How to Relieve Neck Pain (in 3 Simple Steps)

Are you asking yourself how to relieve neck pain? Let me tell you the hard truth: there are no magical stretches, trigger points, or gadgets to help you with that! And your neck pain isn’t caused by your tight pecs or posture.

We used to think that those statements were true. And no offense if you thought so too. Thanks to scientific research, we now know better. In this article, I will show you how to relieve neck pain in 3 simple steps.

By the end of this article, you will have everything you need to manage your neck pain long-term.

Step 1: Understand the Problem

I had this coaching client with neck pain. And I can still remember how he said: “Gino, I’m sick of this ongoing subscription of manual therapy. Something needs to change!”

I worked with him for 4 Months and we achieved great results. We used the exact three steps outlined in this article.

What I want you to understand in this first step, is that there is no simple fix for neck pain. If there were one, you wouldn’t be reading this article. That’s a hard pill to swallow, but hear me out, please.

I’m sure you’ve heard some of the following explanations for your neck pain:

• Your neck muscles are too tight.
• Your neck muscles are too weak.
• You have a trigger point in your neck.
• Your forward head posture is the cause.
• You have a blocked or misaligned vertebra.
• etc.

And I get it – they sound absolutely reasonable.

The thing is: when you take a closer look at the scientific research on this, you come to a different conclusion.

The conclusion is, that you can’t reduce neck pain to one of those things. It’s more complex than that.

I will walk you through every single one of those explanations. You will find out why they only helped you in the short term.

You can’t believe that?

Take your own experience as an example. If your tight muscles were the cause, a relief of tension should get rid of the problem. I guess that didn’t happen.

Research indicates that the muscles we perceive as tense don’t have to be harder (Dieterich et al. 2020).

So even if your neck feels super tight, it doesn’t mean those muscles actually are.

According to current evidence, the feeling of tension is a RESPONSE of the body to stressors.

This means that you can’t always and only reduce tension to the affected area. It’s much more complex than that.

Psychosocial factors, like high stress at work or with your partner, can tip you over the edge. This can then cause an increase in muscular tension. Research like the one done by Mense (2008) supports this.

At this point, I want to mention the “threat bucket” you’ve seen on this channel before.

As you can see from the bucket, many things cause stress for your body and fill up the bucket with water.

If you have more stress than you can currently handle, the bucket overflows. The feeling of tension or even pain is ONE possible response from your body. Your body is trying to tell you it’s time to make some changes.

Another hypothesis often mentioned is that weak muscles tend to be tense. This idea makes sense, but I haven’t found solid evidence that this is true.

It’s more likely that you have less muscle strength BECAUSE OF pain. Not the other way around. Ylinen et al. (2004) confirm this in their research.

And yet, strength training can be very beneficial!

Studies like Søgaard et al. (2012) show that people who do strength training have better results than those who don’t.

Your neck muscles can handle everyday loads better if they are stronger.

Yet, that doesn’t mean muscle weakness is the cause of neck tension or pain (even though I would love it if it were).

Let’s talk about trigger points. If those were the cause, you could release them and the pain should be gone for good. But most people only feel temporary relief from trigger point therapy.

How about the forward head posture?

Same thought process. Work on your neck muscles to get the head back into the “right” position. Then the pain should be gone, right? Doesn’t seem so.

And what about the blocked or misaligned vertebra?

The cracking sound of a “realignment” comes from gas bubbles.

There’s no realignment of the vertebra happening. And that’s a good thing! Because your spine is super strong and resilient. Even if it sometimes doesn’t feel like it.

So now we understand that neck tension and pain are usually a result (or symptom) of overload.

What should we do next? Let’s tackle the pain now!

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Step 2: Manage the Symptom

Having neck pain can be very debilitating, that’s why it’s useful to tackle it immediately.

In this second step, we’re talking about:

• Foam Rolling (aka self-massage)
• Heat
• Stretching
• Strength training

What do all the mentioned treatment options have in common?

You can do them by yourself. That’s very important and empowering if you have control over your pain on your own.

Foam rolling, heat and stretching will only help short term, but that’s still reason enough to do them!

At the same time: if you only rely on those, you might not be making the progress you are looking for.

As mentioned before: strength training can help your neck pain long term. That’s why I want to put the focus on it.

Here are three exercises that you can do:

You can do those exercises for:

• 3 Sets
• 10–15 repetitions
• 2-3x per week

Use a low weight at first (your neck might be sensitive at the moment) and then work your way up over time

But of course – strength training isn’t always the solution. We talked about how neck pain is a result of general overload.

Let’s take a closer look at this.

Step 3: Work on the cause

Remember the threat bucket? I’d recommend taking a look at which stressors in your life you can change positively.

• Is it your sleep habits that you could optimize?
• Or is it your diet that could use some tweaking?
• How about you stop hanging out with that friend who drains you every time you meet up?

You get the point.

Start with the low-hanging fruits first!

Your work situation may be stressful, but quite difficult to change. Yet, you can change your diet right now.

Also, consider integrating more activities into your life that help reduce stress.

Like spending more time in nature, exercising, reading, or spending time with family.

Yes, that sounds like work. Yes, you have to take responsibility for your pain. And yes, you are the person who has to do most of the lifting here (quite literally).

But at the same time, you can start right now. And you can apply this three-step process to many, many more pain presentations.

If you ever need help with your pain, you can book a free pain analysis with me. In this free analysis call, we can see if remote online coaching would work for you. Click on this link for more information.

Let’s summarize:

In step 1 we understood that neck pain is more complex than having weak or tight muscles.

In step 2 we look at how you can reduce pain by using self-massage, heat or exercises like stretching. We also want to increase the load tolerance of your neck by doing strength exercises.

And in step 3 we discussed working on the cause by reducing your stress level.

I want you to take a screenshot of this graphic and start using it right now.

If you also have pain between your shoulder blades, then check out this article now.

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