Re strengthening exercises, regular strength training will help to increase the strength of your neck but you can also do specific exercises to target the muscles that move the head. Your neck muscles will respond to strengthening in the same manner that other skeletal muscles will such as legs and arms will. You can get a head harness that allows you to attach weights or connect to weight stack pulley system for resistance and you can use rubber exercise bands in a similar manner. A lot of fitness centres will have these, but it's probably worth getting your own so you're not sharing head sweat/germs with everyone else. You can even use your own had for resistance, but it's difficult to gauge increases.
In terms of exercises, rotational and forward flexion exercises can be performed with a larger range of movement while backwards extension and lateral flexion (tilting head to shoulders) should be with smaller or more limited ranges of movement when using added resistance. A general recommendation is to not use resistance in motion that creates compression between the edges of the vertebrae. So for example if you want to train your neck in lateral flexion, start with your neck tilted part way to the right shoulder and pull part way to the left shoulder in order to avoid excessive compression under tension to the left edge of vertebrae on the left side of your neck. Movements should also be controlled and smooth and not sudden or jerky.
From a safety/reasoning pov, think of your spine as a bunch of wooden discs stack on top of each other with a thinner rubber disc in between them. The discs can rotate on top of each other fairly easily, but they don't bend side to side too easily. Ideally you want to limit the amount of compression happening between the wood discs (vertebrae) and rubber disc (intervertebral discs).
If you don't do any resistance training at all start off with a basic program to build overall body strength before starting to work specifically on your neck muscles. Make sure to focus on using good posture during your workouts as this will help with developing good postural (neck and spine) strength.
Here's a link that discusses a strengthening program designed to help alleviate neck pain and the exercises involved would also be of benefit from a mtb'ing perspective.
[https://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/strength-training-relieves-chronic-neck-pain](https://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/strength-training-relieves-chronic-neck-pain)
June 9, 2022, 4:07 p.m. - Mark
Re strengthening exercises, regular strength training will help to increase the strength of your neck but you can also do specific exercises to target the muscles that move the head. Your neck muscles will respond to strengthening in the same manner that other skeletal muscles will such as legs and arms will. You can get a head harness that allows you to attach weights or connect to weight stack pulley system for resistance and you can use rubber exercise bands in a similar manner. A lot of fitness centres will have these, but it's probably worth getting your own so you're not sharing head sweat/germs with everyone else. You can even use your own had for resistance, but it's difficult to gauge increases. In terms of exercises, rotational and forward flexion exercises can be performed with a larger range of movement while backwards extension and lateral flexion (tilting head to shoulders) should be with smaller or more limited ranges of movement when using added resistance. A general recommendation is to not use resistance in motion that creates compression between the edges of the vertebrae. So for example if you want to train your neck in lateral flexion, start with your neck tilted part way to the right shoulder and pull part way to the left shoulder in order to avoid excessive compression under tension to the left edge of vertebrae on the left side of your neck. Movements should also be controlled and smooth and not sudden or jerky. From a safety/reasoning pov, think of your spine as a bunch of wooden discs stack on top of each other with a thinner rubber disc in between them. The discs can rotate on top of each other fairly easily, but they don't bend side to side too easily. Ideally you want to limit the amount of compression happening between the wood discs (vertebrae) and rubber disc (intervertebral discs). If you don't do any resistance training at all start off with a basic program to build overall body strength before starting to work specifically on your neck muscles. Make sure to focus on using good posture during your workouts as this will help with developing good postural (neck and spine) strength. Here's a link that discusses a strengthening program designed to help alleviate neck pain and the exercises involved would also be of benefit from a mtb'ing perspective. [https://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/strength-training-relieves-chronic-neck-pain](https://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/strength-training-relieves-chronic-neck-pain)