For most of my adult life, I’ve suffered from neck pain and tension headaches. Some of this is due to whiplash from a car accident, but mostly it’s related to my poor posture. Women are especially prone to carrying tension in their trapezius muscle (which connects from the base of your skull to multiple surfaces of your shoulder blades and spine) and raising your shoulders throughout the day can lead to serious pain and lousy posture. I recently saw a massage therapist for this pain and was told that the tension in my muscle is so bad, it feels like I have rocks in my trapezius. Massage is an expensive way to deal with this. Fortunately, there is a cheaper way to fix poor posture that works like a charm… exercise!
If you lift weights in a gym, chances are that you work the muscles that exacerbate this problem–pectorals, deltoids, trapezius. Strengthening any muscle that flexes the chest or raises the shoulders can worsen the tension you carry in your neck and shoulders. While it may seem unbalanced, the best thing to do is skip lifting for your deltoids and trapezius all together, lower the amount of weight you lift with your chest, and above all, focus on your back muscles. You want to strengthen the muscles that pull your shoulder blades down and back. This means lifting for your back muscles, including your rhomboids and lats. Also try stretching the chest muscles so that chest tightness doesn’t cause your shoulders to round forward. My chiropractor recommended this to me in 2005 and I set to work right away in the gym. Within a month, my neck pain was gone. Soon after, I noticed a serious improvement in my posture. I kept this up until my recent pregnancy interfered with my gym routine, and sure enough, my neck pain and lousy posture are back. Like so many ailments, this one can be easily fixed with exercise and I look forward to when I can return to the gym to correct it. So if you suffer from neck pain and tension in your neck and shoulders, doing the right exercises in the gym can help you!
