The Easiest Way To Fix Neck Pain

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Chapters

• 0:00 Why Neck Pain Isn’t Always The Neck
• 0:20 BJJ, Phones, And Forward Posture
• 1:51 Activating Upper Back Before Pressing
• 2:45 Top Drill 1: Band Or Dowel Dislocates
• 4:07 Hangs, Scap Shrugs, And Warm-Up Progressions
• 5:20 Scap Swimmers: Prone And Standing Variations
• 6:27 Ring Rows With True Scap Retraction
• 7:17 Windmills And Straight-Arm Strength
• 9:48 Sponsor: Electrolytes For BJJ
• 10:38 IYTWs, Tempo Work, And Weak Links
• 12:56 Balancing Odd Positions And Preventing Pain
• 15:09 Three Drills Recap And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Do you suffer from neck pain and you're not sure why? We are going to go deep to find out how we can actually solve this problem for you. Because sometimes, not always, neck pain is not because of a neck problem. And you do BJJ, you spend a bit of time like this, we put pressure on our necks. But we also do plenty of other stuff like be on our phones, sit down at our desks, and having a forward posture can overload your neck. And weakness in the upper back is often the key perpetrator in neck pain. And so what I wanted to do is talk about how we can uh yeah, strengthen the upper back and give you a few things that are going to help you resolve this. Because short of a bulge disc in the neck, which is horrible and a bin there, um, oftentimes people complaining of neck pain have weak upper backs. And and the jujitsu posture thing is pretty common, isn't it, Joe?

SPEAKER_01: 0:56

Yeah, we've most of us got pretty dog shit posture, and jits definitely puts you in some pretty shitty positions. Kind of reinforces it. Um yeah, absolutely. And then you add to that, you know, some cunt might have been trying to choke you for like 20 minutes. You fight. You might be stuck in a guillotine. Yeah, maybe you didn't fight, maybe you just took 20 minutes for the round to end. You're like, you never got me down, Ray. Um but I never tapped. Yeah, but you know, like there's a bunch of there's a bunch of shit going on when it comes to that whole like upper torso neck region. Definitely.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27

And yeah, like oftentimes you'll, you know, we we it's it's the subject of many memes where it's got the Batman, you know, yeah, didn't tap to the guillotine, and now you're moving like 90s, you know. Um then Keaton, whatever, the original Batman we have. Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton. Best, no, still the best Batman. Still the best Batman. No, no neck movement. So what I've found is just even for myself, uh, if I'm feeling really restricted, like I can't tip my head side to side, or I'm struggling to turn my head, uh, doing a certain amount of work, which is usually what I do before I do any pressing, whether it's like horizontal or overhead stuff, I always do work to activate through my upper back. And I find that once I've done that, actually my neck starts to move better. I'm like, oh, why is that? And it's actually because I've actually just kind of created a degree of bracing in a muscular way. It's kind of reset my posture and now my my head's in a better position. And so, oh now my neck doesn't feel overloaded. And so what I want to go through, Joe, is uh go through kind of our each having three of our favorite upper back strengtheners, activators, etc. etc. So the the thing that I always start with is a uh like a dislocate. So whether you use a a band or you use a um a piece of wood, like a dowel, to take the hands front to back and really focus on getting getting shoulder blades squeezing together on the way back and keeping that tension because usually where I feel it most is like my wrists and my pecs. Like I feel it very much through the front. And I I always, whenever I'm doing it with a jujitsu person, that you always see people like they start with their hands here and then they go, Oh, I can't, they go wider and they go wider and they go wider, and then they're like, I need a longer piece of wood. They're like just the index fingers on the stick, just trying to get that range of motion, and and it's it's very much a postural thing. So I really like to dislocate as a as an initial warm-up to um get the upper back working. How about yourself?

SPEAKER_01: 3:41

I like to dislocate. Um, sometimes it's a bit bit I find, you know, depending on like because I do get a bit of a chronic shoulder kind of neck thing. It's rotator cuff, but you know, relevant to this chat, it feels like my neck. I finish and I'm like, oh, my neck's sore. And then when I get into it, and it's usually when I get someone to work on it, it's actually the rotator cuff, like the internal shoulder region.

