Don't Do This to Your Neck (Over Age 50)

then you're able to do things like be able to get down on the ground you can look around let's say you're having to crawl through a vents like you're Mission Impossible and you need to get down on the floor and if you have trouble with any of that then what I would suggest is yes you I'm here on a Brisk morning in Japan to talk about a neck exercise that's supposedly so dangerous that you should never do it if you're over the age of 50 some physical therapists on the internet and out there in the world tell people who are over the age of 50 that doing this simple exercise is somehow dangerous unnatural and bad for you and we're going to talk about why that's total BS why doctors and PTs say that this NE exercise is bad for you we're going to talk about why they are being misled and how they're misleading you with good intentions and how you can improve the range motion of your neck without hurting yourself in the long run so if you're ready let's get ready to think right move right and feel [Music] right so first off the exercise that I have seen PT say is bad for you if you're over the age of 50 is this simple exercise it's rolling your neck this is supposedly bad for you because the PTI saw online said he hears noises in his neck when he does the neck roll therefore you should not do this simple neck roll because obviously if there are noises it's bad for you and you're going to sever a nerve or whatever you're just going to Crunch and destroy the bones in your neck now this is absolute garbage reasoning This falls into the physically feeble fallacy which is basically when somebody who doesn't know how to help you and who doesn't understand how a human body works tells you that because something's hard for them it's going to be hard for you or bad for you so if somebody says oh well you know I can't do push-ups therefore you shouldn't do push-ups because we're both too old and weak to do push-ups that's the physically feeble fallacy and this is the same thing doctors and PTs do this all the time somehow rolling your head like this is supposed to be bad for you now when you actually think about it this is total garbage because babies do this teenagers can do this kids do this you can do this all your life if the muscles that control your bones work correctly think about this if you were an adult who had to actually climb trees to get food if you were a hunter if you had to crawl around dig around and look up at the sky on occasion guess what you'd have to have the ability to roll your neck around and it wouldn't be bad for you it most definitely wouldn't end your life and it most definitely wouldn't destroy you to be looking around in different directions one thing I heard in that video I saw was that this PT believed that since you have pure emotions in your neck you should just stick to those pure emotions meaning pure emotions being straight up straight down side to side right and then he was saying you should just keep those separate never combine those motions because sometimes or somehow that's bad for you and again total garbage reasoning physically feeble fallacy okay just think about this if you are doing something like surfing which I don't know how many of you are doing you have to be able to turn and look over like that you got to be able to turn turn your head tilt your head look down if you are navigating a hiking trail you're going to need to look down turn your head okay if you're looking at birds and you're trying to see what's up in the sky then you're going to be able to turn and look up like that that's normal human function so if you have trouble with any of that then what I would suggest is yes you can slow things down and keep it to Pure motions so you can just gradually go back pay attention to the muscle Sensations if you feel like you get stiffness and tightness in the muscles of the front take your time stretch it out you can even massage it if you're getting a bunch of crunching in the back of your neck don't go as far as fast and think about building strength in all directions because when the muscles are not stabilizing correctly if they're not moving the bones correctly you might feel crunching that doesn't mean that you are doomed to have a terrible arthritic neck that just means your muscles don't know how to control the bone so I have some videos that will help you do this I will link to those in the description box but basically real quick you can use your hands to do neck exercises and strengthen your neck in different positions so let's say when I go this way I feel some sort of like crunching or feels really weak and unstable I can just use my hand and I can strengthen it by pushing into my hand I'm using the neck muscles here and I'm not just going to work on one side I can put my hand on the other side and then try to push back that way so I'm going to be using the muscles on both sides in all the positions so maybe if I go like this and I feel like oh yeah that's funky somewhere I'm going to figure out what's weaker what side is going to help me the most and I'm just going to keep doing that I can also do it by looking up and pushing down into my hand in that position I can stay in that position put my hands behind my head and then go back into my hands so now I'm using muscles in the back of my neck I can also do this by combining motions turn my head like this looking up at the sky looking at Birds it's not breaking my neck I'm not going to separ my cored artery I'm not going to give myself give myself a stroke I'm just gradually learning to use my muscles in my neck so let's say I'm here I was pushing back I can use my hand here and then I can again create resistance I'm pushing into my