By Dr. Simone Losi
Stretching the neck muscles is essential because during the day, due to stress, bad posture, anxiety and nervousness, these muscles find themselves in a perennial state of tension, which can lead to pain and discomfort in the neck and spine. in toto.
But how is this possible?
In the gym they have always taught us that to tone the muscles it is necessary to create a voluntary muscle contraction through an overload; all this is absolutely true but it is necessary to specify that, in order to obtain a good contraction of a muscle, the aforementioned muscular district and the muscles that are inserted in that point, must be sufficiently elastic to generate a correct range of movement.
Let's take examples.
If we perform an exercise for the chest in the presence of a retracted sternocleidomastoid (remember that this muscle, as the name implies, fits onto the sternum), we will obtain an exaggerated contraction of the muscle in question, which will compromise the correct execution of the exercise itself.
Another very important muscle is the homoioid, which is inserted at the scapular level; if this muscle is retracted it does not allow a free movement at the scapular level, therefore it goes to alter the right articular rom in all those exercises that involve the intervention of the shoulder blades.
The trapezoids are other muscles that are very often retracted and, during the exercises for the shoulders, their poor elasticity leads them to activate early, to the detriment of the deltoid.
So it is very important to work on the flexibility of all those muscles that fit on the neck, so that they can then be trained in a more physiological and above all efficient way.
Now let's see what are the main stretching exercises for cervical muscles; these exercises can also be performed every day, maintaining each position for at least 45 sec. The correct technique of execution also provides that the breath is generated in a fluid and natural way.
* exercise for scaleni:
lateral flexion of the neck with the aid of the hand and depression of the ipsilateral shoulder. This exercise can be emphasized by placing a small handlebar in your hand to increase the degree of stretch.
* exercise for trapeze:
neck rotation, bringing the ipsilateral hand behind the back with a depressed shoulder.
* exercise for homoioid:
head extension and swallowing.
* exercise for sternocleidomastoid:
neck rotation, lateral flexion and head extension
* exercise for hyoid muscles:
neck extension, maximum opening of the mouth, and then closing of the mouth slowly when the maximum physiological extension of the neck has been reached.
In addition to these, it is very important to perform the mobilization exercises, which will be performed by series and repetitions.
Let's see some of them:
neck rotations to the right and to the left
lateral flexions to the right and to the left
flexion and extension of the neck
neck rotations bringing the gaze from the opposite side to the rotation
bending downwards bringing the eye upwards
extension upwards bringing the gaze downwards.
If you do these exercises daily, your cervical tract will be grateful to you ... and not only, as the eyes, with their respective ocular muscles, and the jaw, with the pterygoid and masseter muscles, will also benefit from these movements.
SEE ALSO:
Exercises for cervical pain
The witch's blow
Exercises for back pain