SPEAKER_00: 4:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 4:03

Um, but I so so in those during those times I find disarcates cold, can be a bit fucked. A bit too much. Yeah. Um hang. Okay. Yeah, passive hang and then some active hang, like some, you know, little scap shrugs, a bunch of that usually, and just some some arm circles, and then I'd be like, all right, let's do some fucking dislocates or whatever. Yeah. But I do find, yeah, like particularly too if my pecs are a bit tight, like I've done some pressing work or some dips or something like that. Um, yeah, you really feel that restriction in the dislocate.

SPEAKER_00: 4:34

Oh, yeah, it's it's it's uncomfortable, but I find even just in one set, there's improvement from like the first rep to the tenth rep. Yeah, the range starts to improve, and it's like, oh well, just taking whatever 30 seconds to a minute to do this has already created a degree of improvement.

SPEAKER_01: 4:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 4:54

Um you ever do the weighted ones lying prone? No, I haven't actually.

SPEAKER_01: 5:00

Really nice. Really nice. I haven't done for a long time. I've seen I've seen it done, and I've thought to myself, oh, that looks tough. You only need like a couple of kilos on the on the on the Dow. But yeah, it's a it's a good one because it yeah, it's just it's a hard position to load.

SPEAKER_00: 5:13

Yeah, my for me, the the when I think of that, that makes me think of like scap swimmer.

SPEAKER_01: 5:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 5:20

And the reason why I like the scap swimmer, and recently, I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me, but I think I saw um maybe Pauly doing it. Excuse me, which is like a like a standing scap swimmer as opposed to like just prone on the ground, yeah. Which is the way I I've just pretty much always done it, but it's always super tough. Um you gotta brace with the abs, and it's there's there's actually a lot involved when you do the scap swimmer drill, and I find that people just they just suck at it. So then I think I saw Paulie doing it with a client where he just had them doing like a standing 45. And I was like, how nice. That's kind of like a really good um, like almost like a halfway point. It's not quite as tough, but it still allows you to get that internal rotation and get the arms above and get get the scaps fired up with a degree of loading because of gravity, but it's not as intense.

SPEAKER_01: 6:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 6:19

So that's that's that would be my maybe second pick. Yeah. Either the standing or the the lying uh scap swimmer.

SPEAKER_01: 6:26

Yeah, it's money. I like that. I like um, you know it's gonna, it's pretty basic, but like I do like ring rows or any kind of invert, rings preferable, um, but with a really with the like a real emphasis on depressing and retracting the sh the scapula. Like were you really being particular about that? And I find that often people who have a bit of this ongoing sort of neck, upper back kind of fuckery going on, their pulling pattern, their like retraction usually involves the scapulars elevating.

SPEAKER_00: 7:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:02

And they're pulling into the upper trap, which is a which is something we can all do, right? Particularly when we're sort of not paying particular attention to what we're doing. Um, and so when you do that drill slowly in more of a kind of, you know, not in a strength context, but more of a warm-up sort of like prehab kind of context, um, it gives that person an opportunity to feel, or myself even, an opportunity to feel like, oh, this is this is when my scaps are actually down and back. Yeah. This is what it, you know, this is how I should be feeling.

SPEAKER_00: 7:30

For sure. And it's it's funny because it's really, it's like a it's just like a re-coordination. It's not like, oh, you suddenly got so much stronger or anything like that. You're just like, nobody, you need to fire in this way. Yeah. And then once you do that, that that then takes the pressure off the traps or allows the neck a little bit more space. And that that's it's funny how you can just within like one or two sets re-coordinate or reorganise how the muscles are firing up. So you're like, oh, I oh, I feel better. It's kind of it's it's funny how it's it's it's very simple, but it's very effective. Yeah. Um my third move that I I love, which is kind of probably um not, it's a little bit off off map, but it's something that's helped me with my shoulders, is uh a windmill, uh, which can be done either just with a little bit of weight, like a lightweight, or with a light kettlebell. But it really gets you to get into this kind of externally rotated position, and it forces you to fire up through your rear delt and a little bit in your lat and your scap while also moving your hip. And so the idea is to not do it heavy at all, but it really helps kind of stretch out all through the oblique up into the back of the shoulder and just stabilize because there's not many exercises where you you have to stabilize a weight out here, you know what I mean? Like that's a not a not a common position, it's a very weak position. But when you kind of reorganize your body in a in a in a in a windmill position, it it does get all through your rotator cuff and your scat fired up to um stabilize your arm in a in a straight position. And I think this is something that actually it occurred to me talking more to like movement crew is this idea of like bent arm strength and like straight arm strength, because I hadn't really thought of it like that. And like get ups and and windmills are definitely like a like a straight arm strength, maybe not in the same vein that you're like doing like a handstand or you're doing uh like a uh what do you call it, like a lever, but you have to keep your elbow straight and you've got to organize yourself around it. Yeah, so that's I like that one.

