only set dressing, only the most simple establishment of context is needed. A bad guy has popped up; fight him!
Exactly the same thing seems to be going on here, except there's no game. A bunch of bad guys pop up; fight them! Context, you say? Well, here's the official English title crawl:
Consider this utter failure of a sentence:
Now look at the first two series of SAC - they have phenomenal storytelling of an incredibly complex story because they are detective shows and the whole thing is about building up understanding of a case in order to solve it. It's why detective shows are so absorbing - because we're learning stuff organically. Both the Laughing Man incident and the Individual Eleven conspiracies were both uncovered by evolving events and having the protagonists track them and investigate their causes while we follow their investigation and piece the story together as the characters do. This was about the only way to tell such a complicated story. Much better to make the story set the scene, no?
Again, underscore 2045 follows exactly the same format as Zero Wing. Brief, overly simplified infodump followed by action that establishes main characters. It would be forgivable to do things this way if the action scene was a) good, b) achieved something or c) established characters well, but it fails all those. The action choreography is awful, makes no sense and serves no purpose plot-wise and actively undermines existing fans expectations of characters. Consider:
The dialogue writing is really poor as well; cookie cutter dialogue, characters have no gravitas and sound like parodies of themselves, and their inside man is so transparently playing them. This is kids show or pantomime level characterisation; or also-ran video game level, since Zero Wing is still in the chat. The target audience of this show is clearly skewing waaaay lower than before.
About visuals; it's the room elephant, but what can I say that hasn't already been said? The suspension of disbelief required for this is enormous, and I fully agree with those who compare it visually to video games, because I can't remember ever seeing a commercially made thing that looked more like a game without actually being one. It really looks like a machinima. The way characters are designed looks like pre-Appleseed CG Anime (which was directed by Shinji Aramaki...what the hell is he doing?), but cheaper and more indie; it's just piss poor. The shininess of the character skin looks very much like plastic. The objects in the world around look weightless and unreal. The way characters move is very NPC-like, for example the food seller that Batou talks to on the way into the town, does the same 'waving away flies' animation - an idle anim - three times in the course of the short scene where she appears.* This is truly TV for the gaming generation.
Also, character design. Compare the character's outfits with their outfits in 2nd Gig Episode 14. Those were soldiers. These are action figures. They're mercenaries in a warzone, but they have tiny little plate carriers, no helmets, no camo, no other protection at all. I remember once asking a guy who had a prosthetic leg why he wore a shoe on it and his answer was that there was no reason to wear the leg itself out when there were things that could protect it right there. The same is true on a larger scale here - if you're in a warzone it makes no sense not to wear armour if you can, even if your body is prosthetic and made of titanium alloys you might as well protect it.
The OP music is pure shit. In-episode music is unexceptional and forgettable. ED theme is pretty ass too. In all this is about as disappointing as I feared.
* this will come up later, I know. This is what I thought after the first episode.
EPISODE 2
So I enjoyed this a bit more because it was a lot more like Section 9 doing Section 9 things, namely being small+high tech+cunning vs. big+high tech+stupid, thematically, and resembles the 'rogue Jigabachi' episode from early in SAC 2nd Gig. It undermines itself crucially, but I begin to suspect that's not going to be uncommon.
The action again made generally not nearly enough sense, and wasn't very satisfying in that once again it is undermining the characters we know:
Also of note: why do they have state of the art hand weapons but guided missiles from basically now or earlier? Stingers are 1980s tech for god's sake. I mean they could probably have some old stuff, in much the same way some people are fighting right now with AK47s and older guns, but if they have Seburos... I can't believe there's not something that would let one of them pilot the missile to its target and ignore the flares, given that we can basically do that now and that Saito is basically doing that with bullets; something you can steer would be absolutely a natural fit with cyberbrain tech.
Visually it looked better, for one reason only: it took place at night.
I can see myself being really pissed off with Togusa's arc. Something is signalling that it's going to be really unsatisfying and Togusa in particular is going to be messed around and end up behaving horrifically out of character. I'm already pissed off that they managed to have him divorce off-screen, when he seemed to have a genuinely close relationship with his family before. Last episode they mentioned that he had some sort of grudge against Kusanagi and the others but it doesn't scan with who he is. The point of him at the beginning (S9 noob) vs. him at the end of the first series (part of the team) vs. how he was in SSS (doing Kusanagi's job) was that he was really inherent to what S9 was and I don't believe that situation would arise from that sort of relationship. "No lol they left him behind and replaced him with fucking Stan" does not scan.
And let's talk about Stan for a moment. Generally when you have an established team and a noob, the noob is there to be explained to - an audience surrogate, basically, so we can learn what the experienced characters already know. Or, as a variation, he's there to be mystified because they won't tell him what's going on, and become pro-active in finding information for himself, performing the same function in a different way. Alternatively, a new character brings a new skillset to the mix. But Stan is apparently just there to be insulted for no obvious reason beyond a cruel sense of humour. He serves no purpose, has no clear skills, discovers basically nothing and has virtually nothing explained to him, and we find things out much more from pre-op briefings and veteran characters talking to each other than from him. He is, so far, a textbook token character.
The geopolitics of the thing are also annoyingly absent in terms of showing rather than telling. The conversation between Batou and the leader of the terrorist footballers (I kind of get what they're going for with this, and I suppose it's just a novelty, but still, ????) was a really good example of what not to do to set your world up. They're sports stars calling out professional soldiers for being '1%er lackeys'...didn't anyone notice how little sense that makes? Pro sportsmen are, at least in the modern world, almost the definition of the 1%. We have no indication of why these spoiled kids, entirely against type, would be concerned with politics at all, let alone radicalised enough to kill.
We know there's some sort of Behind Man person supporting the terrorist footballers, and we know they know something about what's going to happen. These are yet to be developed so I can get behind this, but the fact a missile hit something after trying all episode to prevent it and I still don't know what it hit because nobody in the story apparently cares enough to find out is simply a failure of storytelling. I don't care just because they do, you know; you need to invest me in the story beyond "Huh? What does that mean? What is this about? Why did that happen?". I want to understand this more so that I care about it.
Got to end on a grudgingly positive note, though. I do want to see more; I want to see if this apparently crappy storytelling actually goes anywhere or if it's just going to be 12 episodes of dangling bait in front of my nose.
EPISODE 3
Not only is the animation and design worse than anything GitS has ever done, the title card looks worse too. The way they depicted cyberspace in original SAC was beautiful - stylishly well crafted but busy enough that it looked plausibly megatechnological. This is just worse. Hexagons. Hexagons are played the fuck out, my friends. That's some deviantart level design.
Love the way the squad just stand there like idiots while the Delta guys just form up around them. Nobody has any fucking sense here.
Togusa has a picture of his wife and kids which is super precious to him; I already feel like I'm being deceived. And then he has a bitchin' Camaro. With stripes. In a warzone. With no traffic. This all makes perfect sense.
But at least the woman repeating the 'waving away flies' anim is explained. Very clever, but the problem is that you need to hang around this long to get that it's not egregious laziness on the part of the production but has an actual purpose in the plot; people with a low tolerance for bullshit won't last that long and will go and rant about how the series looks like a PS2 game.
But so far the whole thing is just so fucking basic. The series really seems to be assuming the audience are idiots. Nothing is left to the imagination, and what little is there to tie into wider theme is telegraphed really clearly.
GOD I hate how this series looks. I hate it. It's depersonalisation. They are actively making everyone less human-like. You are making your characters worse by making them look like this.
EPISODE 4
The main problem here is that this is juuuuuust good enough to keep watching, but not remotely good enough to be actually good. Disappointment is not new in this field, but it's actively making me angry. It is developing a little more dimensionality with the NSA asshole forcing them into working for them, but then again the entire situation they are in is down to them not acting like S9 would and suspecting the shit out of slimy NSA guys who have come to give them a job. They seem so shocked and disappointed that the US government is selling them out and forcing them into doing something they don't want; because that's totally unlike how the US government has behaved on this show in the past, right? They've always been so trustworthy and above board, except for every single time they've interacted with these characters prior to now. But yeah, I'm sure they'd be much more likely to be straight with an entirely disposable 5-person mercenary company than they would with the Japanese government.
EPISODE 5
I hope this will come to be known as The Great Naked Smooth-crotch Kuvshinov Backflips Fiasco. I mean, I was actually into this episode for a minute, up to then, but the idea is preposterous. Muscles can't do that. Physics can't do that. Here's a non-aug human, cyberbrain aside, doing bullet-dodging at Seburo rates of fire, and since his attackers are in autistic mode he can't read their movements from their own internal data, so it's all about what he can personally sense. All the 'processing powaah' in the world cannot enable you to see behind yourself. You cannot predict the trajectory of fully automatic fire after the first couple of rounds, particularly not if the shooter is moving, and even if you can, you can't get out of its way. And three veteran cyborgs who can move faster than he can, can't manage to shoot him, hit him or catch him. BULL. SHIT.
All you need to do is a) make him jump, get him on the way down - no amount of muscles or 'processing powaah' can change a human's trajectory in mid-air; or b) get Ishikawa to unload his KSG at shin level. You can't dodge the fully random shot dispersion of a shotgun.
Meanwhile, dog-squad vs. Saito. He doesn't climb a tree? Badass points for firing a 20mm from the hip, sure, but no, this is not how you remain combat effective.
And then, they spent two episodes talking about making some sort of break for it, and when it comes to it, they stand around like lemons and let the Delta squad surround them, with lots of warning, all over again. This is not what S9 does.
Also, "Patrick Huge". Perhaps this is supposed to have been 'Hughes', but still...this really makes people take you seriously, chaps.
EPISODE 6
The series is still resolutely annoying. I will grudgingly give 'nice idea' points for having him program a virus into the system in the way he does; however the shape of this so far is clear - a series designed to create the largest number of setpieces with the least possible story. And it STILL looks like ass. The fight with the robots was laughable. And the start and end music still suck hugely; I hate the ending theme more every time I hear it. I am disappoint.
I can't quite put my finger on what the robots remind me of. Sure I've seen robots similar to this before. A game maybe?
EPISODE 7
OK, I will admit, with the exception of the crap that is Purin, this was an actually good episode, the style and feel of SAC at last. I want to see more bumbling oyaji criminals in the cybernetic future, and I think they did a good thing making a story like this.
