![]() ![]() This sounds like a good thing, but when we over-use this muscle to stabilize our neck along with upper trap and SCM, we end up with the same result of neck pain, tension headaches, and even scapular or mid back pain. The levator scapulae, in combination with other nearby muscles, elevates and rotates the scapula (shoulder blade) to assist in lifting your arm overhead. Due to its attachment on the posterior first rib, excess tension in the scalene muscle group can reduce the space the brachial plexus has to travel between this muscle and the first rib and clavicle, causing numbness and tingling in the arm, hand, and/or fingers due to nerve root compression (otherwise known as thoracic outlet syndrome or TOS). Over-utilizing these muscles for every breath contributes to muscle tension that pulls your neck into forward head posture, neck pain and loss of motion, and perhaps tension headaches in your temple (scalenes) or your forehead, jaw, or sternum (SCM). The scalenes and SCM’s are muscles that many people use to assist in breathing, but these muscles are only intended for breathing under duress or extreme exercise, when it is hard to catch your breath. However, over time this muscle is over-worked from lifting our arms, as well as being over-stretched by chronically poor forward head posture, resulting in pain, tension, and even tension headaches that feel like a sword through the eye. However, since most of us have a very under-developed and under-recruited group of neck muscles called the deep anterior neck flexors that are supposed to do the stabilizing, our other neck muscles are just doing what they have to do to keep your head on your shoulders.įor example, the upper trap muscle gets a bad rap, because many of us use this muscle to assist us in lifting our arms overhead. The scalenes, upper traps, levators, and sternocleidomastoids (SCM’s) were never intended to be utilized as neck stabilizers. While helping to do something they were never intended to do, these muscles become overworked, tight, and eventually become painful over time. The neck contains many large and well-known muscles that tend to be problematic. For people who suffer from neck pain, tension headaches, shoulder pain, scapular pain, TMJ dysfunction, and even migraines, or just those of us who spend hours in front of a computer or texting each day, exercises for neck stabilization should be incorporated into any work-out routine intended to make you stronger and/or to treat and prevent your pain. If you consult the research, it isn’t as important to strengthen the neck as it is to stabilize the neck. Now before you run out to buy one of these contraptions that allow you to hang a plate or dumbbell from your head, there are important things you should know. Similar to one of our earlier articles on the abdominals, if you google “neck strengthening,” you will get some very crazy ideas of how you should strengthen your neck (see the picture to the right for just one of many interesting ideas). My bet is that not a lot of people include neck stabilization exercises in their work-out routine, but I hope this article will help you re-consider. How do we stabilize our nearly twenty pound heads using just the tiny muscles in our neck? It’s a great question that’s not addressed very often in gyms and weight rooms. We are back this month working on improving our body strength and stability, and we have finally made our way to the top of the body.
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