Push up questions - CrossFit Discussion Board

I realise I've already asked a question here about hand stand push ups, but this one is for the regular old, feet on the floor, hands under shoulders ones.

1 - Hand placement. I'm not talking about wide or narrow, but instead where they are in terms of "length," ie close to my shoulders or more like under my face. I don't know why, but I always have a tendency to have my hands a little too far forward. Short of starting off on my belly and making sure that my hands are level with my shoulders, I'll almost always put them too far forwards. Is this a bad habit, and can it contribute to injury? If so, might influence question 2, which is...

2 - Hand/wrist pain. Sometimes I get pain in what feels like the back of my hand, going into the wrist. I don't generally have pain in my hands, apart from having messed up punches I threw at a punch bag a few months ago, so I'm perplexed as to why this would hurt. Worst case scenario would be carpal tunnel syndrome or something, but like I said, my hands generally don't hurt. Could my hand positioning, or wrist flexibility, play into this?

3 - Shoulder blades. When I went to my physio she had me doing push ups and said that my shoulder blades stuck out too much at the top, or something similar. She also picked up on how they stuck out even more as I went down, and gave me the impression I shouldn't pinch them together as I go down (or something - can't remember, to be honest) In any case, this sounds an awful lot scapula winging to me. She made me do what I can only describe as serratus anterior holds - be in the top of a push up and try to get my serratus anterior involved by almost pushing my body away from the floor to activate them. The only problem was that doing this usually led to me shrugging my shoulders up to my neck, something that I, with tight upper traps, need to avoid. With all of this in mind, do you have any advice on shoulder positioning, and scapula strengthening, that might help me?

Thanks in advance for the awesome responses

Source: http://board.crossfit.com/showthread.php?t=78655

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