Prevent Text Neck Pain With These Three Exercises

Text neck, or what is otherwise also known as “tech neck,” is a catchy term coined to describe forward head posture after hours glued to your phone, laptop, or TV.

Text neck may lead to stiffness, and dull pain either felt at the top of the neck or the lower neck close to the shoulders. For some people, the sustained tension in their neck can lead to cervicogenic headaches, or what is commonly known as tension headaches.

People’s resting postures where their head is forward, rounded upper, or rounded shoulders are just a few of the symptoms that lead to text neck. The longer you have forward head posture, the more force gets placed on the neck. Without proper prevention, this feeling of discomfort or tightness may eventually lead to other issues like nerve irritations, headaches, thoracic outlet syndrome, or disc bulges.

To help defend your body from neck pain, try these three exercises.

Seated Chin Tucks

Start position Bring your hand behind your head and tuck in your chin. Press the back of your head into your hands, while looking straight ahead.

End position After 5 seconds, release the tucked chin position.You should feel a stretch at the top of your neck and a slight contraction on the front of your neck.

Complete 8 x, every 30 minutes.

Chin Tuck and Wall Angels

Start position Lean against a wall, either standing or seated and begin to tuck your chin. Bring your arms up into shoulder height with your elbows bent at a 90-degree angle.

End position Slide the arms up and down the wall in a snow angel position, and maintain the chin tuck throughout. It’s essential to try to keep the backside of the forearm against the wall during this movement (if you can’t, that’s okay go as for back as you can).

You should feel a slight stretch on the back of the neck, a stretch in your chest and a slight contraction at the back of your shoulders. If your shoulders are tight this will feel like a bit of work on the front of the shoulders

Complete 8-10 reps, every 1-2 hours.

Thoracic Spine Extension

Start position You can use the side of your couch, bed, or desk/table. With either your elbows bent or arms straight (whichever is most comfortable), slowly bring your chest down and your head through your arms.

End position Now begin to round your spine as high up as you can. Repeat and continue this movement through your upper back.

You should feel a stretch in your upper back between your shoulder blades and in your armpits.

Complete 10 reps, every 1-2 hours.

2 min read

Four Text Neck Exercises To Avoid Text Neck Syndrome

Posted on Nov 28, 2016

Education

Four Text Neck Exercises To Avoid Text Neck Syndrome

At this point in the tech generation, it’s safe to say that majority of the population has a smartphone. Unfortunately, we all are susceptible to text neck syndrome. However, small changes to the way you consume content on your phone can make all the difference between a healthy neck and text neck.

Check out these four simple exercises and neck pain stretches for your neck pain!

1. Neck problems from cell phones can be fixed by simply bringing your phone a little closer to your face. It makes the world of a difference!

Ultimately, you decide on positioning; your phone doesn’t. By putting 10 degrees of extension in your neck (bringing your head back up) can alleviate about 10lbs of sustained weight on your neck. As long as you’re more conscious about positioning, it’ll help you find opportunities to bring your phone up to your face.

2. Talk more and text less

We have lost our ability to make more genuine connections. We don’t even call to wish each other happy birthday anymore. We pretty much say all of our well wishes with one emoticon. In a day in age where hearing a voice over the phone is rare take advantage. It could set you apart in many ways and give you a competitive edge.

3. Tuck your elbows – it provides you with a checkpoint

When you tuck your elbows into your body it gives you no room to drop your arms down any more. When your arms drop down your head will just end up following.

4. Get into the habit of simple and quick neck exercises

Working on the deep neck flexors is an excellent way to create a stretch of your back neck muscles that tend to tighten up. It also builds the strength of the muscles deep in the front of the neck that tends to get weaker and inhibited because of always texting on your phone.

Lie on your back
Tuck your chin slightly
Raise your head up just high enough to force you to contract the muscles in the front of your neck against gravity
Slowly continue to raise your head into more neck flexion (chin down to to chest)
Don’t let your chin jut forward
Hold for 30 sec (or whatever time you can tolerate. Many of you will be super tired after 10secs)
Repeat 3x daily