Exercises to Strengthen Neck Muscles

The neck region is usually ignored and muscles builders don’t give full focus or the importance it deserves if compared to the other groups of muscles in your body. There are a number of reasons to strengthen your neck muscles and most important of them is that by training this particular muscle group, you can prevent injuries that occur to this sensitive body area.

Neck Strengthening Exercises

Free Weight Exercises

There are a number of exercises to train neck muscles but if you are interested to use free weight exercises for this purpose, you better make the right weight choices by choosing the weights between 2-5 lbs as you can hold it easily. To perform free weight exercises, you need to take following steps:

  • Lie down on your back on a flat surface something like a bench.
  • When you are resting on the bench, move your body slightly upward to prevent your head rest on the bench.
  • Now this is the time to keep weight on the area that covers your forehead.
  • Don’t lose the control over thought throughout the exercise.
  • Bring your head lower very slowly and carefully. Meanwhile, push your chin towards the chest.

Resistance Exercises

You can also use resistance exercise to strengthen your neck muscles for which you just have to use your hands. These kinds of neck exercises are used to increase strengths as well as the level of flexibility of the muscles. You can perform them into four different directions i.e. forward, backwards, right side and left side.

  • If you use forward resistance technique, you will have to put your hands on your forehead while will be forcing your head to move in forward position.
  • People also use backwards resistance technique in which you put your hands right behind your head while keeping your head straight and looking ahead. Once you take this position, try to push your head back and the hands behind your head will create resistance but you should not let them move or shift. Stay in this position for about 5 seconds.
  • If you want to know how to strengthen posterior neck muscles perform by performing right side or left side neck resistance exercise, you will simply follow the same rules as mentioned above in case of forward and backward position.

Towel Exercises

Towel exercises to strengthen front neck muscles are considered to be quite effective and extremely simple and you just need a towel to use during this exercise.

  • Take a small towel
  • Fold it twice to make half
  • Fold it to make thicker
  • Sit on a chair or a bench or stand with apart feet.
  • Wrap the folded piece of towel right behind your head.
  • Use both your hands to hold both ends of towel
  • Bring lower your chin slowly to your chest and
  • If you hold the towel tightly, this will create great resistance
  • Lift your head upwards
  • Keep on lowering down and lifting up your head carefully and slowly.

These are some the great exercises, but you can also use the exercises with hand weights to strengthen neck muscles quickly.