Exercise considerations for neck pain

두통이 있는 환자들을 대상으로 endurance ex. 그룹, strength ex.그룹으로 나누어 운동을 실시한 결과 1년 후 endurance 한 그룹의 두통 감소가 더 컸었다.
저자는 stretching 운동만 하는 것 보다는 endurance ex.와 strength ex.를 함께 해주는 것이 최선의 선택이라 함!

또한 일주일에 5일을 매일 2분만 운동하는 그룹과 12분 운동한 그룹으로 나누어 tubing운동을 시켰을때 두 그룹에서 모두 10주 후 통증과 압통에서 감소가 있었다고 보고함..즉, 최소 2분만의 운동도 통증에는 효과가 있었다고 함

Today’s post is written by Rick Kaselj.  Rick is the creator of the Muscle Imbalances Revealed products that I have mentioned in the past.  I reviewed both the lower extremity and upper extremity editions of Muscle Imbalances Revealed in the past.  Rick has a nice presentation on the neck in the upper body edition and wanted to share this post on the topic.  Thanks Rick!

Exercises for Neck Pain

Often times our clients with neck pain will get all kinds of diagnostics tests, have all kinds of assessments, and have a stack of labels before they get to us.  With all that information, it is sometimes challenging to design a proper program.

The first exercise component that most of us go for is stretching the neck, but is this right?  Should you be stretching someone with neck pain?  After stretching, we start strengthening.  Now, do the good old 3 sets of 10 repetitions work for neck pain?  What kind of strengthening exercises do you do for the neck?  Should I be doing cable machine neck exercises?

These are all common questions that the research can help us answer.

Strengthening and Stretching Leads to Better Neck Pain Results

Lets start off with looking at headaches caused by neck pain and how exercise can help.  Looking at Ylinen 2010 where they had a 2 week clinical and home based exercise program that was done 5 days a week.  They had two groups in the study, one was a strength group and the other was an endurance group.

The endurance group lifted their heads up from a supine position for 3 sets of 20.

 The strengthening group used a dynamic isometric hold with tubing in a sitting position for 1 set of 15 in 4 directions.

 Both groups performed shoulder shrugs, shoulder presses, bicep curls, pec flys and pull overs with 2 kg dumbbells for 3 sets of 20.  The control group only performed shoulder and neck stretches.

What the researchers found was that the endurance group had the greatest decrease in headaches after 12 month follow up.  The authors suggest that stretching alone is not enough but an endurance or strengthening program along with stretches may be the best choice.

2 Minutes a Day of Exercise will Decrease Neck Pain

Anderson in 2011 performed a study with 174 women and 24 men who worked at least 30 hours a week and who reported frequent neck/shoulder pain.  They had one group that did 2 minutes of exercise and one group that did 12 minutes of exercise for 5 days a week.

After the 10 week program, they found both groups had a reduction of pain and tenderness.  The exercise that they performed was a resistive tubing, lateral raise in the scapular plane.  The 2 minute group performed the exercise for one set to failure while the 12 minute group performed 5 to 6 sets of 8 to 12 repetition.

Very cool.  Now a little more info on isometrics.

Isometric Strengthening is Not A Very Sexy Thing

Ylinen in 2006 reported that “the change in neck pain and disability indices correlated with the isometric neck strength.”  Has to make you wonder.  Keep stretching and get minimal results with neck pain or start doing isometrics and have happy clients and happy necks. 

Are Home Programs that Good?

People that start a home program, do great at the start but things taper down as time passes.  We have experienced that in our clients and even in ourselves.  Häkkinen in 2006 noted that “progressive loading, supervision of training, and psychosocial support is needed in long-term rehabilitation programs to maintain patient motivation.”

I know many clinicians are good at this but encouraging your clients to come back and see you in order to review the exercises, provide support and motivation is a good idea to do.