But however much I try to look past it, the CG is really awful. Note how Batou's vest pockets deform when he puts his hands up. Someone noticed this and decided to not fix it. And I fucking see you, Kuvshinov, self-inserting again. Not professional.
At least Pazu and Borma are back.
EPISODE 8
So we're now two thirds through this and it took this long to form S9 again. The whole thing is badly crafted. E8 should have been a thoughtful spy drama and instead it hurriedly shoehorned that into the b-story. Togusa's 'investigation' is laughable - walks into the place in thermoptic camo with a hornet drone that goes 'there, on the prime minister's desk - the only thing on it - clearly visible - a tiny bastard'. I mean I could have done that without the drone or the thermoptics. The old men from the last episode could.
Thus my main impetus for continuing is not really curiosity but confusion, rather than "how will they solve this problem?" or "what is the answer to this mystery?" the driving force here is "are they going to explain what the fuck is going on?" and "when will this start to make sense?".
Calling this now, too - Togusa isn't divorced at all and it's all a ruse to protect his family. I mean they've been hinting since E2 but the way they keep harping on it seems like a cheap ploy to make Togusa seem more crafty.
EPISODE 9
It's just occurred to me that the structure of this series seems to be backwards. The setup and execution for this one seems very much like episodes of SAC gone by, ass visuals and excessively rapid pace notwithstanding. Previously things went from smaller incidents with odd technological dimensions to bigger plots and governmental intrigue and thence to multi-episode sequences with attack helicopters and tanks, but here we're going the opposite way.
Also, since the posthumans seem to be acting on diverse individual motivations all centred around righting a problem with global society , this very much reminds me of another Production IG gig written and directed by Kenji Kamiyama, Eden of the East, wherein a bunch of people are given phones loaded with immense sums of money and told they must 'save Japan', and each person responds to this in different ways. Turn that up to 11 and you get this, basically. The issue is the captured post-human with half his head missing. I can't really fit him into this idea. Then again military types do honestly believe in 'sic vis pacet para bellum' and 'peace through superior firepower' and so on, perhaps he thought the best idea really was to just destroy the world.
What's confusing me about this is the politics. In fiction you can't simply say 'black is white' or any other reversal of reality and expect people to just go with it, there must be a plausible grounds for believing it in the context.
I don't see how and why Japan is being painted as essentially a puppet state of the US in this series. Presumably the fact that Japan isn't one of the Great 4 is the root of this, but so far as I can see Japan in Underscore 2045 is doing what it normally does in reality, just doing its own thing while creating technology for export, and particularly given the radiation-scrubbing tech Japan is established to possess in 2nd Gig, there appears to be no sanction hanging over it forcing it to do what the Americans want, yet they still make out Japan is somehow beholden to the American Empire.
In reality, Japan has every ability to tell the Americans to fuck off - look for example at Okinawa. The Americans want to move their marine base but the locals are not into it, and are even less into the existing marine base. The marines in Okinawa play everything there extremely carefully because they know that they can't just get what they want and have to constantly work to establish goodwill. Obviously that doesn't necessarily fit with the fiction here, but we need to know why they're acting like this for it to be credible.
However the NSA asshole floats around like he owns the place and seems entirely able to give orders to the Japanese PM. Meanwhile the fact the Japanese PM is an American is completely beyond me; I suspect it will play into what's going on later. But make no mistake, this is still not a well-crafted story; it's achieving its objective through volume of fire rather than accuracy. They've burned a great deal of time and presumably money on building lacklustre set-pieces when they didn't have to, instead of making a story with the care they used to, and I want to know why.
EPISODE 10
Purin is cancer. Pure fucking cancer. I miss the meaningless badly choreographed desert fighting at this point. Purin belongs in GitS exactly as much as Kusanagi belongs in Love Hina or something. Whatever light fluffy high school romance anime is currently cool, I don't know about that stuff. Possibly this is the worst episode yet, thanks to the combination of her, a plot that goes nowhere and is based on idiocy and failure to apply any sort of macro logic to the situation (how is a witch hunt possibly better than law in anyone's mind? Even vigilantes do what they do because the law is failing, i.e. they believe in the concept of law enough that they want it to work), the embarrasingly bad fighting at the end (Togusa as Bruce Lee...fucking stop it) and some more of Purin being cancer. If Batou does in some way get with her, I will be so incredibly disappointed; even him brushing her off is not as amusing as it should be because of the way she reacts to it.
If I want pink-haired cartoon schoolgirls who think they are cute, designed for people too immature to appreciate realistic mature characters like S9 used to be, I'm spoiled for choice, but stop dragging that bilge into Ghost in the Shell, or more accurately dragging GitS down into the bilge.
It's even undermining GitS's feminist kudos. Up to now, whatever else they do with this series, Kusanagi is out there being gender equality incarnate, defining herself as a strong character against strong antagonists over and over again... but here comes Purin, performing femininity for no in-universe reason whatsoever to those who don't appreciate it at all (Batou/the tachikomas) and assuming that she's got to be subservient until someone tells her otherwise. Then she goes out in the field and the first thing she does is make some slob undress for no reason and he still outwits her. But now Production IG can finally sell cute GitS merch, so yaaaaaay!
This episode supports my 'Super-Eden of the East' theory, too.
EPISODE 11
I stand by my assessment of this as working backwards. This resembles the sort of inciting event that makes the rest of a story like Laughing Man hang together. But I also smell the high probability of a second series of this; largely because, based on the vestigial ability to create an interconnected plot on view here, the likelihood of things wrapping up fully in the final episode is tiny.
It's also making me fucking angry. The ethics of the school scenes are so fucking rank all around; the teacher mixing good life advice with sickening suggestive behaviour, and later rape; the girl who's so focused on 'being good' she's not willing to allow anyone to deviate from the 'correct' thing to do, and then being put on a pedestal for it by the boy; the apathetic avoidance and toxic escapism of Shimamura himself; the way the whole thing is presented ambiguously, providing the opportunity for it to all not be real, which is such a cop out.
Possibly that's what they were going for, but either way, as someone who works with Japanese teenagers and sees less amped-up elements of all of this stuff all the time, I am fucking repulsed by the bottomless fatalism of it all, the readiness to just accept without challenge. "One person cannot make a difference" feels like a personal attack. That's ALL HISTORY IS, one person making a difference, over and over again. It's why I am who I am and why I do what I do. And it all feels like emotional manipulation rather than good fiction because it's so inept at storytelling.
That game the kid is playing, too. Ugh. Is this what anime creators think 14-year-old kids play? Is this what 14-year-old kids play? If it actually is, really, dear 14 year olds, get your shit together. I was playing much better games than that in 1995, when I was 14.
EPISODE 12
Yep. Cliffhanger ending. Unresolved. Unsatisfying. In a way it was 12 episodes of dangling bait in front of my nose. Called that Togusa arc, too.
I feel like my emotions are being manipulated by a particularly clumsy brain surgeon. Perhaps this is what it's like to have your cyberbrain hacked. Or then again, maybe this is what it's like to dislike fiction. If this were my first dive into GitS I might be actively into it, but as it stands, this is distressingly similar to Rebuild of Eva 3 (albeit not nearly as bad, since that unrivalled shitheap is designed explicitly to sabotage itself, whereas this is simply not very good) in that both critically disappoint by having the original creators taking a thing that we know and love, and then mightily shitting on it by making it not be like it should be.
Like a lot of people watching this, I have a pre-existing connection to it because I know and, despite everything, still love the characters here, and I'm along for this ride basically for them and the promise of more of their adventures - but at the same time, this as-yet half-baked plot and cruddy storytelling is really fucking around with me.
Also in common with Rebuild of Eva, we now have to wait for a resolution to the story that still has the potential to fix the problems with the story, but also the potential to seal its fate as a massive disappointment, and right now the scales of probability tip rather more to the 'massive disappointment' end of things. The term 'character assassination' refers to deliberate attempts to smear someone and that's not what's going on here, but based on how badly the series has used its characters, I do sympathise with those using this terminology.
The inclusion of Takeshi Shimamura as a 14-year-old blank slate sympathetic antagonist is pretty revealing regarding the intended audience of the thing. Add to that a randomly dead child and you have a perfectly good recipe for shitting on Ghost in the Shell. Compare this with the way that the runaway Tachikoma SAC episode was handled. That had a child character, but was sensitively made and demanded emotional intelligence. This was literally killing off a child by accident to motivate a villain. It's so cheap; it's the kind of thing beginner writers are warned not to do since audiences don't buy it, because it's such a cliche. Cheap sentimentality!
The non-chronological nature of Shimamura's story fucks it up too. So first he goes to stay in an idyllic country village, encounters a mysterious paratrooper, steals the book, tries to give it back and is told to keep it because it predicts the future, tries to read it and doesn't understand. Then he goes wandering in the forest and some apparently blind corrupt cops murder someone right in front of him; the girl shows up, the paratrooper shows up out of nowhere for no reason and shoots the cops, while they accidentally shoot the little girl who dies in Takeshi's arms. There's a police report about it, but apparently his mother doesn't know anything about it? Then because of this incident he turns into the hollow, useless, hallucinating wreck that we've seen in the previous episode. He read 1984, claimed to understand it. Something happened at his school, but thanks to unreliable narration (and shit storytelling) we can't be sure what; in response he made ThinkPol but only used it once.
...What in the shit is he doing? Where is he now? Did anything actually happen at that school? The rape by the teacher? The suicide? Do S9 know about it or not? When we see it, whose POV are we following? Is he actually in the village with Togusa and Batou or not?
So much left unanswered. We need some things unanswered to make the second half work, but this episode answers literally nothing. I see nearly zero return on my investment in this series up to this point. Planting and payoff has to be a continual thing to work. It's not one or the other. You're planting seeds but you're also letting them grow and sprout and blossom. Underscore 2045 is flinging seeds in every bloody direction and dashing off to do it some more without waiting for more than a couple to sprout.
Particularly since 1984 is such an important book, it's a great idea in principle to have that form a foundation for the story as Catcher in the Rye did with SAC 1, but are they really having this kid be Winston Smith straight down the line? He tries to rebel against the system and gets Room 101'ed into submission? Who is going to be O'Brian in this allegory? The NSA? S9?