hand I'm using muscles to help me create that twist but in a careful gradual way so when you're doing this you're not using maximum contractions you're using gentle contractions 30 to 50% so like a medium range and then as you feel stronger and safer and more comfortable you can absolutely use more of a uh intense contraction if you feel like you need to for some reason maybe you are in Jiu-Jitsu and you really want to have a strong neck well doing things like this isometric contractions to build your neck strength could probably help you out quite a bit but if you're just a run-ofthe-mill Joe or Jane who's just kind of looking at the computer screen all day your neck muscles are super super super weak and just doing a little bit of this is going to help you use your neck muscles to control your head and turn your head with a lot less of that crunching and cracking so then you know you can be strong er down here you can be stronger back here and then you can get used to going to the extremes and building up strength there too but like I said you want to do this carefully remember that slow is safe and fast is full so start with low intensity hold for 5 seconds build it up to 10 seconds when you feel ready then you could even do 30 seconds you can play around with it it's not about any magic numbers okay so when you first starting off I'd suggest doing this you could probably do it once a day maybe twice a day and just again keep it low intensity and just keep finding positions that are tough I would say find two or three positions do two sets in each position and then that's it so super simple and then do it again the next day and if you feel like you tolerate it well then you can do it more the next day as well or even later that day just play with play with it see how your body feels and adapt adjust to what it feels like your body needs and make sure you explore all those different angles so that you feel like you can control all those positions well safely and without a lot of thinking and you can use neck rolls then to help you discover difficult angles so maybe it's right here well then you can just strengthen there maybe strengthen the rotation in both directions maybe strengthen the ability to pull yourself into that position you want to explore use neck rolls gently and safely and then as you find and discover difficult angles you want to work to strengthen those angles or if you find that you know what even getting to a certain position is really tough because it's so stiff well then you can also do some gentle stretching too just listen to the muscles and help those muscles figure out how to get your head and neck into those currently difficult positions then you're able to do things like be able to get down on the ground can look around let's say you're having to crawl through a vent like you're Mission Impossible and you need to get down on the floor and you can still look up find that vent you need to crawl up whatever it is you want to have the ability to use your neck in all kinds of positions don't buy into the physically feble fallacy don't let somebody tell you that just because you're 50 years old it's somehow horribly dangerous for you to use your neck that's totally natural for a human being in a way that human beings are literally designed to be able to do like this this is normal neck function just because you turn 50 I'm going to turn 50 in a couple years I'm not going to give up my ability to move my neck it's ridiculous so don't don't don't just take people at their word a lot of doctors a lot of physical therapists will tell you stuff because that's what they were taught but what they were taught is derived from knowledge that surgeons pass down and surgeons don't understand how muscles work they only understand and generally the technical knowhow of cutting into the body and shaving down bones and fixing broken bones they literally only see muscles as something that you cut to get out of the way so they can access the bones so if that is the mentality that's pervading everything else you're going to get bad advice surgeons are the ones who are supposedly most knowledgeable about joint pain supposedly muscle function but basically all they want to do is cut into structures so remember that that is in all of the medical System including in the PT world because the pts pretty much just as a matter of financial incentives have to do whatever surgeons tell them is correct unless they don't Bill insurance if they're you know cash pay then they get to do whatever they want but then there are standards of practice that often will hamstring them into telling you stuff that is total BS like you should never combine motions in your back if this video helped you make sure you share it with somebody else who's over 50 or over 60 or over 30 it doesn't really matter the age doesn't matter for a free course to help you with your body go to Upright health.com BRB it'll help you rebuild your body at home with six free workouts and a whole bunch of useful advice including some detailed coverage of the physically feeble fallacy upright health.com BRB and for more free videos to help you with your body be sure to check these out here and as always I hope you remember that pain sucks life sh

Channel: Upright Health

Views: 68,007

Keywords: upright health, upright health neck pain, upright health neck, neck exercises for seniors, safe neck exercises, dangerous neck exercises, good neck exercises, cracking in neck when i turn my head, neck cracks, neck cracks when i turn my head, age 50, neck exercises over 50, over fifty, bob and brad neck pain, physical therapist over 50

Id: ObaBkDa7SeY

Length: 11min 35sec (695 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024