Shoulder impingement has been described and researched for many years and some of the original work was described by Neer in the early 1980’s. As our understanding of impingement has expanded we have come to realise that there are many types of shoulder impingement i.e internal and external, and primary and secondary. For some the word can be daunting and if not clearly specified, it can leave the clinician and patient without knowledge of what structure is at fault, where it is occurring and why. This is the first of three blogs looking at shoulder impingement, the role of the scapula, and different approaches to the treatment of scapula dyskinesis in shoulder impingement syndrome.