As I said, if this were my first dive into GitS and I were young and had no sense, which is to say this was the first such thing I'd ever seen and I didn't know about how much better it could be, I might be into it. But by this point I'm 39 years old, I've seen, read and played almost every incarnation of Ghost in the Shell, and I grew up with the 1995 movie when it was new and I was 14. And 14-year-old me loved that film. It's still my favourite film. So far, while it's grown on me a bit and it's not appalling, this is the most disappointing and flawed incarnation of it, and making it this basic for the sake of younger audiences is frankly an insult to younger audiences.
WHERE DOES IT GO FROM HERE?
Best Case Scenario: Posthumans are working for the betterment of humanity, Kusanagi starts acting like the extremely resourceful and intelligent person she is and ends up joining them, there's some sort of link established between them and the antagonist from SSS, Togusa is undercover in the posthuman gang rather than brainwashed, Purin gets shot dead in Episode 13 and Batou decides to avenge her in spectacular fashion, Stan comes back and his existence is actually justified in some way and he gets to be useful, Boma and Paz get some lines, some backstory and something useful to do, the PM turns out to be a bad guy. Also the visuals get less atrocious and Yoko Kanno comes back. Bonus points for Appleseed continuity links.
Worst Case Scenario: Posthumans are evil because they just are, Kusanagi continues to carry the idiot ball, Togusa is actually taken over by the posthumans and becomes an enemy only to be stopped at the last moment by his ex-wife, Purin gets a bigger role/is actually a tachikoma, Paz and Borma continue to be set dressing only, Stan comes back for like one episode for no very good reason.
submitted by SecretCatPolicy to Ghost_in_the_Shell [link] [comments]
Long post is long. Spoiler-filled, obviously. TLDR version: No mercy for the weak. Learn to read.
EPISODE 1
Based on the first episode, video games are a really good touchstone for this series so far, but not only because of how it looks. I keep thinking about the Zero Wing cutscene meme ("Someone set up us the bomb!" "All your base are belong to us" and so on) because that's really comparable in terms of storytelling, writing and general quality of presentation. Zero Wing exists as a meme because of its terrible translation, but it is not actually impossible to understand, just full of laughable errors. But the reason it's easy to understand is because of the simplicity of the narrative; some rudimentary scene setting and setup of characters precedes a basic action scene to launch the meat of the game.
This is important; in any narrative where the story world isn't a well-known part of our current world (fantasy and sci-fi in particular), it's critical to set up the world where the story occurs. Context is everything. Context, established well, draws you into the story by making you care about the world and characters. Maybe you like them. Maybe you find your curiosity piqued. Maybe there's an element of fear or excitement in there too. But by how the initial state of the world is presented, you should also be forming an emotional connection with the show that draws you in in order to form an intellectual connection that cements your connection to the story. With Zero Wing, since the reason you're there, seeing the cutscene, is to play the game, and the story is basically only set dressing, only the most simple establishment of context is needed. A bad guy has popped up; fight him!
Exactly the same thing seems to be going on here, except there's no game. A bunch of bad guys pop up; fight them! Context, you say? Well, here's the official English title crawl:
AD 2042 - The Great 4 (American Empire, China, Russia, and EU) sought economic sustainability for its members. Using AI Code 1A84 the American Empire initiated war as an industry. The world dubbed it "sustainable war". However, each nation put its economic interests first, and the world soon found itself in a dire straits.None of this is 'why', it's all 'what'; it's like looking at a diagram of for example a human heart and having it clearly labelled with "anterior ventricle" and "chordae tendiniae" and so on - I now know what those things are called but I still know nothing about what they do and why they are like they are. In the same way, I know that 'sustainable war' is a significant thing in the story, but I don't have a clue what it is, how it works, why it exists, why it's bad/good for given people; I know that the global money system is messed up, and the name of the problem hints at what's going on, but not why or how... With this intro they're trying to set a wider scene, but they do it in the worst way possible, giving us an 'explanation' that's full of stuff they then need to explain further, but don't.
AD 2044 - The Global Simultaneous Default caused financial firms to halt all transactions. Paper currency became worthless, and all virtual currency and e-money vanished from the net. This triggered a rapid escalation in war as an industry. Even advanced nations suffered riots, terrorism, separatist movements, and civil war. Sustainable war slowly but surely began to spread, threatening the human race with extinction.
AD 2045...
Consider this utter failure of a sentence:
Using AI Code 1A84 the American Empire initiated war as an industry.I have three problems here.
- Initiated? Anyone with a brain knows war has been at least somewhat of an industry for about the last 5000 years. Anyone with any knowledge of modern history knows about Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex, the Vietnam war, the War On Drugs, the War On Terror... Surely the entire idea of this is to be an allegory for modern geopolitics - so perhaps implying that the modern world isn't like this is unwise, if you actually want your allegory to land. Or do they mean they're coming out and openly saying "Today we're going to invade [throws dart at map] ...Angola, not because they're doing anything wrong, just because we want to financially rape them"? How does that work?
- War on whom? Wars happen to defend or to acquire. War as an industry relies on an economically favourable objective to the war, i.e. a war to acquire something. You support your domestic economy by making weapons, sure, but there has to be a goal to using the weapons. Shooting stuff doesn't make money by itself. Whether it's about claiming resources or about destroying a state infrastructure in order to sell it a new one, war in and of itself isn't an industry entire.
- What is AI Code 1A84? This is made to seem meaningful without any further explanation, and it just excludes the audience. You could remove this part of the sentence entirely and it doesn't change anything. That is what we call 'bad writing'. If it turns out that this is important information later, it should be introduced in a way that establishes a mystery around it. Or it's a literary allusion - permanent wars supporting superstates is a feature of 1984, but that's about establishing ideology, not economics; the economics take care of themselves, in that the war drives the ideology that makes the citizens into unprotesting mindless slaves who drive the economy. That doesn't quite seem like what they're going for here.
Now look at the first two series of SAC - they have phenomenal storytelling of an incredibly complex story because they are detective shows and the whole thing is about building up understanding of a case in order to solve it. It's why detective shows are so absorbing - because we're learning stuff organically. Both the Laughing Man incident and the Individual Eleven conspiracies were both uncovered by evolving events and having the protagonists track them and investigate their causes while we follow their investigation and piece the story together as the characters do. This was about the only way to tell such a complicated story. Much better to make the story set the scene, no?
Again, underscore 2045 follows exactly the same format as Zero Wing. Brief, overly simplified infodump followed by action that establishes main characters. It would be forgivable to do things this way if the action scene was a) good, b) achieved something or c) established characters well, but it fails all those. The action choreography is awful, makes no sense and serves no purpose plot-wise and actively undermines existing fans expectations of characters. Consider:
- The bad guys are just shooting randomly at nothing, for no reason; clearly ammo is free in this war-torn desert.
- The squad just hang out in the line of fire like a clear invitation to shoot.
- They just let the bad guys shoot grenades at them for fully a minute before Saito takes the GL out of action with a single shot, which he could have done as soon as the truck appeared. Worse, it appears the only reason he did it was to embarrass Stan.
- Tachikoma jumps up on wind turbines, shoots at rear of technical, technical loses front wheel. Makes perfect sense.
- Before, everyone involved could shoot accurately to an insane degree. Now the only one who can seems to be Saito.
- They talk about trying to make sure they have as few casualties as possible, then proceed to crash the vehicles, shoot fully automatic weapons at them and generally not try to do that in any meaningful way, and the fact that some of them survive is sheer luck. Possibly they're talking about their actual targets at the end of the road, but that's not clear.
- The guy who gets the drop on Batou; what the fuck was that? The man's a veteran of the Rangers and Section 9. He fought in WWIV, he's been in hundreds of gunfights - and he's still here. Suddenly he's been handed the idiot ball. I fully expected him to do something cool, but no. #JusticeForBatou. Also, the guy who gets the drop on him is then ambushed by Kusanagi, who was standing behind and a little off to the side. How did he not see her?
The dialogue writing is really poor as well; cookie cutter dialogue, characters have no gravitas and sound like parodies of themselves, and their inside man is so transparently playing them. This is kids show or pantomime level characterisation; or also-ran video game level, since Zero Wing is still in the chat. The target audience of this show is clearly skewing waaaay lower than before.
About visuals; it's the room elephant, but what can I say that hasn't already been said? The suspension of disbelief required for this is enormous, and I fully agree with those who compare it visually to video games, because I can't remember ever seeing a commercially made thing that looked more like a game without actually being one. It really looks like a machinima. The way characters are designed looks like pre-Appleseed CG Anime (which was directed by Shinji Aramaki...what the hell is he doing?), but cheaper and more indie; it's just piss poor. The shininess of the character skin looks very much like plastic. The objects in the world around look weightless and unreal. The way characters move is very NPC-like, for example the food seller that Batou talks to on the way into the town, does the same 'waving away flies' animation - an idle anim - three times in the course of the short scene where she appears.* This is truly TV for the gaming generation.
Also, character design. Compare the character's outfits with their outfits in 2nd Gig Episode 14. Those were soldiers. These are action figures. They're mercenaries in a warzone, but they have tiny little plate carriers, no helmets, no camo, no other protection at all. I remember once asking a guy who had a prosthetic leg why he wore a shoe on it and his answer was that there was no reason to wear the leg itself out when there were things that could protect it right there. The same is true on a larger scale here - if you're in a warzone it makes no sense not to wear armour if you can, even if your body is prosthetic and made of titanium alloys you might as well protect it.
The OP music is pure shit. In-episode music is unexceptional and forgettable. ED theme is pretty ass too. In all this is about as disappointing as I feared.
* this will come up later, I know. This is what I thought after the first episode.
EPISODE 2
So I enjoyed this a bit more because it was a lot more like Section 9 doing Section 9 things, namely being small+high tech+cunning vs. big+high tech+stupid, thematically, and resembles the 'rogue Jigabachi' episode from early in SAC 2nd Gig. It undermines itself crucially, but I begin to suspect that's not going to be uncommon.
The action again made generally not nearly enough sense, and wasn't very satisfying in that once again it is undermining the characters we know:
- Saito is all like "oh I can't snipe it because it's in my blind spot and it's hacking my satellite feed"... So just unplug and shoot the fucking thing. Human snipers now can do that. Saito could do that in SAC 2nd Gig Episode 14. A 25-year veteran battlefield sniper with a state of the art rifle can do that.
