Neck Pain Rehab for BJJ | Part 5 (18 min)

So you might rather hear your head just brushing the mat. Do remember to keep breathing while you're doing this. It's very easy to find yourself holding your breath. Again, do make sure you're keeping your head very close to the mat.

I don't want to start lifting it up too much and I definitely don't want to start poking that chin forward so make sure you're keeping the chin tucked in. And just rest there. Just let the neck relax. So like I say, it's very easy when you start lifting the head to start leading chin first.

We've talked about this before. Make sure you're not doing that. Make sure you're tucking the chin and lifting up. It's a different muscles and that difference is important for what we need for grappling.

So I'm going to do the same thing again. I'm going to tuck the chin and lift the head up just a millimetre. This time I'm going to slide my head ear to the shoulder and ear to the shoulder. So again, the head just brushing the mat, keeping the chin tucked in.

And then rest the head. It's a hard one to do well. So do make sure that you're keeping the head in the right position and don't be afraid to take a few extra rests if you're struggling. With all these neck exercises, less is more.

Much rather we're doing a few reps correctly than doing lots of reps badly. So just looking left and right. Keeping the chin tucked in, making sure that your lengthening through the back of the neck. And rest there.

From there, coming up, just going to grab the band. I'm going to go into some of those pull-up parts that we did yesterday. I'm using a blue band here, but you can change the strength. So green is a medium tension, red is even lighter.

Blue is quite heavy or black is the one stronger than that. So try and get hold of a few different coloured bands. They're always worth having around. It's really handy.

They're easy to transport. You can throw them in the bag and then you can just throw them in your training bag. Definitely a good training tool to have. I'm just going to take a minute and then we're going to do another set of those.

Again, just looking for that chin tuck position as I do these. So you'll start to become more and more familiar with that position in places. Just letting the chin come towards the chest, engaging those muscles on the front of your neck and getting used to using those in different positions. So I'm going to start with the chin tuck position.

So I'm going to start with the chin and getting used to using those in different positions. While you're doing other things as well, just getting the muscles at the front of the neck working. That's a really important part of what we're doing here. So what I'm going to do next is grab the chair.

So I want to be quite careful with this exercise. So if at any point when you're doing this, it becomes painful or it doesn't feel right or you're worried about anything, stop doing it and get somebody to take a proper look for you. So I'm going to start by just sitting by the chair and put my head on the back of the chair. So I'm at the base of my skull resting on the chair.

Please do make sure that this is something that's not going to fall over when you put your weight on it. That's really important. So make sure you check that out. Now all I'm going to do is I'm going to lift my weight up and I'm going to hold my body in a straight line with the weight going through the back of my neck.

This is called a flat neck bridge. We're going to start with some short holds. This is an exercise that you can build up. You can go towards doing it for up to 25 to 30 seconds, but we're going to start with a relatively short period of time.

And obviously if I get any problems with any of that, I'm going to back right off. Okay. It is possible to do a supported version of this. And if you're really struggling with the way you can get somebody to hold your hands to take some of the weight off.

But we will start with this version for now. Okay. So I'm going to go back. Same thing again, back of the head on the on the chair.

And again, we're looking for that straight line. So I'm trying to get that neutral spine, maybe a little tiny bit of extension on the back of the head. Basically a neutral position. Okay.

So I'm going to lift up. And in between, I'm just going to move my head around a little bit, move my shoulders, just relax the neck. Again, this is an exercise that I wouldn't necessarily do this one time, but I'm going to do it a couple of times. So I'm going to do it a couple of times.

And then I'm going to move my head around a little bit, move my shoulders, just relax the neck. Again, this is an exercise I wouldn't necessarily do this one every day. It's a good one to add into your routine, maybe a couple of times a week. As long as you're able to do it without pain.

Like I said, it's not an exercise I would use in the early stages with somebody who's got acute neck pain. I would start with something easier to settle things down first, but this is definitely a good one to build up too. So we're going to leave that one there for today. If I was working with a more advanced athlete, then I might very well look at doing some of those exercises and then start to add in other movements with the arms, things like this.

So we're working on holding that position with the neck while doing something else as well. So that's what I would move onto. We're going to go back to our upper back mobility. And this time we're going to add a nice way of advancing that on.

So I'm going to start with the foam roller towards the middle of the upper back here. I'm just going to hold my weight over my head. And then this time I'm going to take the shoulders all the way back and I'm just going to hold that position. If this becomes sore on the shoulders, obviously I want to back off.

You'd be careful of that, especially if I've got any shoulder issues, which can often go along with the neck issues as well. And then I'm going to rest. I'm going to roll up slightly. So we're not going to do as many different points as we did before because we're holding each one for longer.

And coming up, I'm going to do one more a little further up the upper back. Do make sure it's a relatively light weight. I don't want to be lifting anything heavy in this position. Back up.

We're just going to take a rest. We're going to go through another sequence of those in a second. At this point, hopefully with all the exercises that we've done before, be comfortable supporting the head in that position. But again, do make sure that there's a slight chin tuck.

You're engaging the muscles on the front of the neck there. I'm going to go through the same sequence on the overhead, reaching back. And once again, still concentrating on the breathing. Coming up, rolling up the back.

And coming up, rolling up the back. And coming up. And coming up. With all of these, I want to emphasize that these are more advanced neck exercises.

These aren't something that I would start with, with somebody using a lot of acute neck pain. So these are ones that I would build up towards. If you get any pain while you're doing them, then go back to an easier exercise. Finally, to finish off with, we're just going to do a few of these isometrics.

We've gone through earlier in the sequence. Pushing the head against the hand. Hopefully I've built up the stage where I can push a bit harder now. Thinking the hands behind the head.

And taking the head to the side. And remember that I'm not pulling on the neck, I'm just placing the hand and then pushing against it. It's a really important distinction there. And dropping the head forwards and pushing back.

And then dropping the head forwards at an angle, pushing back into the center. I can tuck the hand behind the back if I want to really emphasize that muscle there. And I'm going to do the same thing the other way. And relax there.

And that brings us to the end of day five. So that's our basic neck pain program. There are a lot of advanced variations on some of those exercises that we can do. So if you have any questions about what you can do, please let me know.

And I'm going to be doing a few more of those exercises in the next few weeks. So that's our basic neck pain program. There are a lot of advanced variations on some of those exercises that we can do. We will hopefully look at getting to an advanced neck pain program, which we'll get to you.

But there's plenty more that can be done along these lines. But the main thing is to master these exercises first. That will give you a really solid grounding. And if you can start bringing these into your everyday warm-ups, your everyday conditioning sessions, they'll really help you jiu-jitsu out.

Thank you for listening and we'll see you again with the next program.