Neck pain can be quite burdensome on daily life. Cervical retractions are often an effective exercise for neck pain relief. Patients that may benefit from extension-based neck exercises like retraction may feel better when standing, when on the move and when sitting upright or supported. Aggravating factors for patients with neck pain may be prolonged computer use, prolonged inactivity and turning the neck to the left or right.
How to perform:
- Start in a sitting position with upright posture (head neutral with chin over the chest)
- Use your neck muscles to bring your chin and head backwards in a straight horizontal direction
- When you have gone as far as you can in the horizontal backwards direction, use both of your fingers to provide an overpressure on the chin to move a little further backwards
- Try and go further and further with each repetition
- Perform 5-6 sets of 10-15 reps or more as needed (if it seems to help you can do more)
- Check your neck range of motion before/after to see if you have improvements in range of motion and pain (turn your head side to side, tilt your ear to your shoulder both ways, look down and up)
- If neck symptoms and/or neck range of motion improve afterwards, continue performing
- If neck symptoms and/or neck range of motion worsen afterwards and remain worse for longer than 10-20 minutes, discontinue
Cervical retractions with overpressure can be very helpful for neck pain. We always recommend getting an evaluation for any new onset neck pain to properly diagnose the condition.
If you have any questions or to schedule an appointment contact the office via the website or call at 630-510-0080.
Yours in health,
The Lederman Chiropractic & Sports Medicine Team
1 Comment.
[…] The beginning of the exercise involves performing a cervical retraction which has been previously described in another blog post at the following link: https://www.ledermanchiropractic.com/health-tips/cervical-retractions-for-neck-pain/ […]