- Batou takes out a tank with an AA missile, somehow; they need some help with their missiles, clearly.
- Ishikawa, an ace hacker...drives a truck (it's like a Top Gear intro).
- "Stan" hung around, did nothing all over again.
- And Kusanagi...age has not mellowed her. Age has turned her into a giant fucking showoff (watch her vault the rail on the stairs, and sigh) and lost her a great deal of sense.
Also of note: why do they have state of the art hand weapons but guided missiles from basically now or earlier? Stingers are 1980s tech for god's sake. I mean they could probably have some old stuff, in much the same way some people are fighting right now with AK47s and older guns, but if they have Seburos... I can't believe there's not something that would let one of them pilot the missile to its target and ignore the flares, given that we can basically do that now and that Saito is basically doing that with bullets; something you can steer would be absolutely a natural fit with cyberbrain tech.
Visually it looked better, for one reason only: it took place at night.
I can see myself being really pissed off with Togusa's arc. Something is signalling that it's going to be really unsatisfying and Togusa in particular is going to be messed around and end up behaving horrifically out of character. I'm already pissed off that they managed to have him divorce off-screen, when he seemed to have a genuinely close relationship with his family before. Last episode they mentioned that he had some sort of grudge against Kusanagi and the others but it doesn't scan with who he is. The point of him at the beginning (S9 noob) vs. him at the end of the first series (part of the team) vs. how he was in SSS (doing Kusanagi's job) was that he was really inherent to what S9 was and I don't believe that situation would arise from that sort of relationship. "No lol they left him behind and replaced him with fucking Stan" does not scan.
And let's talk about Stan for a moment. Generally when you have an established team and a noob, the noob is there to be explained to - an audience surrogate, basically, so we can learn what the experienced characters already know. Or, as a variation, he's there to be mystified because they won't tell him what's going on, and become pro-active in finding information for himself, performing the same function in a different way. Alternatively, a new character brings a new skillset to the mix. But Stan is apparently just there to be insulted for no obvious reason beyond a cruel sense of humour. He serves no purpose, has no clear skills, discovers basically nothing and has virtually nothing explained to him, and we find things out much more from pre-op briefings and veteran characters talking to each other than from him. He is, so far, a textbook token character.
The geopolitics of the thing are also annoyingly absent in terms of showing rather than telling. The conversation between Batou and the leader of the terrorist footballers (I kind of get what they're going for with this, and I suppose it's just a novelty, but still, ????) was a really good example of what not to do to set your world up. They're sports stars calling out professional soldiers for being '1%er lackeys'...didn't anyone notice how little sense that makes? Pro sportsmen are, at least in the modern world, almost the definition of the 1%. We have no indication of why these spoiled kids, entirely against type, would be concerned with politics at all, let alone radicalised enough to kill.
We know there's some sort of Behind Man person supporting the terrorist footballers, and we know they know something about what's going to happen. These are yet to be developed so I can get behind this, but the fact a missile hit something after trying all episode to prevent it and I still don't know what it hit because nobody in the story apparently cares enough to find out is simply a failure of storytelling. I don't care just because they do, you know; you need to invest me in the story beyond "Huh? What does that mean? What is this about? Why did that happen?". I want to understand this more so that I care about it.
Got to end on a grudgingly positive note, though. I do want to see more; I want to see if this apparently crappy storytelling actually goes anywhere or if it's just going to be 12 episodes of dangling bait in front of my nose.
EPISODE 3
Not only is the animation and design worse than anything GitS has ever done, the title card looks worse too. The way they depicted cyberspace in original SAC was beautiful - stylishly well crafted but busy enough that it looked plausibly megatechnological. This is just worse. Hexagons. Hexagons are played the fuck out, my friends. That's some deviantart level design.
Love the way the squad just stand there like idiots while the Delta guys just form up around them. Nobody has any fucking sense here.
Togusa has a picture of his wife and kids which is super precious to him; I already feel like I'm being deceived. And then he has a bitchin' Camaro. With stripes. In a warzone. With no traffic. This all makes perfect sense.
But at least the woman repeating the 'waving away flies' anim is explained. Very clever, but the problem is that you need to hang around this long to get that it's not egregious laziness on the part of the production but has an actual purpose in the plot; people with a low tolerance for bullshit won't last that long and will go and rant about how the series looks like a PS2 game.
But so far the whole thing is just so fucking basic. The series really seems to be assuming the audience are idiots. Nothing is left to the imagination, and what little is there to tie into wider theme is telegraphed really clearly.
GOD I hate how this series looks. I hate it. It's depersonalisation. They are actively making everyone less human-like. You are making your characters worse by making them look like this.
EPISODE 4
The main problem here is that this is juuuuuust good enough to keep watching, but not remotely good enough to be actually good. Disappointment is not new in this field, but it's actively making me angry. It is developing a little more dimensionality with the NSA asshole forcing them into working for them, but then again the entire situation they are in is down to them not acting like S9 would and suspecting the shit out of slimy NSA guys who have come to give them a job. They seem so shocked and disappointed that the US government is selling them out and forcing them into doing something they don't want; because that's totally unlike how the US government has behaved on this show in the past, right? They've always been so trustworthy and above board, except for every single time they've interacted with these characters prior to now. But yeah, I'm sure they'd be much more likely to be straight with an entirely disposable 5-person mercenary company than they would with the Japanese government.
EPISODE 5
I hope this will come to be known as The Great Naked Smooth-crotch Kuvshinov Backflips Fiasco. I mean, I was actually into this episode for a minute, up to then, but the idea is preposterous. Muscles can't do that. Physics can't do that. Here's a non-aug human, cyberbrain aside, doing bullet-dodging at Seburo rates of fire, and since his attackers are in autistic mode he can't read their movements from their own internal data, so it's all about what he can personally sense. All the 'processing powaah' in the world cannot enable you to see behind yourself. You cannot predict the trajectory of fully automatic fire after the first couple of rounds, particularly not if the shooter is moving, and even if you can, you can't get out of its way. And three veteran cyborgs who can move faster than he can, can't manage to shoot him, hit him or catch him. BULL. SHIT.
All you need to do is a) make him jump, get him on the way down - no amount of muscles or 'processing powaah' can change a human's trajectory in mid-air; or b) get Ishikawa to unload his KSG at shin level. You can't dodge the fully random shot dispersion of a shotgun.
Meanwhile, dog-squad vs. Saito. He doesn't climb a tree? Badass points for firing a 20mm from the hip, sure, but no, this is not how you remain combat effective.
And then, they spent two episodes talking about making some sort of break for it, and when it comes to it, they stand around like lemons and let the Delta squad surround them, with lots of warning, all over again. This is not what S9 does.
Also, "Patrick Huge". Perhaps this is supposed to have been 'Hughes', but still...this really makes people take you seriously, chaps.
EPISODE 6
The series is still resolutely annoying. I will grudgingly give 'nice idea' points for having him program a virus into the system in the way he does; however the shape of this so far is clear - a series designed to create the largest number of setpieces with the least possible story. And it STILL looks like ass. The fight with the robots was laughable. And the start and end music still suck hugely; I hate the ending theme more every time I hear it. I am disappoint.
I can't quite put my finger on what the robots remind me of. Sure I've seen robots similar to this before. A game maybe?
EPISODE 7
OK, I will admit, with the exception of the crap that is Purin, this was an actually good episode, the style and feel of SAC at last. I want to see more bumbling oyaji criminals in the cybernetic future, and I think they did a good thing making a story like this.
But however much I try to look past it, the CG is really awful. Note how Batou's vest pockets deform when he puts his hands up. Someone noticed this and decided to not fix it. And I fucking see you, Kuvshinov, self-inserting again. Not professional.
At least Pazu and Borma are back.
EPISODE 8
So we're now two thirds through this and it took this long to form S9 again. The whole thing is badly crafted. E8 should have been a thoughtful spy drama and instead it hurriedly shoehorned that into the b-story. Togusa's 'investigation' is laughable - walks into the place in thermoptic camo with a hornet drone that goes 'there, on the prime minister's desk - the only thing on it - clearly visible - a tiny bastard'. I mean I could have done that without the drone or the thermoptics. The old men from the last episode could.
Thus my main impetus for continuing is not really curiosity but confusion, rather than "how will they solve this problem?" or "what is the answer to this mystery?" the driving force here is "are they going to explain what the fuck is going on?" and "when will this start to make sense?".
Calling this now, too - Togusa isn't divorced at all and it's all a ruse to protect his family. I mean they've been hinting since E2 but the way they keep harping on it seems like a cheap ploy to make Togusa seem more crafty.
EPISODE 9
It's just occurred to me that the structure of this series seems to be backwards. The setup and execution for this one seems very much like episodes of SAC gone by, ass visuals and excessively rapid pace notwithstanding. Previously things went from smaller incidents with odd technological dimensions to bigger plots and governmental intrigue and thence to multi-episode sequences with attack helicopters and tanks, but here we're going the opposite way.
Also, since the posthumans seem to be acting on diverse individual motivations all centred around righting a problem with global society , this very much reminds me of another Production IG gig written and directed by Kenji Kamiyama, Eden of the East, wherein a bunch of people are given phones loaded with immense sums of money and told they must 'save Japan', and each person responds to this in different ways. Turn that up to 11 and you get this, basically. The issue is the captured post-human with half his head missing. I can't really fit him into this idea. Then again military types do honestly believe in 'sic vis pacet para bellum' and 'peace through superior firepower' and so on, perhaps he thought the best idea really was to just destroy the world.
What's confusing me about this is the politics. In fiction you can't simply say 'black is white' or any other reversal of reality and expect people to just go with it, there must be a plausible grounds for believing it in the context.
I don't see how and why Japan is being painted as essentially a puppet state of the US in this series. Presumably the fact that Japan isn't one of the Great 4 is the root of this, but so far as I can see Japan in Underscore 2045 is doing what it normally does in reality, just doing its own thing while creating technology for export, and particularly given the radiation-scrubbing tech Japan is established to possess in 2nd Gig, there appears to be no sanction hanging over it forcing it to do what the Americans want, yet they still make out Japan is somehow beholden to the American Empire.
