INSTANT RELIEF - How to Treat A Pinched Neck Nerve - Physical Therapy Exercises

what's up guys hey Jared Beck's Tran here doctor of physical therapy Tona tightened calm do you have pain in your neck that sometimes sends symptoms down into your arms could be indicative of a pinched nerve so today I wanted to talk to you all about this condition what it is why you get it and then share some of my favorite exercises to hopefully help you guys out of some of that pain and out of some of that discomfort let's get into it right now [Music] all right you guys thank you so much for joining me today here on tone and tighten I hope to be able to share something with you that's going to help you out of some of the pain or discomfort that you might be experiencing of course if these things I do share help you out do me a favor and hit that thumbs up button down below okay so let's talk about pinched nerves and let's talk about radiating pain it's a common problem a lot of us experience it not a lot of us know why we have it and so those are the things that I hope to share with you today and so let's say let's jump right into it so pull out my spy model and so we're looking specifically at the neck so this is a profile view he's looking that way right now and you can see if I jump in here really close you can see that each of our vertebrae well our neck is made up a series of vertebrae that are stacked one right on top of the other now at each one of those levels you get these yellow things that exit out right here those are your nerves and they go down and specifically the ones in the neck are going to go down and innervate your arm and so they're responsible for all the sensation and all the muscle activity in your arm all those nerves come from our brain exit out our neck and then travel down into our arms now what can happen is those nerves can become irritated with some of the more common conditions that I see are going to be degeneration in your discs meaning that those discs aren't as tall as they used to be or you can also get a disc bulge meaning that some of that disk material is actually kind of bulging out into a space that it doesn't normally occupy when that nerve is irritated up at that neck level what it can do is it can actually send symptoms and down into your arm be it numbness tingling pain or even all of the above and so those are the things that we want to try to get rid of now that being said it's crucial that I mentioned to you one very important principle that of centralization versus peripheral ization anything that we do that causes those symptoms say they're down into your hand if you do a motion or an activity and all of a sudden that comes into your forearm up into your elbow up into your upper arm even up into your shoulder that is and in that is an indication that were headed the right direction we would refer to that as centralization basically your symptoms are centralizing to that source of the pain up in your neck those are things that we want to promote those are things that's that's again an indication that we're doing the right thing that your symptoms are headed the right direction so centralization is a great thing now that being said if we do any activity that causes peripheral ization for example if you're experiencing kind of that numbness tingling kind of radiating pain down into your shoulder we do one of these exercises and all of a sudden pain is down into your elbow into your arm that's a sign that we're headed the wrong direction that's a sign that maybe the exercises that I'm showing you aren't going to be your best option that you need to possibly pursue some some other means so peripheral ization anything that we anything that causes symptoms to go further away from your neck is a sign that we're headed in the wrong direction now these symptoms from our neck these radiating symptoms from our neck are often caused by posture or position and so we can get our spine into certain postures into certain positions that kind of open those holes that make them a little wider create a little more space for the nerve those are the types of postures that we want to promote and those are the things that I'm going to show you in this video so one thing I want to mention real quick because our posture is such a strong predictor of a lot of the neck pain and shoulder pain that you might be experiencing a shot an entire video about how to correct this problem sharing some of my favorite stretches and exercises to help you out of that posture it certainly might help you with this condition as well I'm gonna leave a link to that down below it's also floating right up here in the screen make sure you check that out for more of these exercises in even greater detail okay let's get into these exercises all right so our first exercise and the one that I probably recommend the most often to most of my cervical patients most of my patients that have neck pain are going to be chin tucks but a lot of the problem that we see with with the neck and with the pinched nerve and the arm pain comes from poor posture meaning the for the shoulders are forward the head is forward and we get into this position so we treat it by trying to reverse that and so your chin tucks the first thing you want to do is sit up straight and tall and then what I want you to do is focus on tucking your chin kind of straight back into your into your net keep in mind it's not a head nod I don't want your gaze to be directed down at only your chin to come down towards your chest I want your chin to go straight back over your shoulders and so in this position right here I call it the double chin exercise you guys the uglier that double chin the more double chins you can kind of create the more roles you can create under here the better the exercise that just tells me that we're headed the right direction and so that's your first exercise so I'd retract back into this chin tuck hold that for about a five-second count and then come up out of it and then retract back hold that for about a five-second count and then come out of it again and so about 10 to 20 repetitions and then you're going to do that at least twice a day even like three four times a day now if the chair is uncomfortable for you you can also do that do these same exercises laying down so you'll see that I'm right here and I'm laying down on my back and then again my focus is just pulling that chin straight down into my throat you'll see that I'm not lifting my head at all and not coming in this direction I'm just gonna tuck straight down into the table hold for about a five-second count and then come right back up out of it and so that's exercise number one chin touch the next exercise we're actually going to do a chin tuck but we're going to take it to the next level now we're going to do chin tucks with some extension so we're seated right here we're gonna tuck our chin backwards perform that chin tuck exercise and now what I want to do is just extend backwards you'll see that I didn't lose that chin tuck position I don't want you in this position right here I'm still gonna have that chin tuck and then I'm going to extend backwards as far as I can go and then come up out of it if we get into this position and they extend way back and they say wow that really hurts back off of that a little bit so again I want to go to the point where you start to feel pain but I don't need to go any further than that hopefully what you find is with repetition with consistency with this you're able to go back further