4 Neck Exercises That INSTANTLY Reduce Pain
Neck pain is one of the most frustrating problems to deal with, it can hurt to just turn your head over the side, which is critically important when checking your blind spot and driving. It can ruin your focus and concentration throughout the day. And it can even prevent people from getting adequate sleep every night.
In today’s video, I’ll be sharing four exercises that help to instantly reduce neck pain, so that you can get a better night’s sleep, be less grumpy around people and of course, be safe when you’re driving.
We’ve got a library of neck pain resources for you to check out as well.
Real quick, my name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile. while avoiding unnecessary surgery injections and medications. Please subscribe so that you don’t miss any of the helpful videos we put out every single week. And don’t forget to turn on your notifications as well. So let’s get straight to it.
Let me show you the first exercise that you need to master in order to do the rest of the exercises so that you can fix this neck problem and get enough sleep at night. The first one is called chin tucks. And this is a common physical therapy exercise, I’m going to show you how I put my spin into it. And I’ll show you some wrong ways to do it. And why the most simple way to think about this is you’re making a double chin.
Everybody knows how to make a double chin. If you just do that right there, you’re doing a chin tuck, it’s a double chin motion. Have you thought about it in terms of percentages, like 100%, chin tuck, this is 100% chin tuck my muscles on the front of my throat kind of behind my throat on the front of my neck are working to do that motion.
Now what you’ve got to do is wait those muscles up. So doing some chin tuck holds is the exercise that you need to start doing to get pressure off your neck joints, the nerves and get the muscles to start working right. So I’m going to do is hold it for 10 seconds, just like that and do it to your tolerance.
If you can’t hold it very much because it starts to hurt or bother something back off from 100% and do 90 or 80 or 70% or whatever percentage feels right for you. But what you should feel is those muscles behind your throat working in order to take the pressure off the other muscles, the other joints in your neck.
So you hold it like that I’m doing about 70% right now, for 10 seconds, you should feel those muscles working the whole time. And you shouldn’t feel every muscle in your neck working just the ones kind of deep behind the front of your neck behind the throat on the front of your neck. Now the wrong way to do this is to repeatedly move back and forth.
This is something that I see commonly done in physical therapy practices. And it can be helpful in a few circumstances to truth be told, but it’s not strengthening your neck. And if the goal is to strengthen your neck, then the holes are going to be more important so that you can get the muscles better activated. If you’re going to repeat the motion. It’s more for mobility, which helps in the short term.
But this exercises the way that I’m showing you will work on mobility as well as the strength so you might as well save the time. So the wrong way to do it is in leaving give you overpressure will push your chin back and forth. And I can’t help but think that it looks like a pigeon walking down the street whenever you’re doing this exercise. But who cares what it looks like what’s most important is that your neck gets better if you want to try that fine.
But the most direct way to strengthen those neck muscles is to do the holes, like I showed you like that No overpressure from your hands, just do a double chin motion, you should still kind of be looking straight ahead like I am. And feel those neck muscles working 10 second holds about 10 times or so is a great place to start.
The second exercise once you’ve mastered that chin tuck is looked downs. So it’s a chin tuck combined with looking down it looks just like this, you do your chin tuck. And then you start to look down and you’re trying to get your chin to go to your chest. And then once you get there, you keep the chin tuck and then return back to the same position.
No need to look up you’re just going from straight to down and then back to straight. Again, you didn’t do this 10 times. So start with your chin tuck always look down. Touch your chin your chest as best as you can no holds, we just come back to the middle and then you can let go the chin tuck, chin tuck, look down, come back straight ahead and then relax.
And what I want you to visualize as you’re doing this is every single bone in your neck, bending one at a time from top to bottom. So when you start with your chin tuck you’re stabilizing your neck by turning on those neck muscles in the front of your throat on the front of your neck behind the throat.
And then when you start to look down trying to bring your chin to your chest, you’re bending the very top bones first and the next one under that and the next one after that and so forth, so that you force your neck joints to all move properly and get good neck joint mobility while simultaneously stretching I’m sorry, strengthening the right neck muscles and teaching your neck to move better, which is critically important and much better than the pigeon exercise that I showed you earlier.
