Transcription
If you have tightness and pain in your upper neck at the base of your skull, the exercises in this video can help to eliminate it. My name is Dr. Jared and you have a group of small muscles here in your upper neck. When they become overworked, tight, and achy, they can cause a lot of problems, including tension, headache, limitation in your range of motion, and even just general pain in that area. And so, in this video, I want to walk you through a step-by-step process to relieve tension in these muscles, alleviate pain in that area, and help you to feel better fast.
The first step that I recommend is to put some heat on your neck if you can. This is a great way to promote relaxation, to help those muscles to relax, to increase blood flow, and just help you to feel better overall. There are a couple of ways you can do this. I've got a couple of different heating pads. This one you throw in the microwave. This one you plug into the wall. I'll link those in the description down below. You can even let a hot shower hit the back of your neck for about 10 minutes. But again, the goal here is to just loosen up that area to promote that relaxation. Just help your neck to feel better. It's not mandatory. If you're not in a place where you can do that for about 10 or so minutes, don't worry about it. We're just going to skip to this next step, which is a massage or a soft tissue mobilization to this area. Another way that we can just help those muscles to release and relax.
There's a couple of ways that I like to do this. Number one is manually with your hands. And so what I want you to do is link your fingertips together right here and support the base of your skull. Now with your thumbs, you can fall right off the base of your skull into the soft part of your neck. So you're going to feel two kind of bony areas back there. Fall off right below that. and you're right in those muscles that we need to massage and that we need to relax. And so we're going to interlock the fingers. We can even tuck the chin down just a little bit to lengthen that area. And then with my thumbs, I'm going to press right into there. And with small circular motions, I'm going to start over at the base of your ears. And then you can work all the way over into the center of the neck, applying just comfortable pressure. If you find an area that's particularly tight, you might want to spend a little more time in that area. That's technique number one.
Technique number two, the one that I personally prefer is with two raet balls that you can either tape together with athletic tape or you can put them into a clean sock. Both of those methods work well to hold them together in this arrangement right here. I'm going to put that down on the floor. And then as I lay down, I'm going to put those two raet balls right here at the base of my skull. And you should feel those just push right in to those to those soft muscles into that soft area of your neck. And then from here, I even like to nod my head up and down and just these really small movements to do a little bit of a massage, but then to also mobilize that area as well. We're promoting a little motion in there. We're getting a little elongation to those muscles. And in general, I'm going to recommend about three to five minutes on whichever massage method that you prefer.
Now that we have those muscles warmed up and loose, step number three is to stretch them out. Here are the three stretches that I would recommend. Stretch number one is actually a mobilization to your upper neck. Incredibly effective at alleviating pressure really fast. This is what it looks like. If I wanted to mobilize the upper left part of my neck, if that's where my tension and pain was, I want you to sidebend your ear over towards the right and then rotate your chin over towards the left. When you get into that position, you should feel a really good stretch right here at the base of that left part of your skull. Now, with my hand, I'm going to get the web space between my thumb and my pointer, and I'm going to put that right here on my chin. And then just a really small motion in this up and to the left direction. And so I'm going to side bend. I'm going to rotate web space right here on my chin. And then just a really small just a little small motion up and to the left. And you'll feel a big stretch in that area, but it might be accompanied by this cavitation or this pop that results in a significant release in your pressure. And then we can do that over here to the right side. So I'm going to side bend right. I'm gonna rotate to or excuse me, side bend left. Rotate to the right until I get that good stretch right there at the base of my skull with my left hand. Chin into that web space. And then just a little small motion up and to the left. May or may not be accompanied by that pop. If it does pop, you should feel better afterwards. It should feel like a release to your pressure. If it does not, not a problem at all. We're still going to proceed with the next two stretches.
The next one is going to be a chin tuck decompression. And so what I want you to do is with one hand make a fist. I'm going to then invert that fist. So it's upside down. I want you to put your forefinger right here on the top of your clavicles. So right where your collar bones come together. That's where the thumb side of your fist is going to go. And then your chin rests right on top of the pinky side of that fist. With your other hand, you're going to grab right here to the base of your skull and then apply a pressure in an upwards motion. So with this hand, I'm pushing my head up. And what that does is it pushes your chin down into your fist. And now all of a sudden, it's blocked. But as you keep pushing up, you're going to notice a decompression and a stretch to the entire back of your neck, including that tight area at the base of your skull. You're going to hold that in a comfortable position for about 5 to 10 seconds. And then you're going to repeat that 10 times.
And then finally, the last stretch that I want you to do would be a I call it the smell your armpit stretch. It's a muscle called your levator scapula. It goes from the base of your skull to the tip of your shoulder blade. Often gets painful, often gets tight in this area as well. This is what it looks like to stretch it out. I'm going to rotate my head 45° and then I'm going to look down towards my pocket. So, right now my nose is basically going down towards my left pocket. With my left hand, reach up to the back of your head. There's the smell your armpit part of the stretch. And then we're going to apply just a very subtle over pressure until you get a good stretch from the base of your right skull down to the top of your right shoulder. And I would hold that for 20 seconds three times over here to the left. And then repeat over here as well. So, we're going to get into that same position. Hold 20 seconds three times over to the right.
Hey, have you been following along with the exercises in this video so far? And if so, how does your neck feel? I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear your experience. Go ahead and leave me a comment down below. Let me know how you're doing. I also want to tell you about the allnew members area here on the Tone and Titan YouTube channel. This is something that I'm super excited about. There are different tiers available and different perks within each one of those tiers, including access to a private video library from me right here on Tone and Titan. I would love to have you check that out. If you're interested in learning more, hit the join button down below.
Okay, so now we've got your neck warmed up, we've got it loosened up, we've got it stretched out. Our last step in this process is to strengthen the muscles in your neck so that pain doesn't come back. And so to do that, I've got two great exercises for you. The first one is going to be a chin tuck. What I want you to do is lie down on your back. And as you do that, the natural position for your neck is going to be arched up off of the floor. And so to do the chin tuck, what I want you to do is try to pull your chin straight down into your throat to flatten your neck down into your floor. So, we should have that whole neck in contact with the ground. And then we're going to hold that for 1 2 3 seconds and then come back up to this neutral starting position and then tuck again. So, push the neck down flat into the floor. Hold 1 2 3 seconds and then come right back up again. The muscles that are tight in your neck are your deep neck extensors. And one great way that we can fix those is by training the deep neck flexors to hold your head in a better position. And that's what we're doing with this exercise. And on this, I recommend two to three sets of about 10 repetitions. That would be a great number to shoot for.
And then the last exercise that I have for you is we're going to train and strengthen some of your other neck extensor muscles so that those small muscles don't have to work quite so hard. So for this one, what I want you to do is come to the very edge of your bed and lay off the bed just so that kind of the top part of your chest is unsupported. Now from here, we're going to hang down into this relaxed position and perform a chin tuck. I want you to focus on lifting the back of your head straight up towards the ceiling. Note that I'm not lifting my head up and looking ahead of me like this. That's working those muscles that ultimately are overworked anyway that we're trying to relax with this video. So, keep your head flat, keep your face parallel to the floor. Start from this position right here. So, I'm going to focus on pulling the back of my head up towards the ceiling. Hold 1 2 3 seconds and then return back down to the starting position. Now, the set and rep recommendation on this is the same as for the chin tucks. About two to three sets of about 10 repetitions is a great number to shoot for. I hope these help your neck to feel amazing and thank you so much for watching.