How to deal with neck pain - part 2

Thank you for your kind feedback from my last blog dealing with "neck pain". Sharon writes: "Perfect timing. I have started to read books on my tablet and the angle of my neck/head/ line of sight is off. Therefore neck pain today. Thank you for this email with neck pain exercises!" The second technique to deal with neck pain is called Static or Passive Stretch. Passive or static stretch is when you hold the neck in a specific position where the muscles are lengthened (and will feel a light stretch), in order to assist in those muscles being lengthened. This type of stretching is the most common type of neck stretching you see for neck injuries and neck pain. An example of a static stretch is this: rotate the head to the side and bring the muscles to the point that they are being lightly stretched. When you get to that light stretch point you will hold the position for a period of time. A lot of times it might be 30 seconds, 1 minute or 2 minutes. What I do that is different is go against the grain when it comes to how long someone stretches. Everyone is going to differ on how long they end up holding that stretch. The key thing that you are looking at is when do you feel the muscles relax? When you feel the neck muscles relax, you can discontinue the stretch. For some people that might end up taking 5, 10, 20 or 30 seconds. Let me explain the relaxing of the neck muscle being stretched. You will bring the muscle to a stretch position. As you hold the stretch and do not change the position you are in, you will feel the muscles lightly relax to a point you won’t feel the stretch any more. It is a small lengthening of the muscle. This is when your neck stretch should end. The second point depends on what your tissues can tolerate. If someone has injured their neck or has neck pain, they might move it into a stretch position, but can only handle 5 seconds. Forcing them to hold it for 30 seconds, a minute, or two will just flare things up (increase neck pain). It’s better to stretch the muscles in a point of comfort, even if it’s not 30, 60 or 120 seconds. If it’s just 5 seconds you can still build on that. And then more advanced the technique is, when you feel that muscle relax you can move to the starting position of the stretch and move to the other side, or move on the next exercise.

Let's connect at gaiaadventures@shaw.ca Catherine D'Aoust, Kinesiologist, Personal Training, Better Aging http://www.gaiaadventures.com 604 329.1257