Get Ready for Neck Day - How to Train Your Neck
Let’s face it. No one walks into the gym thinking “I’m pumped for neck day today.” It’s not something we often work on or see people working on in the gym. No one wants to be that person getting looks from everyone because of the weird exercises you’re doing. But just like any other part of the body can be trained, so can the neck. Now we aren’t talking about adding a neck day into your exercise split, but rather adding in some accessories to your upper body loading day. You don’t need to turn into a Formula 1 driver with your neck strength but it can benefit your upper extremity lifts especially in an overhead position.
In the context of this we can think of the neck as the anatomy that supports the head including the muscles which help perform neck movements of flexion (bending forward), extension (bending backwards), side flexion (bending to each side) and rotation. We can also include the larger muscles of the upper extremity which attach from the neck to the shoulder and scapula as they transfer loads through the neck when we lift heavy loads with our upper body.
Is it bad to load your neck?
Well.. is it bad to train your quads? Just like any other body part it can be worked on and strengthened. Neck strengthening has been shown to reduce neck pain and reduce risk of concussion. And as mentioned above, forces from your upper body lifts get transferred through the neck as we stabilize so why not increase the tolerance of those tissues to help provide stability?
How to Load the Neck
Just like any body part there is an infinite number of exercise variations you can perform, but here are a couple ideas to get you started.
When we think of loading the neck we can load it in all the directions mentioned above:
Flexion
Extension
Side flexion
Rotation
We also think of breaking it down into 3 broad categories:
Active range of motion
Direct neck loading
Indirect functional loading.
Here’s some examples…
Active Range of Motion
Direct Neck Loading
Indirect Functional Loading
In Summary
The neck can be an area of opportunity to load for a lot of people independent of whether they’re dealing with a neck issue or not. It can be an accessory to your upper extremity loading exercises.
Loading the neck is similar to loading any other body part.
When we load the neck we think of loading it in all planes of movement and in 3 different categories including active range of motion, direct loading and indirect functional loading.
Give some of these a try and let us know how they work for you.
