In part one of my articles about neck pain I discussed the various causes of neck pain and why it is so important that you DO NOT rely solely on stretching and massage to relieve your pain. In many cases these very strategies are making your problem worse, especially if you have a depressed shoulder accompanied with weakness and poor movement. This is not to say that all stretching and massage is useless, you just need to know what stretches to use, and how to combine your mobility work with strengthening exercises. If you missed part one you can go back and read it again by clicking here. While it is important to strengthen various muscles it is foolish to rush into this process for you will almost certainly make matters worse. You need a plan of trying to reduce inflammation and trigger points to weaken over-working tonic muscles stealing work from weakened phasic stabilizer muscles. This is a delicate process to do this with this area of the body as there is so many nerves and things to contend with. Even your thoughts and emotions can play a role in creating tension in muscles around the neck so this is something you need to consider. To help you out I have put together a plan that outlines the various exercises to use as assessment tools to find out where to start.
I believe most people are aware of the amazing benefits to their body by using more functional training exercises over machines and various isolation exercises for improving movement in daily life and sports. I have posted numerous articles and videos explaining this concept in great detail for many years and the knowledge and education of this is training method much better than what it was 10-15 years ago. However, there still is a misconception that these exercises might make you move better and prevent injuries but they will not make you improve muscular strength and in particular hypertrophy (muscle size). There are several reasons why people fail to put on muscle size when using a functional training approach but what you will find it is not the exercises that are to blame. In this article I will show you exactly what you need to know to improve your movement efficiency and muscle size if that is something you are wanting to do.
The neck is one of the most difficult areas to work with as there is so many things that contribute to the onset of pain. Even your thoughts can affect the muscles and create a ton of trigger points and pain! When you consider it is a part of the complex shoulder region you can begin to see why so many people never find an answer to their problems. One of the biggest saboteurs is our instincts to constantly find ways to relieve the pain, instead of finding out WHY the pain is there in the first place. It makes perfect sense as to wanting to find a way to relieve the tension immediately by stretching the area that feels tight, however, when you understand how the neck is reacting to problems elsewhere, you can begin to see how our instincts are betraying us and setting our body up for much bigger problems. In this article, I will explain what the key causes of neck pain are and why stretching the tight neck muscles is not the solution to long term pain.