In reality, Japan has every ability to tell the Americans to fuck off - look for example at Okinawa. The Americans want to move their marine base but the locals are not into it, and are even less into the existing marine base. The marines in Okinawa play everything there extremely carefully because they know that they can't just get what they want and have to constantly work to establish goodwill. Obviously that doesn't necessarily fit with the fiction here, but we need to know why they're acting like this for it to be credible.
However the NSA asshole floats around like he owns the place and seems entirely able to give orders to the Japanese PM. Meanwhile the fact the Japanese PM is an American is completely beyond me; I suspect it will play into what's going on later. But make no mistake, this is still not a well-crafted story; it's achieving its objective through volume of fire rather than accuracy. They've burned a great deal of time and presumably money on building lacklustre set-pieces when they didn't have to, instead of making a story with the care they used to, and I want to know why.
EPISODE 10
Purin is cancer. Pure fucking cancer. I miss the meaningless badly choreographed desert fighting at this point. Purin belongs in GitS exactly as much as Kusanagi belongs in Love Hina or something. Whatever light fluffy high school romance anime is currently cool, I don't know about that stuff. Possibly this is the worst episode yet, thanks to the combination of her, a plot that goes nowhere and is based on idiocy and failure to apply any sort of macro logic to the situation (how is a witch hunt possibly better than law in anyone's mind? Even vigilantes do what they do because the law is failing, i.e. they believe in the concept of law enough that they want it to work), the embarrasingly bad fighting at the end (Togusa as Bruce Lee...fucking stop it) and some more of Purin being cancer. If Batou does in some way get with her, I will be so incredibly disappointed; even him brushing her off is not as amusing as it should be because of the way she reacts to it.
If I want pink-haired cartoon schoolgirls who think they are cute, designed for people too immature to appreciate realistic mature characters like S9 used to be, I'm spoiled for choice, but stop dragging that bilge into Ghost in the Shell, or more accurately dragging GitS down into the bilge.
It's even undermining GitS's feminist kudos. Up to now, whatever else they do with this series, Kusanagi is out there being gender equality incarnate, defining herself as a strong character against strong antagonists over and over again... but here comes Purin, performing femininity for no in-universe reason whatsoever to those who don't appreciate it at all (Batou/the tachikomas) and assuming that she's got to be subservient until someone tells her otherwise. Then she goes out in the field and the first thing she does is make some slob undress for no reason and he still outwits her. But now Production IG can finally sell cute GitS merch, so yaaaaaay!
This episode supports my 'Super-Eden of the East' theory, too.
EPISODE 11
I stand by my assessment of this as working backwards. This resembles the sort of inciting event that makes the rest of a story like Laughing Man hang together. But I also smell the high probability of a second series of this; largely because, based on the vestigial ability to create an interconnected plot on view here, the likelihood of things wrapping up fully in the final episode is tiny.
It's also making me fucking angry. The ethics of the school scenes are so fucking rank all around; the teacher mixing good life advice with sickening suggestive behaviour, and later rape; the girl who's so focused on 'being good' she's not willing to allow anyone to deviate from the 'correct' thing to do, and then being put on a pedestal for it by the boy; the apathetic avoidance and toxic escapism of Shimamura himself; the way the whole thing is presented ambiguously, providing the opportunity for it to all not be real, which is such a cop out.
Possibly that's what they were going for, but either way, as someone who works with Japanese teenagers and sees less amped-up elements of all of this stuff all the time, I am fucking repulsed by the bottomless fatalism of it all, the readiness to just accept without challenge. "One person cannot make a difference" feels like a personal attack. That's ALL HISTORY IS, one person making a difference, over and over again. It's why I am who I am and why I do what I do. And it all feels like emotional manipulation rather than good fiction because it's so inept at storytelling.
That game the kid is playing, too. Ugh. Is this what anime creators think 14-year-old kids play? Is this what 14-year-old kids play? If it actually is, really, dear 14 year olds, get your shit together. I was playing much better games than that in 1995, when I was 14.
EPISODE 12
Yep. Cliffhanger ending. Unresolved. Unsatisfying. In a way it was 12 episodes of dangling bait in front of my nose. Called that Togusa arc, too.
I feel like my emotions are being manipulated by a particularly clumsy brain surgeon. Perhaps this is what it's like to have your cyberbrain hacked. Or then again, maybe this is what it's like to dislike fiction. If this were my first dive into GitS I might be actively into it, but as it stands, this is distressingly similar to Rebuild of Eva 3 (albeit not nearly as bad, since that unrivalled shitheap is designed explicitly to sabotage itself, whereas this is simply not very good) in that both critically disappoint by having the original creators taking a thing that we know and love, and then mightily shitting on it by making it not be like it should be.
Like a lot of people watching this, I have a pre-existing connection to it because I know and, despite everything, still love the characters here, and I'm along for this ride basically for them and the promise of more of their adventures - but at the same time, this as-yet half-baked plot and cruddy storytelling is really fucking around with me.
Also in common with Rebuild of Eva, we now have to wait for a resolution to the story that still has the potential to fix the problems with the story, but also the potential to seal its fate as a massive disappointment, and right now the scales of probability tip rather more to the 'massive disappointment' end of things. The term 'character assassination' refers to deliberate attempts to smear someone and that's not what's going on here, but based on how badly the series has used its characters, I do sympathise with those using this terminology.
The inclusion of Takeshi Shimamura as a 14-year-old blank slate sympathetic antagonist is pretty revealing regarding the intended audience of the thing. Add to that a randomly dead child and you have a perfectly good recipe for shitting on Ghost in the Shell. Compare this with the way that the runaway Tachikoma SAC episode was handled. That had a child character, but was sensitively made and demanded emotional intelligence. This was literally killing off a child by accident to motivate a villain. It's so cheap; it's the kind of thing beginner writers are warned not to do since audiences don't buy it, because it's such a cliche. Cheap sentimentality!
The non-chronological nature of Shimamura's story fucks it up too. So first he goes to stay in an idyllic country village, encounters a mysterious paratrooper, steals the book, tries to give it back and is told to keep it because it predicts the future, tries to read it and doesn't understand. Then he goes wandering in the forest and some apparently blind corrupt cops murder someone right in front of him; the girl shows up, the paratrooper shows up out of nowhere for no reason and shoots the cops, while they accidentally shoot the little girl who dies in Takeshi's arms. There's a police report about it, but apparently his mother doesn't know anything about it? Then because of this incident he turns into the hollow, useless, hallucinating wreck that we've seen in the previous episode. He read 1984, claimed to understand it. Something happened at his school, but thanks to unreliable narration (and shit storytelling) we can't be sure what; in response he made ThinkPol but only used it once.
...What in the shit is he doing? Where is he now? Did anything actually happen at that school? The rape by the teacher? The suicide? Do S9 know about it or not? When we see it, whose POV are we following? Is he actually in the village with Togusa and Batou or not?
So much left unanswered. We need some things unanswered to make the second half work, but this episode answers literally nothing. I see nearly zero return on my investment in this series up to this point. Planting and payoff has to be a continual thing to work. It's not one or the other. You're planting seeds but you're also letting them grow and sprout and blossom. Underscore 2045 is flinging seeds in every bloody direction and dashing off to do it some more without waiting for more than a couple to sprout.
Particularly since 1984 is such an important book, it's a great idea in principle to have that form a foundation for the story as Catcher in the Rye did with SAC 1, but are they really having this kid be Winston Smith straight down the line? He tries to rebel against the system and gets Room 101'ed into submission? Who is going to be O'Brian in this allegory? The NSA? S9?
As I said, if this were my first dive into GitS and I were young and had no sense, which is to say this was the first such thing I'd ever seen and I didn't know about how much better it could be, I might be into it. But by this point I'm 39 years old, I've seen, read and played almost every incarnation of Ghost in the Shell, and I grew up with the 1995 movie when it was new and I was 14. And 14-year-old me loved that film. It's still my favourite film. So far, while it's grown on me a bit and it's not appalling, this is the most disappointing and flawed incarnation of it, and making it this basic for the sake of younger audiences is frankly an insult to younger audiences.
WHERE DOES IT GO FROM HERE?
Best Case Scenario: Posthumans are working for the betterment of humanity, Kusanagi starts acting like the extremely resourceful and intelligent person she is and ends up joining them, there's some sort of link established between them and the antagonist from SSS, Togusa is undercover in the posthuman gang rather than brainwashed, Purin gets shot dead in Episode 13 and Batou decides to avenge her in spectacular fashion, Stan comes back and his existence is actually justified in some way and he gets to be useful, Boma and Paz get some lines, some backstory and something useful to do, the PM turns out to be a bad guy. Also the visuals get less atrocious and Yoko Kanno comes back. Bonus points for Appleseed continuity links.
Worst Case Scenario: Posthumans are evil because they just are, Kusanagi continues to carry the idiot ball, Togusa is actually taken over by the posthumans and becomes an enemy only to be stopped at the last moment by his ex-wife, Purin gets a bigger role/is actually a tachikoma, Paz and Borma continue to be set dressing only, Stan comes back for like one episode for no very good reason.
2019.03.03 14:16 MyloTheGrey A Different Take on Curing MBP
Hey guys I found this in a forum and it really blew my mind. I hope we can be more open minded and hopeful when it comes to different ways of approaching MBP and possible solutions to cure it.
PART 1: THE METHOD I'll divide my method in 3 zones, posture, blood flow and general health, craniofacial development. All three are intertwined. POSTURE >Make sure your posture is correct. Watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQqgf8kB6R8 [Embed] >Buy a support for your pc on amazon if you use a laptop so that the pc is in line with your eyes. >Do hip flexor stretches every day before going to bed. I'm sure you have anterior pelvilc tilt. Do hip flexor stretches after every training sessions. >Make sure you fix your form on the exercises you do. This video from Elliot Hulse, for example, shows how doing chin ups badly can give you forward head posture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eeIiQ67\_1U [Embed] ; there are many more examples, become more expert on exercise science >For your training be sure you are more focused on long head of the triceps, neck, lower traps, rear delt, glutes, hamstrings and core. Focus less on biceps, quads, upper traps, front delt, chest. >Sleep on your back without a pillow. This is hard to reach (I still didn't manage to) but it will change a lot of things. If you have back pain, put a small pillow under your knees.
