Top 3 Exercises For Tension Headaches & Migraines

Are you looking for exercises to help tension headaches and migraine problems? Do you suffer from pain on the front of your forehead, tension on the back of the head, at the base of the skull, pain behind the eyeball, temple problems, sensitivity to light, or sounds? Those are all symptoms of tension headaches and migraine problems.

I’m Dr. David, I’m a specialist physical therapist over at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy, and I’ve helped people with tension headaches and migraines for years. It’s quite simple to treat actually. It just depends on which type of headache it is, what type of migraine it is, and what the root problem is. Once we have all that ironed out, then treatment is pretty typical.

But I wanted to do this video for you where we cover the top three most used exercises that we give patients for tension headaches and migraines so that you might start to try these at home and be able to get them some relief.

Number one, towel stretches.

I’m actually going to use a pillowcase. I’ve got one right here. So what you want to do is grab your towel or your pillowcase, and fold it the long way, like so. So it’s kind of long, and then twist it a bit just to make it a little more narrow and stiffer. And then what you’ll do is put it around your neck.

The point of this exercise, it’s kind of a stretch than an exercise, it is to free up stiff joints in the neck to allow the nerves that are potentially aggravating your headache or migraine problem to move better. And that way you can get some stiffness taken care of in your neck and muscles as well.

So what you do is you pin one hand down against your chest here, and then the other hand you’re going to pull it against your neck bones. Even if it’s a bit tender in the neck bones, you want to push into it as long as it’s not too uncomfortable to where you’re cringing or wanting to cry or have some severe pain, it just feels like a mild tenderness at most. And you’re pulling into those neck bones as you turn in the direction.

Want to emphasize here, the point is not to stretch your head in rotation as far as it’ll go, you don’t want to turn as far as you can, you’re forcing the motion with the top end of the tower, the pillow case here, and just mildly turning my neck. It actually popped just now when I did that. And you’re just as I’m turning lightly, I’m not turning as far as I can. This is as far as I need to turn here it already unstiffen in my case, but I have the ability to turn my head farther.

The point is to put that towel on the part of your neck that stiffness and then with your hand pulling in this direction to free up the joint. So you might just do that for 20-30 seconds, maybe a minute, It’ll sustain some pressure and then just give it a little baby bounces at the end and then go the other way. And just move like that. I can still turn a lot more, but I’m not trying to stretch my neck. Like I said, I’m just trying to move the joint right where this towel lines up on my left side in this case.

The second exercise is chin retractions.

This one is a good one to get the deep neck muscles working. They help to give stability to your neck for your head and neck. It’s really simple. And the way that it’s commonly done though is you repeat a motion. I don’t want you to repeat the motion, I want you to do holds. So you got to have your head and neck up nice and tall. Do a little baby double chin and then do a big double chin just like that. And it’s not looking down.

Notice I didn’t tilt my head down. I shoved my head back over my neck and that turns on those muscles that are behind your throat right here. Hold that go about 50 to 75% intensity. If 100 for me is right here. I’m going to back off to about 50% and I feel those muscles behind my throat working. Hold it there for 10 to 20 seconds, 30 seconds and what you should feel is a light very light stretch on the back of the neck, and then the muscles in the front of the neck working. That’s good. You want it to do that. Do about 10 of those holds all in a row. Really, you can go as many as you need to begin to get some relief.

If it’s the right type of tension headache or migraine problem, you should begin to get relief. The more that you do that exercise, the exercise should not be aggravating it should not bother the headache or the migraine problem anymore. It should give it some relief of anything. If you find that this exercise is making it worse then don’t do this exercise. There are a few cases of migraine and headache problems where this is not the best exercise to do. So just pay attention to your symptoms you should know right away as you start to do it if it’s getting worse or better.

The third exercise is going after upper body weakness that commonly feeds into headache and migraine problems. You want to do a shrug exercise.

Practicing a little bit of that same chin tuck maneuver, that double chin maneuver, just lightly tuck your chin down like that or backwards. Then you want to shrug, just bring your shoulders up to your ears as high as you can go. I’m getting a little shaky here while still holding my neck in place. Hold that for 10 seconds.

You should feel these muscles over here getting tired, that’s good. And then repeat that 10 times. So, do 10 second holds 10 times. Tuck the chin in, retract your head back, and then do a big giant shrug as hard as you can, as long as it’s not hurting. And here I’m squinting not because it’s hurting but because I’m giving it a lot of effort to shrug my shoulders up. And I can feel these muscles on both sides, squeezing and tightening. And that’s exactly what you want.

After doing 10 second holds 10 times. Or do less if you need to, if it’s just starting to bother you or it’s a little uncomfortable or hard to do. Just do five reps, just hold it for five or six seconds or seven. But generally, 10 second holds 10 times should give you some relief. After you do that, you’ll feel tired like you worked out a little bit. But then in the moments after that resolves that the tiredness goes away. It should feel loose, and some relief through your headache migraine problem.

So, give these exercises a shot. If you find that they’re not quite helping you as much as you want, maybe you are getting some relief, but it’s not completely going away, you’re still having to take pain medications and you still are having trouble focusing and concentrating or you’re grumpy because of the headache or migraine problem that you’re dealing with, and you’re thinking that it might be beneficial for you to talk to an expert about getting the stiffness out by hand from an expert or getting some more specific exercises for your headache and migraine problem, I encourage you to contact us.

There are two ways to do that. One, you can call our office at 915-503-1314. Or you can go to the top menu bar of our website here and find the option that says cost and availability. Click on that and a form will pop up. Leave us your details and one of my staff will give you a call. Once we talk on the phone whether you call us or you or you use the form. We want to hear all about your headache and migraine problems so that we can make sure that it’s the right type of problem that we can help you out with here in the clinic. If it is, my staff will give you the next steps and then we’ll go from there. I hope that we can see real soon the clinic and be a part of your success story and getting off of pain medications and ending your headache and migraine problem. Have a great day.