3 Ways To Ease Your Neck Pain

Here at Elevate Physiotherapy, we see numerous clients coming with neck pain. Neck pain is a common problem, especially for people with desk bound jobs. In this blog post, we will share with you 3 ways you can combat your neck pain to help ease it.

What Is Causing My Neck Pain?

The common neck pain we see usually comes from 2 main muscles, the levator scapulae and the trapezius. These muscles attach from the base of your skull, all the way down your neck to your back. The role of these muscles is to stabilize your neck and shoulder. When these muscles are overworked, they tend to become tense and painful. These muscles are overworked usually due to poor posture and the rest of the back muscles not being strong enough to share the role of stabilizing the structures.

What Can I Do To Ease My Neck Pain?

1. Stretch

The first thing we recommend is stretching these muscles. This will help loosen the muscles to have less pain. A common way you can think about these stretches is to try and smell your armpit or listen to your armpit for the other stretch. You can do these stretches below by holding for 30 seconds, 3-4 times a day.

2. Adjust Your Desk and Sitting Position

As most of us are desk bound at work, changing your work environment is one of the best ways to manage your condition. Patients tend to come in with screens that are either too low or too high. It is even worse if they have been using a laptop for a few hours. This will cause them to round their shoulders and neck to look down at the screen. It would be optimal to have a monitor with your laptop to adjust your screen to eye level as shown below.

3. Banded Pull Aparts

On top of stretching and changing your posture, an effective way to easing your neck pain is to strengthen your muscles through exercise. Give this exercise a go with a resistant band. You should aim for 3 sets of 15 repetitions, with 2-minute rest in between sets. You can start off with a light resistance band and if it gets easy, challenge yourself with a medium resistance band. It is important to keep your back engaged throughout this movement and you should not feel the resistance in your shoulders.

Try these 3 ways to help with your neck pain and let us know how it goes. If your pain persists, do contact us to book an appointment for our physiotherapists to assess your neck pain.

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