and further and it actually feels better and better as you do it so your first rep you might do this chin tuck and then you might only be able to extend to here and that's totally fine that's where I want you to stay but then over time you should be able to tuck and then extend even a little bit further and so again my recommendations for this are about the same about a three to five second hold and then we're gonna do them ten repetitions at a time you even might even do kind of twenty to thirty of these and then perform that a couple times throughout your day some people do find it a little more comfortable if you grab a towel there's a couple ways that you can kind of do this with the towel keep that towel down low I'm gonna hold it with my hands chin tuck and then extend backwards that's a little easier to kind of take some of the pressure off of your back and some of the pressure off of your neck if you do that with a towel some people find that a little more comfortable they're a little more tolerant towards that a thing that I like to do is actually promote even more extension by getting the shoulder blades and the scapula involved with this so to do that you're gonna you're right here with your towel you tuck your chin backwards and now as you extend over the back of the chair you're actually going to bring that towel up with you so you'll see the relative angle on my towel doesn't change I'm starting right here and then as I extend backwards I'm finishing right here so right here chin tuck backwards extend up and over hold for a three to five second count and then come right back down out of it that's exercise number three again about 10 to 20 repetitions a couple of times a day on that one all right so my next three exercises are geared primarily towards these posture related issues the first thing that I love for that are going to be what we call some SCAP pitches or some scapular pinches basically what you're going to do is sit up straight and tall squeeze your shoulder blades together hold for a three count and then relax and so again right here we're straight and tall we're gonna squeeze hold two three and then relax right here um what you're focused what I want your focus to be is not only retraction with your shoulder blades not only squeezing them together but I also want you to try to tuck them into your back pockets I also want you to try to pull them down towards the floor a lot of times when people do this they'll go like this try to keep your upper traps try to keep your neck relaxed again the motion is kind of pulling down and back and at the end of that set should actually feel like you're actually loser in your neck just because again those shoulder blades are pulling down and back it's actually stretching your neck and so a set of about 10 to 20 and then repeat that three times so about 3 sets of 10 is typically what I recommend with the scalp inches that's another one that you can do a couple of times a day ok next let me show you on my foam roller foam roller you guys if you followed my channel for any amount of time you know this is one of my absolute favourite pieces of therapy equipment if you don't have one I'm gonna leave a link down below check out that link you can pick one up on your own and so but what I'm gonna show you on this this is a great tool to just kind of straighten your spine out in fact it's so great I shot an entire video on the foam roller six minutes to correct your posture links down below links also floating around up here right now but for the purposes of this video what you're going to do is sit right up on that foam roller this one is a 36 inch length I like the longer length because you can actually lay down like the whole length of my spine on this very comfortably and then that's it you guys all you got to do is lay right here and just let gravity kind of stretch the front of your chest stretch the front of your shoulders I even tell people a lot of times in my physical therapy clinic I'll have people do their chin tucks while they're on this maximize your time bigger bang for your buck and so you're laying down you're nice and relaxed everything's stretching out and then I'm going to perform my chin tuck hold two three and then come up out of it perform my chin tuck hold two three just like that and again what we're going for here is just stretching we're trying to get out of this posture and we're trying to get up and back and into this posture that's the goal with that foam roller ok the last exercise that I want to show you are going to be what we call wall angels you're gonna come with your back to a wall I want your hips against the wall your feet can come out from the wall about eight to ten inches but my hips are against the wall my shoulder blades are against the wall and the back of my head are against the wall now what I'm going to do with my knuckles I'm gonna put them right up here against the wall and then hold my knuckles against the wall keep those three points of contact in my spine and then you're just gonna slide them up and over your head and then right back down what you should feel is all those muscles between your shoulder blades going crazy all those postural muscles are holding you in this nice posture is we maintain those points of contact and then we just add some active motion to the arms it's going to really help to stabilize and support and keep everything together nice and tight right where we need it to be and so typically what I'll do is all either do set a timer I'll say like a two-minute timer for someone to do this or count out about 3 sets of 10 this one we can only do this one we only have to do once a day it's a little bit more aggressive once a day 3 sets of 10 on your wall angels alright you guys there you have them about six of my favorite exercises to help alleviate some of the pain in your neck that pitch nerve symptoms and some of the numbness tingling pain whatever symptoms you guys might have in your arm and so I hope that helps you guys out I hope you benefited from this video if you did find it beneficial hit that thumbs up button down below to like this video also if you have any questions or comments or want to share your experience with this video leave that in a comment down below thank you for those comments if you haven't done so already please take this chance to subscribe to tone and tighten right here on YouTube my goal is to share things with you guys that are going to make you the fittest healthiest versions of yourselves and so I hope you take the chance to subscribe to this channel you can do that down below you can also do it right here this is that posture video that I told you guys about earlier this is that foam roll video that I told you guys about earlier this one is how to alleviate muscle knots in your neck and shoulders that's another one that you guys might like I'll see you next time right back here on tone and tighten

Channel: Tone and Tighten

Views: 3,536,027

Keywords: pinched neck nerve, pinched neck nerve physical therapy, exercises for pinched nerve in neck, physical therapy for neck pain pinched nerve, best exercises for pinched nerve in neck, pinched nerve treatment neck exercises, how to treat pinched nerve, physical therapy, best exercises for pinched nerve, how to treat nerve pain, best exercises for neck pain relief, how to treat nerve pain in neck, neck pain, nerve pain, pinched nerve, arm numbness, arm pain, tone and tighten

Id: q5SsM9PWWYc

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 25 2019