So here’s one more time we can do this 10 times as part of your neck routine. chin tuck looked at Chin, your chest, come right back up, and then relax. The third exercise is overhead shrugs with the chin tuck. As you can see, now the chin tucks a common theme here. And it’s important because if you are strengthening those muscles on the front of your neck, behind your throat, and then you do other motions on top of that, that’s the most functional or practical way to strengthen those deep neck flexors.
Which are very important in taking pressures off the joints of your neck, taking pressure off the nerves and making your muscles work right in your neck, so that you can have a healthier neck, a more mobile neck, that is moving away from getting arthritis problems and disc problems and other long term issues that you just don’t want to deal with as you age in life with your neck.
So here it is the overhead shrug exercise, you can start with your chin tuck, like so, then you’re going to search Raise your hands up, maintain your chin tuck, because as your arms come up overhead, your head’s going to want to do this, you’re going to lose a chin tuck, but you have to feel those muscles working slightly. And to give you a percentage of how hard to fire those neck muscles.
Let’s work in about 25 to 50% work in that range. You don’t have to go super hard 100%. In fact, it’s just not going to be productive for you to do that, to stay in that 25 to 50% range with the chin tuck muscles. So 25% right here for me.
Then as my hands come to about eyebrow forehead level, I’m going to start to shrug my shoulders as much as possible, something popped in my neck. And that’s good. I’m freeing up a joint and then maintain the shrug. As you reach up overhead. I got a few more joints to pop on my shoulders and neck. That’s good. And I’m going to hold it here for 10 seconds. And I’m shrugging.
I’m not down here I’m up here I’m shoving my shoulders up into my ears as best as possible. And I’m even shaking a bit and I’m feeling the front of my neck, the deep neck flexor muscles working as I do this, after about 10 seconds, keep the shrug as you lower your arms, so I’m still struggling. Then when your hands gets about forehead or eyebrow level, you can relax and relax the chin tuck.
So let’s see that in real time with a 10 second hold 12345678 certain harder 10. All right, bring it down, shrugging still. Okay, now relax a stroke. And I worked out I work out those shorty muscles. And that exercise right there got me tired, and I’m going to stop because I’m going to start to sweat, I want to get my nice clothes. sweaty, I have patients here in a minute in a minute.
But that’s a little intense. So for you, if that one is too intense, you can reduce the intensity and have to shrug 100%, you can shrug it 70% 50%. The idea. The main idea here is that you keep a chin tuck, and you start reaching up overhead with a shrug.
Now common question that I get about this exercise is can I shrug while my hands are down or holding some weights down with the size of my body rather than reaching up overhead. And the answer to that is yes, you can. But it’s not as ideal as reaching up overhead because when you reach up overhead, it makes your shoulder blades move upwards and rotate upwards as well, which is important to fire the right neck muscles to challenge your neck muscles in the front to get the stability that you need for the long term.
So reaching up overhead all day is better than keeping your arms down at your sides. But it’s still productive to keep track your arm denture size. And it may be what you need to do if you got some shoulder issue or you’re just not quite ready for that overhead reach for whatever reason. And for the fourth exercise, I’m going to jump over to my table.
Let’s do that now. Now on my table. So for this last exercise, it can get quite intense on those deep neck flexors. So if you’re if you want to try this out, or watch me first, if you think that it’s going to bother you then do these other exercises that I showed you first, the first three before coming to this one, I need you to feel confident that you’re not going to get any cramps or hurt your neck in any way.
There’s ways to make it easier, which I’ll show you. But please be careful when proceeding into this exercise. It’s kind of intense, because it is a strengthening exercise, which is what you need. If you’ve got neck problems like stenosis, disk issues, pensioners, arthritis, you need more strengthen your neck so that you’re not making it worse over time and even some unnecessary surgery or rely on pain medications or injections.
So this is important to get to eventually, if you’re not here, it’s okay just make it your goal to get strong enough with the other exercises to get to this one eventually, and include this in your routine. So this is a neck curl exercise. I’m going to start lying down on your bed and your couch wherever you want on the floor.
They can do that chin tuck like we’ve covered the whole chain right there. And then kind of like that look down exercise. It’s almost the same thing. You can be bringing your chin to your chest and your shoulders might come up a bit, you might feel like you are kind of starting to do a sit up, that’s okay, you’re ever going to work. But make sure that your chin is down against your chest as best as you can. And Look down, look at your feet, look at your legs.
