Neck Training Exercises

The importance of strengthening the neck is well-known to contact sport athletes, such as football players, wrestlers and boxers. These athletes will receive incredible numbers of high-speed impacts to their head, with only the strength of their neck to prevent these impacts from causing concussions and resultant traumatic brain injury. Every athlete can benefit from neck training exercises.

Towel Pulls

Simple towel pulls are perhaps the simplest and safest method of neck training. Place a towel around your head and grab the ends of the towel in each hand. Hold the towel steady with your hands as you try to move your head. This allows you to provide the optimal amount of resistance to condition your neck muscles, in accordance with the level of their current strength. Towel pulls can be conducted to the front, the back and both sides for best results. These are the ideal beginner neck training exercise because there is less chance of potential injury than with alternative neck training exercises.

Neck Bridges

A common sight in wrestling team conditioning programs is the neck bridge. Lying on your back, place your feet under your buttocks by bending sharply at the knees. Push with your legs and rock your body up off the floor so your entire weight is supported by your feet and your head. This is the back neck bridge. You can also perform these to the front and either side. An advanced form of the neck bridge would be to pivot around your head, changing from the back neck bridge to the side, then the front, and then the other side. Finally, return to the back neck bridge in order to complete one repetition. The neck bridge should not be performed without proper coaching because there is some risk of overloading the muscles of the neck. Exhaustion of these muscles could cause severe damage to the spine in the neck.

Power Cleans

An often overlooked benefit of the power clean exercise is the effect it offers as a neck training exercise. Although most often used as a back and posterior shoulders exercise, the power clean also strengthens the muscles at the back of the neck. This highly effective posterior chain exercise might, in fact, replace all other neck training exercises for all but those athletes involved in the most aggressive sports, such as rugby, mixed martial arts and the others already noted. The power clean will provide additional conditioning for those athletes as a neck training exercise.