Are Your Neck Exercises
A Pain In The Neck?

Neck exercises are the conventional approach in treating neck pain or stiff necks. You will probably have considered or currently do exercises for you neck to help alleviate your condition. The accepted wisdom is that pain may be due to muscle weakness or imbalance, if you have eliminated other causes then this is the most likely reason.

But how do your neck muscles become weak in the first place? You can accept that doing exercises for your neck will have an effect on the muscles. But what about the other ninety-nine percent of the time? What you do with your muscles away from your exercises will have a far greater impact.

I believe that many cases of neck and shoulder pain are due to poor habits of movement. These habits include wrong use of the muscles causing some to work too hard whilst others do little.

Constant use of your neck in this way will obviously lead to uneven development. If you have not yet tried my body awareness test click on the link below and you may be surprised at the result.

Try my body awareness test

How you move your head and use your neck muscles will be based on the picture you have of your body. The exercise below will help you to redraw this picture and therefore start to change how you move and ulimately the strength of the muscles. Good use of your body during your everyday activities will readdress the imbalance issues without the need for separate exercises. If you do your neck exercises based on your old inaccurate picture of where you head and neck meet, they will serve only to re-enforce your poor habits.

There are 15 unique exercises in my ebook (details below) that will show you how to sit, stand, walk and do whatever you want to do without stress so you neck pain will melt away. I can guarantee that you'll not have seen this 15 unique neck exercises before, yet any one of these could be the answer to your problem. For more information please click stiff neck relief.

Body Awareness Movement - The Neck

This is not a neck exercise, more of an experiment that will give you a new experience of moving your head in a different way.

Place your both index fingers in the groove behind your ears - the joint your head moves from is roughly in between your two fingers and almost level with your eyes. The point where the two lines cross on the photograph below.

Leaving your fingers there for the moment, try and move your head to the left with as little effort as possible. You should be able to do this without the shoulders moving. The objective is to get the head moving with the absolute minimum amount of effort enabling you to experience movement in a different way. It is worth checking that you have not tightened the jaw, as this will interfere with the neck and shoulder muscles. To soften the jaw, allow the teeth to part a little whilst keeping the lips lightly together.

Now look down, again with the thought of the pivot point and allowing the movement from here. Think of your eyes leading the head to look up whilst allowing you head to tilt back on the pivot point like a see-saw. Now let you head release forward by thinking of letting go of the back at the neck and your head will drop back down without having to pull the head forward. Your head is heavier in front of the pivot point of the atlanto-occipital and if the muscles at the back are released gravity will do the rest.

When you next do your neck exercises, check whether you are moving your head from this point, or more importantly, do you really need to do them? If you can use you head and neck correctly your muscles will soon re-balance themselves and in the majority of cases where muscles are a factor, real improvements are possible

One simple thing you can do to help your neck is to use a memory foam neck pillow. Take advantage of this new technology and give your neck complete support while you sleep.

Try one of my total body fitness programs as an alternative to neck exercises
Designed for athletes to develop better body knowledge and get more for less effort, my programs could help your neck pain by improvong your coordination and get your muscles working for you and not against.

Improve posture without exercise
Your head is heavy and if it is held or moved from the wrong place will place a strain on your neck. Neck exercises may strengthen the muscles but it won't change how you move your head. A head in the wrong place will collapse your posture - but be wary of corrective exercises.

Want to ask a question? My view of what fitness means and how it can be attained is different to the conventional approach. If there is anything on this page that you would like to follow up please feel free to contact me

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