BLOOD FLOW AND GENERAL HEALTH >Improve your cardiovascular activity. Walk at least 10 000 steps every day. >Do scalp massages. They do improve your circulation, but the true purpose is to decompress the galea, allowing it to be mobile again. Do this test: if you can't move your hair only thinking about it, you probably have a receiding hairline. Decompress the galea. Research very well how to do this. After your galea becomes mobile again, exercise it's movement everyday in your sparetime, to cause blood flow. >Eat food containing aromatase inhibitors. Estrogen can cause hair loss in males, because estrogen is a stress hormone and stress can cause hair loss. In general have a good diet, consisting of non-processed food, meat and crude vegetables and fruits. >Consider taking micronutrients integrators. >Consider buying a water filter. >Abstain from porn and masturbation. >Abstain from activities that cause chronic stress you can avoid (internet usage, addictions, social medias, internet browsing, 4chan). >Include more time with loved ones, if you can. >Include a meditation routine into your life. >Use a topic drug capable of inducing more blood flow to your scalp to avoid the situation becomes worse, like minoxidil.
CRANIOFACIAL DEVELOPMENT This is the root cause. If you fix this, the others won't be necessary. But since it will take a while to fix this and you could not even be able to if you're too old or fucked up, you will still do the other two. The other two will actually accelerate the craniofacial process, making the improvement faster and better. >Mewing. I'm listing this first because it's free. Learn to mew every 24/7 and how to swallow correctly. >Surgery. If you have a deviated septum, get it fixed. It's free in most countries since it's not a cosmetic surgery, but a functional one. A deviated septum forces you to breath from your mouth since not enough air can enter your nose. This will help you with everything in your life, including posture, facial symmetry and forward maxillar development. >Palate symmetry and expansion. Find a functional, safe appliance which can expand your palate both forward and laterally, while at the same time correcting the assymetry in your maxilla and jaw, which is the main cause of all these problems. There are many, and I'm still researching them. For now, the A.L.F. (Advanced Lightwire Functional appliance) looks the best. It will fix your face and your balding if it's not too late.
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Blood vessels travel throught the scalp tissues fueling nutrients to the hair follicles. The galea aponeurotica is attached to the occipitofrontalis muscles. The temporalis muscles are also connected to the galea aponeurotica via the temporalis fascia. The galea aponeurotica can be stretched by the forces of muscular contraction. Since muscles throughout the body are connected via myofascial meridians, their action cannot be seen in isolation. This explains why intensity of neck pain, forward head posture, chronic tension-type headache and migraine are strictly correlated. When neck muscles are in continuous tension, their action propagates to the head, stretching and tightening the galea against the underlying layers of the scalp. The underlying structure is rich of blood vessels that are compressed, blocking blood flow towards the hair follicles. The restriction in blood supply to tissues is called ischemia: this leads to insufficiency of oxygen (hypoxia), reduced availability of nutrients and inadequate removal of metabolites. This obviously leads to the death of tissues, thus including the hair follicles (hair loss) and surrounding structures. This is also reflected in the presence of dandruff (excessive shedding of dead cells from the scalp). When tissues are damaged, an inflammatory response is activated. The function of inflammation is to clear out necrotic cells and damaged tissues. The classical signs of inflammation are heat, pain and redness. These elements describe symptoms of scalp sensitivity and trichodynia. Since the muscle tension that tight the galea is always present, the inflammation is long-term and chronic, causing fibrosis and calcification. This further decreases the blood flow into the scalp, promoting ulterior cells death, leading to a closed-loop chain of events depicted in the diagram I posted, reason why hair loss progresses with individuals becoming older.
Obviously a bad diet, lack of physical exercise and rise in estrogen levels brought an higher level of inflamation. But the main cause here is the tightening of those muscles. Before I explain why those muscles became tight in the first place, I'll first debunk the genetics/dht cope. Current theories see the dihydrotestosterone (DHT) hormone as the main responsible for hair loss. As the name suggests, there are two supposed causes for androgenetic alopecia: the action of hormones (androgens) and action derived from genetic. The theory started to arise after observations made on Eunuchs (i.e. men who have been castrated). Already in 400 BCE, Hippocrates noticed that Eunuchs do not become bald, with formal conclusions made by James B. Hamilton between 40s and 60s: eunuchoid and prepubertally castrated men fails to achieve sexual maturation and show complete retention of head hair. Baldness can then be induced by following administration of male hormone substances to sexually immature men who otherwise would not have become bald. In 1974, a study has generally observed a higher formation of 5α-reduced metabolites and 17-ketosteroid metabolites at all sites of the scalp of bald men as compared to hair obtained from the corresponding sites of women and nonbalding men. So, from here it has been assumed the importance of DHT in baldness. However, many arguments are against the role of DHT as primary cause in hair loss:
>DHT stimulates the production of pigmented terminal hair in many areas after puberty, including pubic and axillary hair in both sexes and beard growth in men. But both beard growth and balding can occur on the same person demonstrating a paradox >Serum androgen concentrations in men with a disposition to balding is lower than in men with no reduction of scalp hair. >The prevalence of Male Pattern Baldness increases with age. However, serum testosterone production declines with aging, together with lower serum DHT. >Female androgenetic alopecia can develop in the absence of detectable levels of circulating androgens or other signs of postpubertal androgenization, showing that this pattern of hair loss is not necessarily androgen dependent. Not only, female patients with androgen deficiency reports hair regrowth on testosterone therapy. We can see that Male Pattern Baldness only affects hair on top of the head, while hair on sides and back does not fall. So, how can DHT cause hair in one area of the scalp to fall out but have no effect on hair follicles just a few millimeters further down? Here is where the genetic part comes into action. According to the current theory, hair follicles on top of the head show increased expression of the androgen receptor gene, i.e. the top of the head is more sensitive to androgens action than hair on the sides and back of the head. However, higher levels of androgen receptors are also found in follicles of beard, scrotum and pubis, reinforcing the paradox. Genetics also suggests that the probability of male pattern hair loss is dependent on family history and age. However, in case of identical male twins, one can bald significantly faster than his counterpart. These together with many other unknowns bring the necessity to define a new model for the explanation of baldness.
Not surprisingly, it has been found that subcutaneous blood flow in the scalp of patients with early male pattern baldness is much lower than the values found in the normal individuals . This would explain the aforementioned higher formation of 5α-reduced metabolites and 17-ketosteroid metabolites at all sites of the scalp of bald men at the basis of the androgenetic theory. The restriction in blood supply to tissues is called ischemia: this leads to insufficiency of oxygen (hypoxia). Not surprisingly again, men suffering from androgenic alopecia have significantly lower oxygen partial pressure (meaning microvascular insufficiency and hypoxia) in the areas of their scalp affected by balding (frontal and vertex regions) versus unaffected areas (temporal and occipital regions). Moreover, balding men have significantly lower oxygen partial pressure in the areas of balding scalp than the same areas of non-bald people. Minoxidil solution, which is one of the commercially available medications for hair loss, stimulates the microcirculation of the bald scalp, effectively promoting hair growth . Patients should be warned about increased shedding in the first months of treatment, that is seen as a positive response to the treatment. How can this increased shedding be explained? Could it be the so called reperfusion injury, i.e. the tissue damage caused when blood supply returns to the tissue after a period of ischemia? In case of reduced blood supply, tissues are damaged and die, thus including the hair follicles and surrounding structures. A proof of this is the associated excessive dandruff found in hair loss: the last layer of the skin, called stratum corneum, consists of dead cells (corneocytes) that are regularly replaced through desquamation. However, certain conditions trigger a more rapid turnover, leading to a larger shedding recognized as dandruff.
When tissues are damaged, an inflammatory response is activated. The function of inflammation is to clear out necrotic cells and damaged tissues. The classical signs of inflammation are heat, pain and redness, situation recognized as scalp sensitivity (burning, stinging, dry scalp, vague discomfort in the scalp, and sometimes, trichodynia) that is associated with hair loss. And guess what? Many studies have shown DHT plays an important role in inflammations, regulating its activity When the inflammation is long-term and chronic, it causes fibrosis and calcification. Indeed, miniaturization of hair follicles has been associated with deposits of densely packed collagen bundles in the follicular dermal sheath, called perifollicular fibrosis. This further decreases the blood flow into the scalp, promoting ulterior cells death. Conclusion: hair loss is not a problem of the hair itself but was a problem of the surrounding tissues. Take two seeds of a genetically identical corn, place one seed in a temperate climate and one in an arid climate: the one in the arid climate only grows to half the height of the one in the temperate climate due to lack of water and nutrients in its environment. This is exactly what happens with our hair and there are studies confirming it: miniaturized hair follicles of pattern alopecia can quickly regenerate once removed from the human scalp and can grow as well as or better than terminal follicles from the same individual. And not only miniaturized hair can regrowth, but also terminal hairs can shrink in difficult recipient sites, impacting their growth and survival rates.
The cause of bad head posture, other than bad habits, is bad craniofacial development, caused by various things, such as biberons, mouthbreathing, early hard feeding, allergies (caused by the modern world). This is a topic too long to explain now, and I reccomend the blog I took the info from (www.tmdocclusion.com). There's not a single bald person with good craniofacial development. As you can see here, both Statham and the Guy in the OP pic here have a very tight neck (look at the folds on the neck. This is how you determine if someone has a tight neck or not) and most importantly a totally assymetric and badly developed face.
Already in 1939 Weston A. Price wrote about his travel around the world where he discovered that jaw problems were not present in tribes of isolated areas far from civilization. In a simplistic view, maxilla is primarily remodeled by forces coming from the tongue and teeth (through masseter muscles) and the causes of a poor craniofacial development have to be found in modern lifestyle, in particular in: >Increasing of bottle-feeding over breast-feeding that influences the swallowing pattern and all oral muscles. >Use of pacifiers/dummies that mainly affect tongue posture. >Trend towards industrial soft high-calorie food that hits chewing effort and muscles action. >Reduced nasal airways, increasing of allergies and nasal congestion that leads to mouth breathing affecting both tongue posture and muscles action. >Trend towards an earlier or too early weaning, influencing swallowing pattern. When one or more of these factors are present, the maxilla drops down and back, reducing the eye support, flattening the cheekbones, narrowing the nasal airway, lengthening the mid facial third, and lowering the palate, which narrows and create malocclusion.