Because if you look up, it kind of turns off your neck muscles, you have to be looking down. After about 10 seconds like that, come on, back down, relax, should feel these muscles working quite hard, you might feel a stretch on the back of your neck, that’s okay. If you feel muscles working in the back of your neck, something’s not right.
And you’re compensating to do the exercise by using the back of your neck muscles, which isn’t right, you should be using these. Double check that you’re tucking your chin in enough, they’re doing that double chin motion.
And it’s okay to use your hands to assist, which I’ll show you in just a minute. Let me show you one more Rep. Without the assist signal, double chin, lift your head, bring your chin into your chest and neck, lift your shoulders up a little bit have been shaky here 10 seconds, just like so we’ll say it’s about 10 seconds. And then come on down.
And for me, I just felt in the front of my neck. Nothing at all, on the back of my neck, it was a stretch. Now let’s say you need to modify, you want to put your hands behind your head, you can do that. So just interlock your hands like so put them behind your head. And then you’re doing the exact same thing, but you’re giving an assist with your head and think of it this way, but assist with your hands.
Think of it this way, if you’re doing 100% on your own with your neck when doing it like so, take some of the pressure off your head with your hands and take 20% from your hands. Or give 20% to your hands, or 50% or whatever you need to not hurt or not compensate so that you’re using on the front of the neck, because that’s what you want, you don’t want to use in the back of the neck muscles.
So I’m going to say I’m going to give it 50% here, I’m going to I’m going to do 50% of the work with my hands and 50% of my neck. So I’m still going to chin tuck, be picking up with my hand, my hands a little bit, I’m lifting up my head, and I’m pushing with my hands down, but I’m still actively pushing my chin into my chest, as I’m firing those neck muscles. And it’s it’s a lot easier work for my neck. at my level where I’m at, I don’t have a neck issue, thankfully, and I’ve worked on it and I have had neck issues in the past.
But I’m very healthy today. And it’s too light for me when I give my hand support. But you might need that hand support. So use it if needed. Of course, you can do 20%, I’m doing more work with my neck now. And just assisting about 20% of my head. As soon as I let off, I feel intensify on my neck. by just putting my hands on my head, it gets a little bit easier. So 10 second holds 10 times.
That’s what I would recommend for the very first exercise of chin tucks, the look downs, you don’t have to hold, you’re just looking down looking back up. The overhead presses, you are definitely holding in for 10 seconds, do that 10 times. And then for this neck curl, you’re going to hold it for 10 seconds 10 times as well. Let me get off this table now. So there you have it, there’s the four exercises that you need to be doing in a routine daily as often as you need to I tell some people to do this, once every hour, it just takes them a few minutes to do it every time.
Total shouldn’t take you more than 10 minutes to do all these exercises, especially as you get used to it and I said 10 second holds 10 times. But you can adjust it the The point is to get your neck muscles stronger. And just like if you were to go start running for exercise, while you need to kind of get to the point where you’re tired in order to lengthen the amount of time or distance that you’re running. or decrease the speed.
Whatever variable you want to play with. In the case of your neck. If you’re trying to improve your neck situations, dealing with arthritis, this problems, nerve issues, stenosis, all those things, then you need to gain more strength likely in those deep neck flexors in the front of your neck. And so you need to take them to fatigue.
And if 10 seconds 10 times is too little than do more. If it’s way too much, then you’re just not ready for it and you can cut it down to four or five reps or seven reps, whatever suits you at that time, but look to increase it to the point where you get fatigued in those deep neck flexors. And once you’re done with this routine, it should just feel like you got a little bit of a workout. It shouldn’t hurt.
You shouldn’t be in pain or feeling like you need to go take pain medication or anything like that. You should feel a little bit better, just a little bit tired. And then as the day goes on, it should reduce your neck pain you should feel like you can turn your head a little easier. As you get stronger over time you should be able to sleep at night better.
But even right after you do the exercise, it should feel a significant improvement you should feel like you can move and be a little more free and not have to worry about your neck as much. Anyways guys drop a comment let us know if you tried it out if it worked for you. And if this video was helpful for you, please give it give it a like and don’t forget to subscribe and turn on notifications, so you don’t miss any of the helpful videos we put out every single week. Have a lot of fun this week guys.
