If you are having some neck pain, stiffness, or tightness, check out this video for neck stretches. The neck muscles that are affected the most are your trapezius and levator scapulae muscles. People often describe neck pain as a crick in their neck.
First start off with some gentle neck stretches by bringing your chin to your chest and then looking up towards the ceiling. This is neck flexion and extension. Next you are going to take your ear to your shoulder on each side. Make sure you are not shrugging your shoulders up. This is side bending. Then you are going to turn your head from side to side like you are looking over your shoulder. This is neck rotation. If that is not painful, then you can add some overpressure with your hands.
Now place your hand under your thigh to keep your shoulder down, then side bend your head to the opposite side and gently put pressure with your other hand to get a stretch through your trapezius muscles. Hold these for 30 seconds and perform 3 times on each side.
The final stretch is going to be for your levator scapulae muscle. This is the muscle that is used when you shrug your shoulders, and they can get overworked when you are stressed out. Take your arm on the side of the pain and place it above and behind your shoulder. Then take your opposite arm and place on top and slightly behind your head. Look down towards the opposite knee of the pain and apply gentle pressure for a good stretch.
Sometimes neck pain happens with even the slightest movement. This often happens with a neck trauma like whiplash or a sport's injury. With any neck trauma, it's important to get checked out by your Healthcare Provider first. Once you're cleared for movement, these stretches and exercises may help.
Headaches are often accompanied by neck pain. Relaxing the muscles around the neck and shoulder area with these stretches and exercise may help relieve the headache as well as the neck pain.
My favorite exercise for Neck Pain Relief is a chin tuck. It’s great for the neck and shoulder, it can help relieve headaches, and it can also help correct posture.
Often a tight levator scapulae muscle can cause neck pain because many of the muscles in the neck area go down into the shoulder as well. My favorite stretch for this area is a levator scapulae stretch.
These shoulder pain relief stretches are great for helping to relieve general shoulder pain and shoulder tightness. The shoulder stretches are done in real time, so they are easy to follow.
A pinched nerve (or cervical radiculopathy) is basically when the nerve coming out of the spine gets irritated at the nerve root. This can cause pain and weakness going down into the arm. These exercises should help.
Frozen shoulder, which is technically known as adhesive capsulitis, is a condition that causes stiffness and pain in your shoulder joint from adhesion build up.
If you are having some neck pain, stiffness, or tightness, check out this video for neck stretches. The neck muscles that are affected the most are your trapezius and levator scapulae muscles. People often describe neck pain as a crick in their neck.
