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  • What's up, guys?

  • Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.

  • Stiff necks.

  • You're probably experienced one, at least in the last year, maybe more often than that.

  • I can tell you this: when you have one it really crushes your workout efforts because

  • there's really nothing that you can do that feels great if your neck is stiff.

  • Particularly, if you're lifting with your shoulders, your upper body, even your legs,

  • if you have to get your arms up in this position to squat.

  • But we can actually do something about it depending upon what is actually causing it

  • in the first place.

  • I'll say this, right off the bat.

  • If you're somebody that has a stiff neck while at the same time you're experiencing numbness,

  • or tingling down your armespecially one arm, not twoyou've got to get checked

  • out.

  • You've got to at least go see a physical therapist.

  • Have somebody check you out and determine that you don’t have some sort of a disc

  • issue here, that's also causing the pain and discomfort in your neck.

  • Then you don’t want to be fussing around and messing around with what I'm going to

  • show you here today.

  • But if what you have is definitely the more common side effect of muscle stiffness, or

  • joint stiffness, then you can do what I'm going to show you here, and it's going to

  • help you quickly.

  • So what you have to understand is, if you can't move your head to the left, or if you

  • can't move your head to the right we have one of two things going on.

  • It's really a 'chicken or the egg' scenario.

  • Either the muscles have spasms that connect here to the neck into the spine and are making

  • difficult for you to move because they're in spasmin this case it's a muscle issue

  • or the joint itself has become stuck and that is causing a reflexive reaction, by the

  • muscle going into spasm because they don’t like the fact that the mechanics here in the

  • spine are different.

  • In that case you'd want to work on the joint issue.

  • Either way, you'll see what I show you here today will actually help both.

  • So if we want to turn to the left look what happens.

  • We start rotating here, in our spine.

  • This is the spinous process; these big, nodules that come off here on the spine.

  • You'll see that two things will happen.

  • Number one: as I start to turn the ones at the top turn first.

  • The more I turn it starts to recruit here, and here, and here.

  • The more I turn it gets into the cervical spine.

  • They start to participate in the rotation.

  • They start moving one after the next, but they start up here with most of the motion.

  • So depending upon how far you can turn that will give you and indication of where you

  • might be stuck, and where you might want to intervene.

  • Okay, so you see how far you can go.

  • The next thing you want to take note of is, as I turn my head to the left these are actually

  • turning which way?

  • They're actually moving to the right.

  • You see that?

  • All these, the spinous processes, are actually moving in that direction as the head moves

  • in this direction.

  • So if you wanted to address this and try to help this out you could take a toweland

  • I'm going to show you one thing here on this channel that a towel is actually good for,

  • because working out ain't one of them.

  • What you do is, you take the towel and you put it around your neck, and the first thing

  • you try to do is determine where your discomfort is.

  • So you can either do it with a towel where you pull forward, this way, where you feel

  • like it's stiff, or you could just use your finger.

  • You're trying to feel these boney processes, one after the next.

  • Down, and down, and I find where it feels a little bit sore, okay?

  • So again, if I've ruled out that I have a disc issue, or if you've already talked to

  • somebody and you've ruled out the disc issues, but you're feeling soreness here, you probably

  • have a little bit of spasm, or you have this, again, vertebrae that's a little suck.

  • So as you feel this stiffness, wherever I identify where it is, now I want to take the

  • towel and put it at that level.

  • Now, all I'm doing is taking my arms and pulling forward on both of them equally.

  • But if I want to turn this way, to the left, we know that I can actually influence that

  • by pulling harder on this side over here – I'll show it from behindby pulling harder

  • here, because what I'm doing is, I'm actually just holding on for stability, and I'm pulling

  • forward on this side.

  • What I'm doing is I'm taking the towel and I'm – let's just take it at this level so

  • you can seeand I'm pushing forward on that side.

  • By pushing forward here, what am I doing?

  • I'm actually rotating the vertebrae to allow for rotation to the left.

  • So now you should instantly feelsort of like what we did with our shoulders popping;

  • if you have popping shoulders.

  • I'll actually link that video because people find it helpful.

  • If you have shoulders that pop there's a drill you can do that can actually reestablish the

  • position of the glenoid humeral joint to allow that to subside, at least for a while, until

  • you can fix it long term.

  • What I'm doing here is, if I have difficulty turning to the left, now I pull here, and

  • I turn at the same time.

  • I'll find that I can actually go further.

  • Then I come back and I ease up, and then I pull on this sidejust stabilizing here

  • and I allow myself to turn, and I come back.

  • Again, chin is tucked here.

  • Nice, pull, turn, and I'll experience more, and more range of motion.

  • Pain free range of motion.

  • This is a mulligan technique that physical therapists use a lot to try to help restore

  • motion in a spine that's locked up, but if it's coming from muscles then this is not

  • going to hurt because at least you're establishing full range of motion, which might allow the

  • muscles that were in spasm to finally let go as it is.

  • Same thing.

  • If I'm trying to go to the other side I'd actually just pull harder here, which is going

  • to then allow me to turn that way, and if I'm having trouble bending my head backward

  • which sometimes happensthen if I pull straight on, with equal force and go

  • back, like that; that actually feels good.

  • That will allow me to basically take the spine and move it this way.

  • Which is what happens as the head goes backward.

  • So a quick little technique that you can use, and I've also broken out the band here.

  • You can use one of the bands to do the exact same thing.

  • The nice thing about the band is, because of the rubber you basically get a little more

  • traction as it pulls on your neck.

  • It kind of sticks to your skin a little bit.

  • You'll get a little more traction that allows you to get a good glide.

  • So guys, as I said, a lot of reasons can lead to this.

  • Firstly, screen the serious stuff.

  • But if it's from your training, maybe you're digging your head into the bench during the

  • bench press.

  • Maybe you're moving your head in all sorts of ways when you're doing lat pull downs.

  • Whatever it is, you could have thrown it off.

  • You could also be having a spasm, or trigger point in your trap that could also affect

  • this, and that would be a different scenario.

  • We can cover that in a different video.

  • The fact of the matter is, stiff necks will screw up your ability to train and train hard.

  • It's not a good thing to try to go out there and train with a stiff neck because you could

  • be hurting yourself in other ways, too.

  • So now you've got, at least, a weapon in your arsenal to address that and hopefully knock

  • it out quickly.

  • So if you're looking, guys, we try to put, not just strength stuff on this channel, but

  • the other stuff that goes with it.

  • Understanding how the body moves so that we can address the whole picture.

  • We do that.

  • We call it "putting the science back in strength".

  • I hope you guys find these videos helpful.

  • They're a little bit more 'wordy', a little bit more technical, but in the end it helps

  • you to understand how the whole picture operates.

  • If you're looking for a complete training program, head to ATHLEANX.com and get our

  • ATHLEANX training system.

  • In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up

  • below.

  • Let me know what else you want me to cover here, and I'll do my best to do that in the

  • days and weeks ahead.

  • All right, guys.

  • See you soon.

What's up, guys?

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