SOURCES :
>Godse, Kiran, and Vijay Zawar. “Sensitive scalp.” International journal of trichology 4.2 (2012): 102. >Misery, Laurent, et al. “Sensitive scalp: does this condition exist? An epidemiological study.” Contact Dermatitis 58.4 (2008): 234-238. >Willimann, Barbara, and Ralph M. Trüeb. “Hair pain (trichodynia): frequency and relationship to hair loss and patient gender.” Dermatology 205.4 (2002): 374-377. >ALEXANBER, SUZANNE. “Loss of hair and dandruff.” British Journal of Dermatology 79.10 (1967): 549-552. >Rossi, Alfredo, et al. “Minoxidil use in dermatology, side effects and recent patents.” Recent patents on inflammation & allergy drug discovery 6.2 (2012): 130-136. >Avci, Pinar, et al. “Low‐level laser (light) therapy (LLLT) for treatment of hair loss.” Lasers in surgery and medicine 46.2 (2014): 144-151. >Choy, H. “Detumescence Therapy of Human Scalp for Natural Hair Regrowth.” J Clin Exp Dermatol Res 3.138 (2012): 2. >Mew, M. “Craniofacial dystrophy. A possible syndrome?.” British dental journal 216.10 (2014): 555-558. >Gonzalez, Humberto E., and Arturo Manns. “Forward head posture: its structural and functional influence on the stomatognathic system, a conceptual study.” CRANIO® 14.1 (1996): 71-80. >Solow, Beni, and Antje Tallgren. “Head posture and craniofacial morphology.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 44.3 (1976): 417-435.
>Strokon, Dennis. “Correction of Dental and Cranial Sidebend with ALF.” IJOM 21 (2010): 3. >Darnell, Michael W. “A proposed chronology of events for forward head posture.” Journal of craniomandibular practice1.4 (1983): 49-54. >Ernest III, Edwin A., and W. Ernest. “Splenius Capitis.” >Simons, David G., Janet G. Travell, and Lois S. Simons. Travell & Simons’ myofascial pain and dysfunction: upper half of body. Vol. 1. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1999. >Myers, Thomas W. “The ‘anatomy trains’.” Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies 1.2 (1997): 91-101. >Haughie, Laura J., Ira M. Fiebert, and Kathryn E. Roach. “Relationship of forward head posture and cervical backward bending to neck pain.” Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy 3.3 (1995): 91-97. >Fernández‐de‐las‐Peñas, César, et al. “Trigger Points in the Suboccipital Muscles and Forward Head Posture in Tension‐Type Headache.” Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain 46.3 (2006): 454-460. >Fernández-de-las-Penas, César, et al. “Referred pain areas of active myofascial trigger points in head, neck, and shoulder muscles, in chronic tension type headache.” Journal of bodywork and movement therapies 14.4 (2010): 391-396. >Fernández‐de‐las‐Peñas, César, Maria L. Cuadrado, and Juan A. Pareja. “Myofascial trigger points, neck mobility, and forward head posture in episodic tension‐type headache.” Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain 47.5 (2007): 662-672. >Freund, Brian J., and Marvin Schwartz. “Treatment of male pattern baldness with botulinum toxin: a pilot study.” Plastic and reconstructive surgery 126.5 (2010): 246e-248e.
>Klemp, Per, Kurt Peters, and Birgitte Hansted. “Subcutaneous blood flow in early male pattern baldness.” Journal of investigative dermatology 92.5 (1989): 725-726. >Goldman, Boris E., David M. Fisher, and Steven L. Ringler. “Transcutaneous PO2 of the scalp in male pattern baldness: a new piece to the puzzle.” Plastic and reconstructive surgery97.6 (1996): 1109-16. >Wester, Ronald C., et al. “Minoxidil stimulates cutaneous blood flow in human balding scalps: pharmacodynamics measured by laser Doppler velocimetry and photopulse plethysmography.” Journal of investigative dermatology 82.5 (1984): 515-517. >Toshitani, Shoji, et al. “A New Apparatus for Hair Regrowth in Male‐pattern Baldness.” The Journal of dermatology 17.4 (1990): 240-246. >Whiting, David A. “Diagnostic and predictive value of horizontal sections of scalp biopsy specimens in male pattern androgenetic alopecia.” Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 28.5 (1993): 755-763. >Whiting, David A. “Chronic telogen effluvium: increased scalp hair shedding in middle-aged women.” Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 35.6 (1996): 899-906. >Hoelzel, Frederick. “Baldness and Calcification of the Ivory Dome.” Journal of the American Medical Association 119.12 (1942): 968-968.
submitted by MyloTheGrey to tressless [link] [comments]
PART 1: THE METHOD I'll divide my method in 3 zones, posture, blood flow and general health, craniofacial development. All three are intertwined. POSTURE >Make sure your posture is correct. Watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQqgf8kB6R8 [Embed] >Buy a support for your pc on amazon if you use a laptop so that the pc is in line with your eyes. >Do hip flexor stretches every day before going to bed. I'm sure you have anterior pelvilc tilt. Do hip flexor stretches after every training sessions. >Make sure you fix your form on the exercises you do. This video from Elliot Hulse, for example, shows how doing chin ups badly can give you forward head posture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eeIiQ67\_1U [Embed] ; there are many more examples, become more expert on exercise science >For your training be sure you are more focused on long head of the triceps, neck, lower traps, rear delt, glutes, hamstrings and core. Focus less on biceps, quads, upper traps, front delt, chest. >Sleep on your back without a pillow. This is hard to reach (I still didn't manage to) but it will change a lot of things. If you have back pain, put a small pillow under your knees.
BLOOD FLOW AND GENERAL HEALTH >Improve your cardiovascular activity. Walk at least 10 000 steps every day. >Do scalp massages. They do improve your circulation, but the true purpose is to decompress the galea, allowing it to be mobile again. Do this test: if you can't move your hair only thinking about it, you probably have a receiding hairline. Decompress the galea. Research very well how to do this. After your galea becomes mobile again, exercise it's movement everyday in your sparetime, to cause blood flow. >Eat food containing aromatase inhibitors. Estrogen can cause hair loss in males, because estrogen is a stress hormone and stress can cause hair loss. In general have a good diet, consisting of non-processed food, meat and crude vegetables and fruits. >Consider taking micronutrients integrators. >Consider buying a water filter. >Abstain from porn and masturbation. >Abstain from activities that cause chronic stress you can avoid (internet usage, addictions, social medias, internet browsing, 4chan). >Include more time with loved ones, if you can. >Include a meditation routine into your life. >Use a topic drug capable of inducing more blood flow to your scalp to avoid the situation becomes worse, like minoxidil.
CRANIOFACIAL DEVELOPMENT This is the root cause. If you fix this, the others won't be necessary. But since it will take a while to fix this and you could not even be able to if you're too old or fucked up, you will still do the other two. The other two will actually accelerate the craniofacial process, making the improvement faster and better. >Mewing. I'm listing this first because it's free. Learn to mew every 24/7 and how to swallow correctly. >Surgery. If you have a deviated septum, get it fixed. It's free in most countries since it's not a cosmetic surgery, but a functional one. A deviated septum forces you to breath from your mouth since not enough air can enter your nose. This will help you with everything in your life, including posture, facial symmetry and forward maxillar development. >Palate symmetry and expansion. Find a functional, safe appliance which can expand your palate both forward and laterally, while at the same time correcting the assymetry in your maxilla and jaw, which is the main cause of all these problems. There are many, and I'm still researching them. For now, the A.L.F. (Advanced Lightwire Functional appliance) looks the best. It will fix your face and your balding if it's not too late.
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Blood vessels travel throught the scalp tissues fueling nutrients to the hair follicles. The galea aponeurotica is attached to the occipitofrontalis muscles. The temporalis muscles are also connected to the galea aponeurotica via the temporalis fascia. The galea aponeurotica can be stretched by the forces of muscular contraction. Since muscles throughout the body are connected via myofascial meridians, their action cannot be seen in isolation. This explains why intensity of neck pain, forward head posture, chronic tension-type headache and migraine are strictly correlated. When neck muscles are in continuous tension, their action propagates to the head, stretching and tightening the galea against the underlying layers of the scalp. The underlying structure is rich of blood vessels that are compressed, blocking blood flow towards the hair follicles. The restriction in blood supply to tissues is called ischemia: this leads to insufficiency of oxygen (hypoxia), reduced availability of nutrients and inadequate removal of metabolites. This obviously leads to the death of tissues, thus including the hair follicles (hair loss) and surrounding structures. This is also reflected in the presence of dandruff (excessive shedding of dead cells from the scalp). When tissues are damaged, an inflammatory response is activated. The function of inflammation is to clear out necrotic cells and damaged tissues. The classical signs of inflammation are heat, pain and redness. These elements describe symptoms of scalp sensitivity and trichodynia. Since the muscle tension that tight the galea is always present, the inflammation is long-term and chronic, causing fibrosis and calcification. This further decreases the blood flow into the scalp, promoting ulterior cells death, leading to a closed-loop chain of events depicted in the diagram I posted, reason why hair loss progresses with individuals becoming older.
