Daily Tip #11 - Neck Tension Relief
0:01 - Intro
Hello, and Happy Monday! If you celebrate Easter, I hope you had a wonderful holiday. This is Daily Tip Number 11. But it's Number 1 of our now Week-Daily Tips. Since we're only going to be doing these Monday through Friday. One thing I've been noticing -- with the time I've been spending at home -- is a lot of neck tension building up. Probably from all the screen work that I've been doing. And I'm sure many of you can relate to that. So, today's exercises are going to give us a couple of things to help start to release some of that tension.
0:38 – Gliding Nod Intro
The first one we're going to do is a mobility drill. Something that's going to open up the joint -- right at the top of the neck and into the base of the head -- that is often closed down when we're spending a lot of time on the computer screen in this position. The first thing I'd like you to do to open this up is to feel the back of your neck right up into the base of your head. There should be a little notch there that you can find. When you find that notch, tuck your chin in. You'll notice how the notch is a little bit smaller. And then as you start to bring the chin out, you'll notice that bony protuberance creates a bigger notch and then goes away again. That's when the joint is closing down. For this drill, we want to make sure that we're keeping that joint space open. Alright?!
1:25 – Doing the Gliding Nod
You can go ahead and give this a shot with me. Again, we're going to get nice and tall through the neck. Bring your finger up into that spot in the back of the head. From there, tuck your chin so we know it's open. And then bow from the base of the neck so that your head is coming down but the chin stays in. Very simply from there -- keeping the chin in -- we're going to start to pull up and all the way back. Keeping that space open through a full range of extension motion with the neck. That's all that it is. Once you've done that once, re-tuck. Bow the chin again. Pull up and back. And then maybe a third time. Tuck. Bow. Keeping the space open. Pull as far up and back as you possibly can.
2:18 – Notes on Gliding Nod
That's something you can do sitting at your desk. Something you can do standing up in the kitchen. It doesn't really matter where. As long as you can move your head, it's easy enough to do. You may notice when you're first trying to figure out how to do it, you're actually increasing the tension through your neck. That's because it's kind of unnatural and hard work to keep the chin tucked while we're pulling up and back. But, with just a little bit of practice, you'll start to feel that tension go away and you'll get better and better at keeping that part of the head open.
2:49 – Trap Squeeze Intro
Step 2 in these drills that I'm giving you, is something for your Traps. Those are the muscles that work right through here that often get really, really tight. And if you remember from the workout that we did earlier -- where we were stretching and squeezing the muscles -- we're going to go through that same process here for these muscles of the neck. Because neck tension is just an imbalance between tightness and relaxation, you want to experience both spectrums, so you can find that nice comfortable place in the middle.
3:20 – Trap Squeeze Demo
We'll do this one together as well, but I'll demo it first. What's going to happen is the stretched position is the shoulder blade dropping down and the shoulder rolling forward. We're then going to tilt the head away and rotate a little bit so we're getting the AC joint -- this little bony thing on top of your shoulder -- as far away from this spot on the base of your neck as possible. So again, shoulder down and forward. Head tilts. Rotates away. And that should give you a pretty good stretch. And you can play with the angles as you need, to get the stretch that you're looking for. Okay?! The second part of the movement is to then reverse it. Think about this spot on the back of the head coming in and touching this spot on your shoulder. You're going to pull the shoulder up. And then you're going to lean the head over. Rotate the head -- the nose up and away. And gently squeeze them together. And once you've gotten a light squeeze. We'll drop away. And come back into the first position. That's what it's going to look like.
4:25 – Notes on the Trap Squeeze
We'll do the drill once on each side so you can experience it. And then this is something you can play with, moving forward throughout the next few days. Just as I mentioned for when we did these types of exercises before, when you're squeezing, start with a level 3, or 4 out of 10, tops. Eventually, you can work up to higher numbers, but the last thing you want to do is cramp out and jam up your neck when what we're trying to do is relax it. So, are you ready to give it a shot? Let's do it together.
4:53 - Do the Trap Squeeze
We start with the stretch. Shoulder blade comes down and forward. Head leans away. Chin rotates back toward the shoulder. That should give you a nice stretch. Maybe bow the head a little bit. Once you're feeling the stretch, try to bring those two points together. That's the most important part to think about. Squeezing the shoulder and the base of the head up together. A piece of this that everybody misses is taking the chin in the opposite direction. Squeeze. And then come back down and find your stretch. Shake that out. And we'll do the other side. So, the stretch position. Shoulder down and forward. Head away. Chin back toward the shoulder. Feel the stretch out through your neck. Now bringing the points together here and here. Draw the shoulder blade up and in. Turn the head away. Lean the head back. Feel the squeeze. And then reverse. Shoulder drops down and away. Head tilts away. And roll the chin back toward you with that little extra stretch and release it.
5:59 - Farewell
That's it! I hope you enjoy today's tip. Try those two drills to see if you can get a little bit of a release of any neck tension that you might be feeling. It could take a couple of times practicing to get it right. Once you've given that a shot, feel free to reach out. Let me know how it went for you. And then tune in again tomorrow, at 11 o'clock. We'll do something new. Hope to see you there!