Reduce Neck Pain With Strengthening Exercises
Two-way repeated measure analysis variance was used to examine the within and between groups difference of the outcome measures, and the group x time interaction. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to determine the correlation between EMG amplitude and torque production during maximal isokinetic flexion and extension for evaluation of the changes in the neuromuscular efficiency. Measurement of the cross-sectional area of each muscle was taken twice and the mean was used for analysis. For longus colli, participants were placed in supine with head supported by a pillow. Level C4 in anterior neck was estimated and marked by posterior neck palpation.
Press into it by trying to turn your head to the right, but use your hand to prevent the rotation. To do an isometric contraction for the muscles in the front of your neck , put your hands on your forehead (Figure 11-1). Press into your hands with your anterior neck muscles, but stop your head from moving with your hands. Many of these exercises use isometric contraction; that is, you contract your muscles without allowing movement.
Pinch the shoulder blades together and lift the hands off the floor. In cases of extreme forward head posture, a person may not be able to pull the head all the way back to the door jamb when first starting. In these cases, it is advisable to pull the head back as far as possible without pain. After initially performing the chin tuck exercise in a door jamb and becoming comfortable with it, the exercise can eventually be done standing or sitting without a door jamb.
If you would like to see if exercises can help relieve any neck and/or shoulder pain you are experiencing, it is always beneficial to have your condition evaluated by a health care professional. It is always best to have the program include clear goals, including ergonomics and additional ways to improve postural muscle balance, stretches as well as any strengthening exercises. Findings of the present study showed that VSE were comparable with IE in improving neck functions and performance. VSE might be superior to IE in promoting efficiency of superficial neck muscle in torque generation. It had been shown by various studies that IE were effective in improving neck functions and reducing neck pain intensity, and hence they were prescribed to participants with neck pain . With the findings from this study, VSE might serve as an alternative to IE in neck training and rehabilitation.
While you can recognize when your neck hurts or is stiff, a weak neck can have other symptoms that are not as obvious. In addition to discomfort in the neck itself, you may have headaches, dizziness or problems with your joint and jaw muscles . You also may have pain or weakness in your arms or AC joint impingement in the shoulder.
However, isotonic neck exercises, which shared the similar motor control exercises for lower back pain nature to VSE except for the standardised execution speed, were found to be effective for improvements in neck muscle strength. Conley et al. found a 34% improvement of neck muscle strength in healthy participants when isotonic neck extension exercises were added to a 12-week general strengthening program. Mansell et al. reported a 15% and 22% improvement in isometric flexion and extension strength respectively in a cohort of soccer players, after completing a 8-week isotonic neck exercise program. The extents of the improvements were comparable to the extent of increase in isokinetic strength in flexion (23%) and extension (16%) in VSE group revealed in our study.
However, due to the practical limitation, it was not possible to use intramuscular EMG to directly record the deep neck muscle activity level during movement testing of the present study. Superficial neck muscles contribute in neck movement force generation while deep neck muscles act as primary neck stabilizers . If there was a same peak superficial muscle EMG amplitude between two people but one needed compensation by superficial muscles, the force generation would be less effective. The association between torque production and peak EMG amplitude would become lower, implying an impaired neuromuscular efficiency.
It was advocated that restoring muscle endurance and optimising the cervical muscle synergy help relieving neck pain and promoting recovery . Further analysis revealed that degree of correlation between extension torque and EMG amplitude of cervical erector spinae increased in both groups. However, significant correlation was found only in VSE group post-program.