SPEAKER_01: 9:44

Yeah, it's yeah, it's very much a straight arm piece for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 9:48

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SPEAKER_01: 10:33

I was thinking, I've actually been doing these lately, and I used to do these when I was deep in the movement game. It's interesting. My first phase of training from Edo was, you know, a bunch of fucking strength work, and then it was five sets of IYTWs. Oh, yeah, yeah. Five sets at a 45 degree incline. Yeah. And you're like, and and each repetition there was, I think it was five, five reps of each. So there's four, there's the I shape, then the Y, then the T, then the W. Yeah. It's five of each. And the tempo is fucking grueling. The tempo was like fast, slow. I think it was five zero five zero. Oh God. So it was like five seconds up, or like four, like it was, it was slow. Maybe not. It was so fucking slow. And you're like, like it took you about two minutes to do a set.

SPEAKER_00: 11:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 11:24

And then you're like, I'm gonna do five of these. That's grueling. And it's the end of I've just done like almost two hours of training.

SPEAKER_00: 11:29

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01: 11:30

But it was insightful because it's like, well, these obviously produce a good result. And I've just recently connected with them again since I had last bout of shoulder fuckery. And um, they've been amazing. Oh yeah. They've been amazing, and it's that same thing of like it's a small little movement. This is the thing about straight arm strength. You're taxing smaller muscle groups, right? That you it's it's kind of easy to not tax them as much. Kind of neglect them. Yeah, right. You can just let your let your big lats and your pecs and everything do the work. Um, but if you with the straight arm stuff, you get these smaller ones working, and so they sort of take like lower intensity work, yeah, but more reps and and more precision. And so the exercises can feel like, well, this is all a bit light, but if you do it well, by the end of it, you're fucking smoked. Oh, it's so humbling.

SPEAKER_00: 12:20

Yeah, it's brutal. Uh, yeah. About six months ago, I was doing like a YTW pattern with like 1.25 kilowatts, or like I was able to progress after six weeks to 2.5 kilowatts. Yeah. And the burn and the discomfort, and it makes you just realise like, how much weaker am I in this motion? You know, I can do dumbbell bench of whatever, and I can barely lift the smallest plates in the gym in this very precise, controlled way. Yeah. And you it just really highlights how biased and imbalanced our bodies can be. And we can kind of get away with it up until the point that you're like, fuck, I can't lift my arm, or you know, like I I think this is the this is the thing that we don't with chronic injuries and neck pain, is it other than obviously if someone cranked your neck and it's you bulged a disc or you got spiked on your head, but it tends to creep up on people, I feel like you know, you you go to bed and you think oh I'm a bit stiff, you wake up the next day, you're like, oh fuck, I can barely move my neck. And and then it's only it's only once you're in that bad situation that you're like, how do I undo this? And then when you start to do something like the kind of IYTW movement, you're like, I didn't realize how how weak I was.

SPEAKER_01: 13:38

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I I think for jujitsu, a lot like a lot of that stuff, like those drills that we've mentioned, becomes super important because you do put your shoulders and all your joints into some really odd positions on the mats, like really odd positions, and so you can you you will put them in those positions and you will build strength there because say you play uh, I don't know, say you play a fucking uh like a close guard overhook game all the time. Yeah. And you know, you got this going on and your grip breaks happening like this, and you're pulling up high with this elbow, and it's like if you're just strengthening that one sort of vector or that one aspect of yeah, then well, you at the expense of the other planes or the other vectors, you're gonna be maybe just building some imbalance here. So adding in these smaller drills that hit multiple ranges of motion, um, while sometimes they can seem like, do they really give me anything? I think the the restoration of balance as a very general way to frame that um is a huge benefit.

SPEAKER_00: 14:44

Massive. Yeah. And just by spending that time working on the weak spots, uh it it kind of proofs you to these or it insulates you or insures you against these nagging, kind of debilitating things, which is like neck pain and and shoulder pain and stuff like that, which can just come from a build up of neglect. There it is, folks. The top three drills, get amongst it, you're gonna feel better.