Obviously a bad diet, lack of physical exercise and rise in estrogen levels brought an higher level of inflamation. But the main cause here is the tightening of those muscles. Before I explain why those muscles became tight in the first place, I'll first debunk the genetics/dht cope. Current theories see the dihydrotestosterone (DHT) hormone as the main responsible for hair loss. As the name suggests, there are two supposed causes for androgenetic alopecia: the action of hormones (androgens) and action derived from genetic. The theory started to arise after observations made on Eunuchs (i.e. men who have been castrated). Already in 400 BCE, Hippocrates noticed that Eunuchs do not become bald, with formal conclusions made by James B. Hamilton between 40s and 60s: eunuchoid and prepubertally castrated men fails to achieve sexual maturation and show complete retention of head hair. Baldness can then be induced by following administration of male hormone substances to sexually immature men who otherwise would not have become bald. In 1974, a study has generally observed a higher formation of 5α-reduced metabolites and 17-ketosteroid metabolites at all sites of the scalp of bald men as compared to hair obtained from the corresponding sites of women and nonbalding men. So, from here it has been assumed the importance of DHT in baldness. However, many arguments are against the role of DHT as primary cause in hair loss:
>DHT stimulates the production of pigmented terminal hair in many areas after puberty, including pubic and axillary hair in both sexes and beard growth in men. But both beard growth and balding can occur on the same person demonstrating a paradox >Serum androgen concentrations in men with a disposition to balding is lower than in men with no reduction of scalp hair. >The prevalence of Male Pattern Baldness increases with age. However, serum testosterone production declines with aging, together with lower serum DHT. >Female androgenetic alopecia can develop in the absence of detectable levels of circulating androgens or other signs of postpubertal androgenization, showing that this pattern of hair loss is not necessarily androgen dependent. Not only, female patients with androgen deficiency reports hair regrowth on testosterone therapy. We can see that Male Pattern Baldness only affects hair on top of the head, while hair on sides and back does not fall. So, how can DHT cause hair in one area of the scalp to fall out but have no effect on hair follicles just a few millimeters further down? Here is where the genetic part comes into action. According to the current theory, hair follicles on top of the head show increased expression of the androgen receptor gene, i.e. the top of the head is more sensitive to androgens action than hair on the sides and back of the head. However, higher levels of androgen receptors are also found in follicles of beard, scrotum and pubis, reinforcing the paradox. Genetics also suggests that the probability of male pattern hair loss is dependent on family history and age. However, in case of identical male twins, one can bald significantly faster than his counterpart. These together with many other unknowns bring the necessity to define a new model for the explanation of baldness.
Not surprisingly, it has been found that subcutaneous blood flow in the scalp of patients with early male pattern baldness is much lower than the values found in the normal individuals . This would explain the aforementioned higher formation of 5α-reduced metabolites and 17-ketosteroid metabolites at all sites of the scalp of bald men at the basis of the androgenetic theory. The restriction in blood supply to tissues is called ischemia: this leads to insufficiency of oxygen (hypoxia). Not surprisingly again, men suffering from androgenic alopecia have significantly lower oxygen partial pressure (meaning microvascular insufficiency and hypoxia) in the areas of their scalp affected by balding (frontal and vertex regions) versus unaffected areas (temporal and occipital regions). Moreover, balding men have significantly lower oxygen partial pressure in the areas of balding scalp than the same areas of non-bald people. Minoxidil solution, which is one of the commercially available medications for hair loss, stimulates the microcirculation of the bald scalp, effectively promoting hair growth . Patients should be warned about increased shedding in the first months of treatment, that is seen as a positive response to the treatment. How can this increased shedding be explained? Could it be the so called reperfusion injury, i.e. the tissue damage caused when blood supply returns to the tissue after a period of ischemia? In case of reduced blood supply, tissues are damaged and die, thus including the hair follicles and surrounding structures. A proof of this is the associated excessive dandruff found in hair loss: the last layer of the skin, called stratum corneum, consists of dead cells (corneocytes) that are regularly replaced through desquamation. However, certain conditions trigger a more rapid turnover, leading to a larger shedding recognized as dandruff.
When tissues are damaged, an inflammatory response is activated. The function of inflammation is to clear out necrotic cells and damaged tissues. The classical signs of inflammation are heat, pain and redness, situation recognized as scalp sensitivity (burning, stinging, dry scalp, vague discomfort in the scalp, and sometimes, trichodynia) that is associated with hair loss. And guess what? Many studies have shown DHT plays an important role in inflammations, regulating its activity When the inflammation is long-term and chronic, it causes fibrosis and calcification. Indeed, miniaturization of hair follicles has been associated with deposits of densely packed collagen bundles in the follicular dermal sheath, called perifollicular fibrosis. This further decreases the blood flow into the scalp, promoting ulterior cells death. Conclusion: hair loss is not a problem of the hair itself but was a problem of the surrounding tissues. Take two seeds of a genetically identical corn, place one seed in a temperate climate and one in an arid climate: the one in the arid climate only grows to half the height of the one in the temperate climate due to lack of water and nutrients in its environment. This is exactly what happens with our hair and there are studies confirming it: miniaturized hair follicles of pattern alopecia can quickly regenerate once removed from the human scalp and can grow as well as or better than terminal follicles from the same individual. And not only miniaturized hair can regrowth, but also terminal hairs can shrink in difficult recipient sites, impacting their growth and survival rates.
The cause of bad head posture, other than bad habits, is bad craniofacial development, caused by various things, such as biberons, mouthbreathing, early hard feeding, allergies (caused by the modern world). This is a topic too long to explain now, and I reccomend the blog I took the info from (www.tmdocclusion.com). There's not a single bald person with good craniofacial development. As you can see here, both Statham and the Guy in the OP pic here have a very tight neck (look at the folds on the neck. This is how you determine if someone has a tight neck or not) and most importantly a totally assymetric and badly developed face.
Already in 1939 Weston A. Price wrote about his travel around the world where he discovered that jaw problems were not present in tribes of isolated areas far from civilization. In a simplistic view, maxilla is primarily remodeled by forces coming from the tongue and teeth (through masseter muscles) and the causes of a poor craniofacial development have to be found in modern lifestyle, in particular in: >Increasing of bottle-feeding over breast-feeding that influences the swallowing pattern and all oral muscles. >Use of pacifiers/dummies that mainly affect tongue posture. >Trend towards industrial soft high-calorie food that hits chewing effort and muscles action. >Reduced nasal airways, increasing of allergies and nasal congestion that leads to mouth breathing affecting both tongue posture and muscles action. >Trend towards an earlier or too early weaning, influencing swallowing pattern. When one or more of these factors are present, the maxilla drops down and back, reducing the eye support, flattening the cheekbones, narrowing the nasal airway, lengthening the mid facial third, and lowering the palate, which narrows and create malocclusion.
SOURCES :
>Godse, Kiran, and Vijay Zawar. “Sensitive scalp.” International journal of trichology 4.2 (2012): 102. >Misery, Laurent, et al. “Sensitive scalp: does this condition exist? An epidemiological study.” Contact Dermatitis 58.4 (2008): 234-238. >Willimann, Barbara, and Ralph M. Trüeb. “Hair pain (trichodynia): frequency and relationship to hair loss and patient gender.” Dermatology 205.4 (2002): 374-377. >ALEXANBER, SUZANNE. “Loss of hair and dandruff.” British Journal of Dermatology 79.10 (1967): 549-552. >Rossi, Alfredo, et al. “Minoxidil use in dermatology, side effects and recent patents.” Recent patents on inflammation & allergy drug discovery 6.2 (2012): 130-136. >Avci, Pinar, et al. “Low‐level laser (light) therapy (LLLT) for treatment of hair loss.” Lasers in surgery and medicine 46.2 (2014): 144-151. >Choy, H. “Detumescence Therapy of Human Scalp for Natural Hair Regrowth.” J Clin Exp Dermatol Res 3.138 (2012): 2. >Mew, M. “Craniofacial dystrophy. A possible syndrome?.” British dental journal 216.10 (2014): 555-558. >Gonzalez, Humberto E., and Arturo Manns. “Forward head posture: its structural and functional influence on the stomatognathic system, a conceptual study.” CRANIO® 14.1 (1996): 71-80. >Solow, Beni, and Antje Tallgren. “Head posture and craniofacial morphology.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 44.3 (1976): 417-435.
>Strokon, Dennis. “Correction of Dental and Cranial Sidebend with ALF.” IJOM 21 (2010): 3. >Darnell, Michael W. “A proposed chronology of events for forward head posture.” Journal of craniomandibular practice1.4 (1983): 49-54. >Ernest III, Edwin A., and W. Ernest. “Splenius Capitis.” >Simons, David G., Janet G. Travell, and Lois S. Simons. Travell & Simons’ myofascial pain and dysfunction: upper half of body. Vol. 1. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1999. >Myers, Thomas W. “The ‘anatomy trains’.” Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies 1.2 (1997): 91-101. >Haughie, Laura J., Ira M. Fiebert, and Kathryn E. Roach. “Relationship of forward head posture and cervical backward bending to neck pain.” Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy 3.3 (1995): 91-97. >Fernández‐de‐las‐Peñas, César, et al. “Trigger Points in the Suboccipital Muscles and Forward Head Posture in Tension‐Type Headache.” Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain 46.3 (2006): 454-460. >Fernández-de-las-Penas, César, et al. “Referred pain areas of active myofascial trigger points in head, neck, and shoulder muscles, in chronic tension type headache.” Journal of bodywork and movement therapies 14.4 (2010): 391-396. >Fernández‐de‐las‐Peñas, César, Maria L. Cuadrado, and Juan A. Pareja. “Myofascial trigger points, neck mobility, and forward head posture in episodic tension‐type headache.” Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain 47.5 (2007): 662-672. >Freund, Brian J., and Marvin Schwartz. “Treatment of male pattern baldness with botulinum toxin: a pilot study.” Plastic and reconstructive surgery 126.5 (2010): 246e-248e.
>Klemp, Per, Kurt Peters, and Birgitte Hansted. “Subcutaneous blood flow in early male pattern baldness.” Journal of investigative dermatology 92.5 (1989): 725-726. >Goldman, Boris E., David M. Fisher, and Steven L. Ringler. “Transcutaneous PO2 of the scalp in male pattern baldness: a new piece to the puzzle.” Plastic and reconstructive surgery97.6 (1996): 1109-16. >Wester, Ronald C., et al. “Minoxidil stimulates cutaneous blood flow in human balding scalps: pharmacodynamics measured by laser Doppler velocimetry and photopulse plethysmography.” Journal of investigative dermatology 82.5 (1984): 515-517. >Toshitani, Shoji, et al. “A New Apparatus for Hair Regrowth in Male‐pattern Baldness.” The Journal of dermatology 17.4 (1990): 240-246. >Whiting, David A. “Diagnostic and predictive value of horizontal sections of scalp biopsy specimens in male pattern androgenetic alopecia.” Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 28.5 (1993): 755-763. >Whiting, David A. “Chronic telogen effluvium: increased scalp hair shedding in middle-aged women.” Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 35.6 (1996): 899-906. >Hoelzel, Frederick. “Baldness and Calcification of the Ivory Dome.” Journal of the American Medical Association 119.12 (1942): 968-968.