Sebastian Brosche · 14 min · 1,601 words
Previously titled: Video 2 - Neck Rehab
Hi folks, welcome back to day two of our neck pain programme. Today we're going to increase the difficulty of some of the exercises. So if you're not quite ready for that yet, if your neck's still in a lot of pain, do feel free to go back and do day one again a few times. If at any point when you're doing this programme you start to get any pain, please back off and you may want to get that assessed by somebody before you continue with the exercises.
So today I'm going to use a step, you can also use a bench or even a bed or a table, anything you can lie on with your head over one end. So we'll get to that in a little bit. I'm going to start by doing the same neck mobility that we did in day one. This is always really important.
Again, I'm just taking my head forwards and back as far as is comfortable in each direction. Hopefully if things are starting to settle down, you may get a bit more movement than you did the first time you did this. It's important not to rush it and not to try and force anything. I want to be feeling that movement down right between my shoulder blades, so it's going down into my upper back, not just moving from the neck itself.
And from there bring my head back up to neutral. Just go left and right. This is one of the ones people often have problems with if their neck is painful. You might find that it feels like there's a pinching on one side, there's a restriction.
So again, just take it as far as you can comfortably, even if that's not very far. If you keep repeating it then you'll start to get a little bit more movement over time. It may not happen immediately, but it's one of those where repetition really does pay off. And we're going to look left and right.
Excellent. So from there, what I want to do is I want to go into all fours and we're going to do some more work on upper back mobility today. We're going to do it in a slightly different way. So what I'm going to do is in all fours, I'm going to drop my head down and arch my upper back and then I'm going to alternate.
So I look up as far as I can and drop my upper back down. And again, nice and slow, nice and steady. And again, only take the head as far back as is comfortable. So if you start to get pain when you get to a certain point, then just get a little bit less far.
And when I've done that, I'm going to drop down onto my front, put my hands by my shoulders and I'm just going to lift up and back down. So again, I'm just working into extension with the upper back. Now it's important that I don't yank my head back as far as I possibly can. I'm going to keep looking straight ahead of me and it's the upper back that I'm focusing on.
I'm keeping my hands on the mat so I can push myself up with my hands. I don't want to have to be lifting myself just at this stage. We'll come to that later on. And I'm going to go back to all fours and I'm just going to do another set like this.
Again, the upper back mobility is all important with neck pain. There's some good evidence that if we mobilise the upper back, it'll help to relieve the neck pain. And that might be because there's a mechanical effect. So if your upper back moves better, it takes some pressure off the neck.
And it may also be to do with other things. We're now starting to understand about pain processing and how all of that works. But it's a really good way to calm the neck down without doing too much on the neck directly, which can sometimes aggravate it. So from there, I'm going to grab my bench and my step where I can lie on the step with my head over the edge.
So I want to line myself up to the base of my neck is just in line with the edge of the step there. I put my feet on the floor. Now head to start with just so I'm not putting all the, I'm not over straining my neck. What I want to do is I want to line my head up with the line of the step and then I'm going to do that chin tuck we did before.
And now I'm going to hold that chin tuck position with my head as close to a straight line as I can get it. But this time, because there's nothing supporting the back of my neck, I'm having to work a lot harder to hold that position. And then to rest, I can just put my hands behind my head or I can shift my weight. So I put the head on the, on the step and give myself a few seconds.
And then I'm going to do the same thing again. Try and get that as close to a straight line as you can. Now a few caveats here. If at any point you find that you're not able to keep that chin tuck position and your chin starts poking forward, can you see how my back, my back of my neck is arched there?
That's the end of the movement. I want to stop completely if that happens. So if at any point I start leading with my chin, then that means that the muscles that I'm working on have become fatigued. Okay.
And rest. Now, if with any of these you need to cut them shorter, that's fine. A lot of people find this particular exercise quite hard work. I've had a lot of very good, very strong fighters who I've worked with who have found this one quite hard at first.
And rest. Okay. We're just going to go for one more. Like I say, you may already have fatigued, in which case do feel free to cut this section short.
So if you end up only doing maybe two or three short sets to start with, that's absolutely fine. And rest. So that's by far the hardest exercise out of the ones we've done so far. So do treat it with caution.
Don't push yourself too far with that one. And do try to make sure that you're doing it correctly. You may want to get somebody watching you do it to make sure that your head's in a straight line. So moving back to the isometrics that we did at the end of day one, we're going to go through those again with a few little variations.
So the first set I'm going to do just the same, keeping my head in the middle and then pushing the head against the hand. And then switching sides. Same on the other side. And pushing backwards.
And then the next time round, what my head drops slightly to one side. So I'm not taking it as far as I can. I'm certainly not yanking on my head. I'm just going to take it slightly off centre and then I'm going to push back and push back towards the middle.
So we're doing a nice, it's an isometric, but it's slightly out of a neutral position. It's important to work these isometrics out in all manner of different positions because however much you try to keep your head in a neutral position when you're grappling, we're never going to be there all the time. You're going to have to, your neck's going to be in lots of different positions and we need it to be strong in all of those positions. And then I'm just going to drop my head forward slightly, link my hands behind my head and push back.
Again, with each of these, I'm making sure that it's at most mildly uncomfortable. It should never be more than that. And we're going to go round again and drop the head off the side. Push back against the hand.
And this is a good time to point out actually that if I want to, I need to be a bit careful about stretching my neck. Lots of people do it, lots of people like it because it feels, it can feel good if your neck's sore, if your neck's uncomfortable. But all of these things where people are pulling on their head, pulling on their muscles, sometimes they can cause more problems as well. Sometimes that can cause damage, particularly if your neck's sore, if you've got a bit of a tear there or something, then we need to be a little bit careful with that.
So I quite like this version instead. If we take the neck to one side and then push back, instead of actually pulling it into position, it's a good way of working on mobility but in a safer way because it's limited by how it feels to you. So if it's painful, you can always back off. So I find that's a good way of doing that.
So once we've done that, call it a day for day two and we'll see you back here tomorrow for day three for some more exercises.
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