How can I help prevent neck pain?

To prevent neck pain, you need to stretch and strengthen around the neck and shoulder joints. Karena Wu, PT, discusses how pain originates in the neck, and she demonstrates a stretch that can help prevent neck pain.

Transcript

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How can you help prevent neck pain? [MUSIC PLAYING]

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You can do that by stretching and strengthening around the neck and the shoulder joints. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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The neck and the shoulders share some of the same muscles. So typically, when one area is weak,

00:35

because of their direct connection, they can pull in the other area, and that can cause your neck pain.

00:41

So to prevent it, you've got to do the strengthening and the stretching around it. So a great simple neck stretch would be side bending your head to stretch your upper trapezius

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muscle here. So I'm going to stretch my right side. I side bend my head to the left.

00:57

Reach around over the top to my left temple, and then give a little bit of over-pressure as I'm pulling my shoulder blade down on the right side.

01:06

So this area is getting a nice big stretch. And I would hold it for about 30 seconds, and then slowly come out of it.