If you’ve ever had a client lying on their back with their ribs visibly poking up out of their shirt, you’ve seen a rib flare in action.

To the untrained eye, it might seem like a simple “posture problem.” But for movement professionals, rib flare is one of the most telling compensations you’ll come across — and one that directly affects performance, breathing, and long-term joint health.

In this guide, I’ll break down:

• What rib flare actually is and why it happens

• The biomechanical chain reactions it sets off

• How to recognize rib flare in your assessments

• Three principle-driven exercises you can use with clients today

I’m Alex Effer, founder of Resilient Training and Rehab. Over the past decade, I’ve helped thousands of coaches, clinicians, and therapists get faster, more consistent results with their clients by going beyond symptoms and addressing root biomechanics. 

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What Is a Rib Flare?

A rib flare is when the lower rib cage protrudes forward and upward, often noticeable when a client is lying supine. Biomechanically, it’s linked to excessive spinal extension — either through the lumbar spine or the lower thoracic region.

But here’s the important point: a rib flare isn’t an isolated problem. It’s a global strategy the body uses to manage gravity and generate force.

When the ribs flare forward, we see predictable downstream consequences:

• Shoulders: Scapulae are pinned down and back, reducing upward rotation and external rotation. Overhead mobility becomes restricted.

• Hips: Loss of internal rotation, reduced ability to load posterior hip structures, compensatory anterior pelvic tilt.

• Spine & breathing: Increased compressive load through the lumbar spine, decreased ability to expand the rib cage with respiration.

From a coaching perspective, this shows up as:

• Clients who “live on their toes” in squats and lunges.

• Lifters who arch their low back excessively in pressing movements.

• Athletes who struggle with rotational capacity.

Why Rib Flare Happens: The Gravity Problem

The body is constantly negotiating with gravity. Picture a barbell on your back 24/7. If your system can’t generate enough force through hip internal rotation and foot pronation, you’ll default forward, shifting your center of mass onto your toes.

To keep yourself upright against that forward drift, you arch your back and open your rib cage.

This “solution” provides temporary stability but long-term limitations. Different body types will flare differently: broader rib cages often drive lower-back extension, narrower rib cages arch more through the ribs.

For us as professionals, the key takeaway is that rib flare is not a local issue. It’s a signal of how the system is (or isn’t) distributing force.

How to Assess Rib Flare in Clients

You can spot rib flare in several ways:

• Postural Assessment: Lying supine or standing, ribs visibly lift off the floor or poke through the shirt. 

• Movement tests: Excessive low-back extension in overhead reaching, difficulty with split squats or hip shifts.

• Breathing patterns: Chest-dominant breathing, limited posterior expansion.

3 Exercises to Correct Rib Flare

Here are three of my go-to interventions that not only reduce rib flare but also retrain the system to manage force and gravity more effectively.

1. Prone Supported Inversion

Goal: Decompress the rib cage and shift center of mass posteriorly.

How to coach it:

• Set the client face-down on a bench with lower ribs supported.

• Elevate the knees slightly above the head using yoga blocks.

• Drop elbows to the floor in a V position, staying tall through the shoulders.

• Cue: “Inhale through your nose to expand your ribs into the bench. Exhale fully without collapsing.”

Why it works: Inversion facilitates rib cage expansion, especially in the posterior and lower ribs. It also biases load back toward the heels — teaching the body a new strategy to fight gravity.

2. Supine Low Reach with Support

Goal: Restore scapular mobility and control rib positioning.

How to coach it:

• Client lies on back with feet on a bench, knees at 90°.

• Small pad under the sacrum/low back to prevent extension.

• Feet together, knees open.

• Hands reach toward inner thighs while head stays relaxed.

• Cue: “Breathe in to reach further, exhale as you press heels into the bench.”

Why it works: This restores upward rotation and external rotation of the scapula while anchoring the ribs down. It unlocks shoulder and thoracic motion while allowing the shoulder blade to actually move.

3. Front-Foot Elevated Split Squat with Zercher Hold

Goal: Train force production without spinal extension compensation.

How to coach it:

• Front foot elevated, band or weight in low Zercher position.

• Band gently pulls forward — client must shift ribs back to counter.

• Inhale on descent, exhale on ascent.

• Cue: “Keep your ribs back and breathe into your back as you move.”

Why it works: Elevation biases the back hip and restores IR. Zercher load forces the rib cage posteriorly. Together, this retrains the system to produce force into the ground without resorting to rib flare.

Key Takeaways

• Rib flare is not just posture issue.  It’s a biomechanical strategy for force management.

• Addressing it requires a principle-first approach: shift center of mass, restore scapular motion, and reintroduce hip/shoulder internal rotation.

• These exercises are tools to retrain the system, not a one time fix. They integrate breathing, position, and load into a cohesive intervention.

When you understand and address rib flare, you unlock new movement options for your clients, reduce injury risk, and dramatically improve performance outcomes.

Want to Learn More?

If you’re a coach, therapist, or clinician looking to go deeper into biomechanical compensations like rib flare and learn how to apply these principles across real client cases — check out the EVOLVE Biomechanics Mentorship.

Inside EVOLVE, I’ll teach you:

• How to identify common compensations in assessments

• The biomechanics driving them

• Step-by-step strategies to restore movement and performance

Hope to see you there!